Orson Scott Card's Amazon Review of Ender's Game

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3SKPG9XEJYASE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0812589041&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

by thinker • 15 years ago

141 118 15 years ago

quandrum• 15 years ago

It's hard to see an author so defensive about their work. There will always be naysayers. Ender's game has persisted for so long in a way that so many of it's peers hasn't.

We have to remember that negative experiences effect our users more, and complaints will in general outnumber the praise, even if the the number of users who are unhappy are outnumbered by happy users by orders of magnitude.

Alternatively, haters gonna hate.

mattdeboard2• 15 years ago

I don't find it challenging or difficult or upsetting at all to see an artist vigorously defend his work. What I find "hard" is someone poo-pooing another person's passionate defense of something they care about.

icedpulleys• 15 years ago

You don't have to put quotation marks around hard; one of its definitions is an adjective meaning painful or difficult to endure.

hugh35• 15 years ago

Unfortunately does nothing to change my view that authors should probably keep away from their own reviews. If he'd had some brilliant new insight that would be one thing, but instead he just comes off as slightly more defensive than anyone who has sold tens of millions of books should.

I guess it was 1999 when this was written, though, so the norms for online reviews had not yet been established.

mcritz• 15 years ago

I felt similarly. “Why not write a blog post?” I thought.

saraid216• 15 years ago

A blog post in 1999 is asking a little much.

ars• 15 years ago

These days Amazon has a place where writers can comment on their books. It may not have existed in 1999.

It's one thing to fake a review, but there's nothing wrong with using that spot to talk to your readers.

jwecker• 15 years ago

Keep in mind also that Orson has written several books for writers and does a ton of workshops etc. For sci-fi he's a pretty prolific (and good imo) writing teacher. In his response he was specifically targeting literary concepts that he teaches and has written about while trying to dilute some of the ad-homonim attacks that were apparently exploding for the book at the time.

wging• 15 years ago

<grin>

donnybrook• 15 years ago

I agree that authors should avoid responding to reviews. However, this is the most gracious response to a review I have ever read from an author. From everything I have read from authors, it does not matter how many books they sell, bad reviews still hurt.

andrewvc• 15 years ago

I'll just point out that the thing I didn't like about enders game was that the book felt too monotone. It has a great twist at the end, but everything leading up to it is linear, predictable, and while initially exciting, quickly becomes uninteresting.

mattdeboard2• 15 years ago

I've read through Ender's Game more times than I can count, and have worn through two paperback copies. It is a powerful book with plenty of great object lessons. Quality is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.

SoftwareMaven2• 15 years ago

I really don't think people should be down-voted for writing a dissenting, non-inflammatory opinion. I really liked Ender's Game (it is on my top 10 list, in fact), but I would absolutely hate living in a world where everybody loved it (even worse would be a world that people felt they couldn't express their dislike for fear of upsetting others).

hugh35• 15 years ago

I think that Ender's Game is one of those books whose appeal is largely independent of its literary merits. The people who love it really love it because they identify with it, it speaks to them, and if you don't identify with it then it's just some random okay sort of sci-fi story about space battles.

I never really identified with it, but maybe if I'd read it at twelve instead of 24 then I would have. (Though I'm kinda glad I didn't.)

I say this not to disparage the book. A fairly well-written book that speaks to a lot of people is much better than a very well-crafted book that speaks to nobody (I'm looking at you, Mr Joyce). And I'm sure there are relatively crappy works of art that I like just because I identify with 'em. But Ender's Game is just one of those love-it-or-go-meh-at-it books.

tedunangst• 15 years ago

That happens with short stories that become novels. If the short story was good enough to be worth converting to a novel, it already has everything it needs to be great. What more can you add?

r00fus• 15 years ago

Which is likely due to the style choice as OSC mentions in his self-book-review.

Personally, having read it at an early age, I found the science part of the sci-fi to be very captivating and philosophy to be interesting.

From a sci-fi historiology perspective, you can see parts of the Bradbury style space-as-wild-west, while also some of the Gibson-esqe interconnected computing. I also found that the philosophy of the ansible to be related to some of Philip K Dick's warped sense of reality books.

pitdesi• 15 years ago

I love Ender's Game and all of OSC's other books, but it seems like he might be a terrible guy... more on that in this very interesting interview: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/02/03/card

hugh35• 15 years ago

Is he actually a terrible person, or merely one who happens to have unpopular opinions?

burgerbrain15• 15 years ago

In my humble opinion, it is not unreasonable to judge a person by their publicly stated opinions.

zavulon• 15 years ago

Hear, hear. I didn't find anything in this interview that identifies him as a "terrible person". Yes, things he says are unpopular on the internet, given the internet's demographics - young, liberal, etc. But I think someone who calls him a "terrible person" based only on views he expressed hasn't met many terrible people in their lifetime.

