I used to love Orson Scott Card. Until recently I had read every book in the Enderverse (I stopped when he put out the Holiday Special (sans Ewoks, thankfully), "War of Gifts," and have not read "Ender in Exile," and I doubt I will read either of those or the upcoming cross between Bean's world and Ender's. I never read anything else by him, save his essays on Hatrack, his personal Website, and a few short stories. Over the course of a few years, between 2005 and 2008, I realized how much I hated this man and his opinions. They made my skin crawl and my mind rebel, and I stopped reading his website.
My love for Ender's Game was tainted by my dislike of the personal opinions of this man. Is that fair?
Is it fair to judge a person's WORKS, his WRITING, on his SELF? Well, maybe not, but that's not what I am doing. I cannot read anything of his that I used to love without seeing bits and pieces of HIM and his opinions in it. And I felt torn. But searching through internet articles and whatnot on the matter, by people who were feeling the same or similar feelings as me, made me feel better--and more incensed. I learned things about OSC that I had not know before--things that made me not just dislike his opinions, but hate him as a person.
Too bad. I still have my copy of Ender's Game, it still sits on my shelf among my loved books, and I still remember fondly the experience of reading the rest of the series. But I don't think I could ever read them again, and there is no way I could ever justify to myself purchasing anything by him again.
And here's why:
We Are Not In Need of Powerful Stories but Righteous Actions from the Mormon Worker, a mormon blog.
On The Problem of Evil in Fiction from Read React Review.
Your Twilight is my Ender's Game from Terminally Incoherent.
Ender's Game: pornography, jesus and writing, a review.
Orson Scott Card blasts J.K. Rowling over the Lexicon case; and Net Neutrality.
Orson Scott Card is a misogynistic homophobic wanker from Feminist SF--the blog! Blunt, but depressingly close to and spot on the truth.
The Hypocrites of Homosexuality: a rant by OS Card on Nauvoo, "A Gathering Place for Latter-Day Saints."
Anti-Gay Bigotry is Anti-American, in response to the above rant, from the Daylight Atheism.
An blog post by yonmei about OSC.
Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat from Kuro5hin.
Creating the Innocent Killer, one of THE MOST interesting explanations of Ender EVER. I MUST say that had OSC written Ender's Gme and Speaker for the Dead to do this, AND not denied it, I would hold Ender's Game to be even more classic as a dissection of Hitler apologism and the tendency for soldiers to say "I was just following orders" or "I was just playing a game" as an excuse for typically inexcusable actions. It would have been as interesting a human nature novel as A Clockwork Orange, though still not as fun.
Anyway, those people show why I feel the way I do about OSC way better than I can possibly rant, so that's it. The end. No more OSC for me.
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