And before I get accused of being his fanboy, I can't stand Ender's Game. I think it's the most overrated piece of garbage in history of sci-fi.. sometimes it reads like a work of a 12 year old. Terrible writing, worse, incredibly naive plot, I have no idea how it can be considered a "classic" and works by far better sci-fi authors like Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley, Henry Kuttner, Alfred Bester, etc are unfairly forgotten.

Having said that, I think the Card's masterpiece is the insults he wrote for Monkey Island game... now that's a great piece of writing!

barrkel• 15 years ago

I found myself disliking the slanted editorializing of the interviewer more than OSC. She's seems unhealthily intent on wallowing in victimhood, and delights in the power she has - "I prefer to get my digs in when I write the piece up, like this. It's a way of fighting back without ever having to face my tormentor head-on." - when whomever she's beating up can't fight back. She has become the bully herself.

grandalf8• 15 years ago

The author misunderstands what Card is trying to say in response to her questions. Also, she evidently misunderstood Ender's Game quite a bit as well.

Ender was suited to be a brilliant military commander precisely because he hated killing so much. A more bloodthirsty commander would have fallen for certain traps, committed certain errors of judgment that Ender was immune to. The nuance here is that Ender's strategic advantage came from a tremendous empathy with his adversary.

In the end, Ender had to be fooled into destroying the Buggers precisely because of this empathy. He never would have been able to commit a genocide if he thought it was actually a genocide, but he could do it in the context of a video game.

And, for what it's worth, the childhood bullying delivered by Ender's brother was also a function of Ender's love for his brother. We see very soon that Ender is capable of tremendous violence, but he tolerates mistreatment from Peter because he loves him so much.

It is this victimhood which endears Ender to any reader who has felt victimized, by showing that in some cases there is great physical and moral power beneath the surface.

The author of this strange hit piece is clearly trying to rile up various reactive political groups against Card. Sure, card is a Mormon and appears somewhat socially conservative in his personal beliefs. He is clearly not homophobic and became defensive when he sensed that the author was trying to broach the subject which had probably caused him much pain.

Sure some people believe that anyone who doesn't advocate same sex marriage qualifies as homophobic... The author of the Salon piece clearly thinks that state recognition of same sex marriage is hugely important.

I'd argue that through his books Card has done far more good (by enlightening people about important moral issues) than any harm caused by his traditional view (restricting the word "marriage" but not the state sanctioned bond between two people).

The remarks about Card yapping and flirting suggest a very immature person wrote the article. Clearly at a certain point Card was trying to be polite and let the interview finish without incident... something that was framed as "shutting down"... Bizarre stuff.

araneae3• 15 years ago

I would take issue with your view that Card isn't homophobic.

From "The Hypocrites of Homosexuality" by Orson Scott Card:

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message to those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

So the man actively opposes it gay marriage. He supports laws that make homosexual acts illegal. He doesn't think that gays should be protected from getting fired because of their sexuality. How is that not homophobic?

telemachos• 15 years ago

> You say, "He is clearly not homophobic."

In the interview, Card says "I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that's being attempted" (emphasis mine).

Calling homosexuality "deviant behavior" upsets me, but the really revealing part, I think is the bit I emphasized. The implication certainly appears to be that (by parity of reasoning) "A homosexual does harm someone simply by being homosexual".

If that's not homophobic, I don't know what is.

william42• 15 years ago

«Sure, card is a Mormon and appears somewhat socially conservative in his personal beliefs.»

Not just «somewhat», he believes that armed insurrection is justified as a response to gay marriage:

«Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.»

see http://www.mormontimes.com/article/10233/State-job-is-not-to...

patrickgzill3• 15 years ago

Thanks for the link, however the writer seems rather smugly superior over the (discovered to be) troglodyte she is interviewing.

Entaroadun2• 15 years ago

Can't we make distinctions between the guy's philosophy and his writing? I for one do not feel the book (or any book) is diminished by my perception of the author as a person.

sho_hn2• 15 years ago

Personally, I can't: The book may not be diminished by itself, but my enjoyment of it certainly is, because I keep searching for evidence of the author's personal beliefs and/or agenda in the text, disrupting immersion.

We're talking about someone who writes stuff like this:

"The argument by the hypocrites of homosexuality that homosexual tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible.

[...]

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

(Source: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html)

And there's a lot of similar-level, oddly familiar sounding looneyness in his writings on various other political topics as well. It's perhaps most disturbing - or fascinating - that a writer as articulate would be content to be such a cliché. At times I wonder if it's all an act.

SoftwareMaven2• 15 years ago

Maybe, maybe not. I do believe that fiction is not just a story, but also a peak into the author's mind. If her writing is trying to paint a picture that is obviously conflicting to what I know the author's beliefs on a topic actually are, it feels like I'm being lied to.

That doesn't mean an author can't experiment with their beliefs, though, and that is where it gets very subjective: do I feel like I'm being lied to or not?

I don't generally spend a lot of time learning about authors I read, though. They tend to exist in a similar space as their characters do in my mind: a place stitched together and colored by the words they have written.

stonemetal2• 15 years ago

When an author's writing consistently expresses their personal philosophy as "The Right Thing", it is hard to draw a line between the two. I don't find it to be true of Card as much as say Heinlein but his politics are clearly visible in his work.

freshfunk• 15 years ago

I could only get through half the interview because the interviewer was horrible and obviously quite biased in the beginning trying really hard (too hard) to portray Card in a certain light.

tptacek• 15 years ago

This is a textbook terrible HN comment.

It sources what may be the single worst literary interview ever conducted (the author interviews herself snickering at her subject) to illuminate the worst-kept secret in all sci-fi fandom (that Orson Scott Card is a devout socially conservative Mormon), all in service of the conclusion that social conservatives are "terrible" people.

NOTHING GOOD CAN CONCEIVABLY COME OF THE ENSUING DISCUSSION.

I've read a bunch of your comments. You are way better than this one.

Please don't write stuff like this on HN.

hugh35• 15 years ago

Well said, tptacek, well said.

As soon as I saw Orson Scott Card's name come up, I knew the conversation would devolve into his (wacky) political views.

There's now 59 comments on this thread, and while I haven't bothered to count it seems that at least 45 of 'em are in this rather dull political argument about gay rights. And since nobody has actually showed up with the anti-gay-rights position, we're stuck discussing precisely which nasty names we should call someone who doesn't share our mutual opinion. Even this rather narrow corner of debate space has apparently got some people rather heated.

And yet, there I am too, throwing my weight in on this boring topic. And this is why politics is something one must actively avoid talking about.

nandemo2• 15 years ago

Indeed. I wish I could collapse down a subthread a la reddit.

burgerbrain15• 15 years ago

The problem with Scott Card is that he substitutes proper character development with "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative". Its a total copout, and he doesn't just do it wth the ender books.

Oh yeah, that and his crazy is often showing...

danilocampos• 15 years ago

> "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative".

I can't agree. Speaker for the Dead (and sequels) characters have a lot of complexity in their arcs – perhaps because they're mostly not children. I'd say the Speaker series is a perfect example of how to create characters with nuance, depth and multiple motivations.

burgerbrain15• 15 years ago

Check out 'A Memory of Earth'.

(Or better yet, don't. It, enders game, and enders shadow all did it. Three strikes and you're out imho, certainly when one of them is the book the author is known for)

grandalf8• 15 years ago

If you thought that was the point of any of Card's books, then you must not have read them very carefully.

The point of Ender's Game was to explore the notion of the ideal human. Ender's shadow also addressed that topic. The adults merely represent forces beyond the protagonists' control, as most adults are in books featuring child characters.

The process of character development is one in which the children discover their own nature and the natures of those around them. The reader is intended to ask him/herself which nature is "best" and to thus view a difficult and opaque moral question with the clarity of comparing a group of friends. Quite ingenious, especially when you consider that this is a children's book. I challenge you to find a more insightful novel of ideas with equivalent appeal to the same young demographic.

ab94• 15 years ago

"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

Is that really true? The first Orwell book I read (Homage to Catalonia) was required for a history class -- a class that had previously assigned some truly awful literature. So I was pessimistic and I read it grudgingly at first. But halfway through the book, I realized I loved it.

chc4• 15 years ago

I was actually a hostile reader the first time I read Ender's Game. I was totally turned off by the horrible cover and not very interested in reading it, but it was assigned for school, so I read it and it became one of my favorite books.

GrantS• 15 years ago

The original Ender's Game series covers are some of the best science fiction art I've ever seen, by an amazing artist named John Harris (examples below). Did your edition have a different cover?

Ender's Game: http://www.igorstshirts.com/blog/conceptships/2009/j_harris_... Speaker for the Dead: http://www.igorstshirts.com/blog/conceptships/2009/j_harris_... Children of the Mind: http://www.igorstshirts.com/blog/conceptships/2009/j_harris_...

More art by John Harris here (not my blog): http://colorcubic.com/2010/09/07/the-science-fiction-art-of-...

rubergly• 15 years ago

I don't think the claim is that no book can survive any hostile reading, but that you can always approach a book with enough hostility to ruin it.

ab94• 15 years ago

That's not how I interpret him. Here's the quotation with more context:

"Of course, those who approached Ender's Game skeptically or because they were 'forced' to read it can hardly imagine their response is valid for those who read it as volunteers or with belief: No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."

nl8• 15 years ago

I had the same experience with Watership Down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down

I was set to read it when I was 14 or 15 in English. What 14 or 15 yo boy wants to read a book about a rabbit? I was wrong, and loved it, then went and read every other book Richard Adams wrote.

So I guess it's not impossible, but at the same time I was probably broad minded enough to change my mind. Many people won't.

puredemo• 15 years ago

How are his other books?

riffraff• 15 years ago

OT, but I can't thank you enough. I read part of this book as a kid in my school antology, loved it butn ever read all of it. Now that I know it's name I can go and fix that missing part of my life :)

latch• 15 years ago

I always thought of Ender's Game of something like a child's book. Something like Harry Potter to LoTRs. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I mean, Harry Potter got a whole bunch of people reading. But seeing this explanation helps me better understand why I feel like that, and what it means.

I'd call this an analysis more than a review. Whatever you think it is, I found it a pretty honest and open piece coming from someone who has such a personal stake in the book.

Stormbringer• 15 years ago

The short story was much better.

There is speculation that the full length novel was ghost written. Essentially somebody asked Card a bunch of questions about it, and he didn't know the answers to any of his questions...

NB: I'm not claiming it's true, just pointing out that a claim has been made

nl8• 15 years ago

I call BS on premise of that link, and on the original essay (which is now online: http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html)

Claims like this fail the Occam's Razor test:

I've seen Elaine's notes and heard Card on the phone, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Hitler Hypothesis is correct; it is simply impossible that Ender's Game and Speaker were written by someone who did not have a very detailed knowledge of Adolph Hitler's life. There are very exact parallels in there that you wouldn't even notice unless you read the footnotes to the most detailed Hitler biographies. I also tend to believe that Card does not have that level of knowledge about Hitler.

It would be simpler to assume that a story where a person causes the extinction of a species would have some similarities with a war in which genocide occurred.

I've read Card's books and I have reasonable knowledge of Hitler and I didn't notice any particular parallel. I suspect that the claim that he doesn't know his own books comes more from a reluctance to engage in a telephone debate rather than the idea that he didn't write them

I say that as someone who really liked Ender's Game, but thought Speaker for the Dead was crap. I had always assumed that Speaker for the Dead had some kind of Mormon message, but I think these accusations go way too far and are unsupported by the evidence.

pseudonym2• 15 years ago

To be fair, having read all of the books in the...currently 9? 10? Enderverse-related series, Ender's Game does come off as extremely low-level. The later Ender books go oddly metaphysically-shaped towards the end, and not always enjoyably so. The Shadow series, on the other hand, was (to me) rather more interesting.

nhebb2• 15 years ago

I found that the less I put on the stage, the more the audience would imagine a much more compelling set than I could ever build

Analogous to Card's statement, lately I've come to realize that I like movies better when they don't explicitly tell you everything. I think a good formula for writing is to lay all the facts out, then remove one or two of them from the script.

CWuestefeld3• 15 years ago

I'd almost agree with you, but as you describe it, the result would just be deus ex machina. It's not fair to just pull a resolution out of your butt, that couldn't possibly have been predicted.

Better to have all the facts there, but not in your face. Commonly, a film with focus on a key point, or dwell on an image, to ensure that the viewer gets it, and I think that's a mistake. A good example of a movie that gets it right is Silence of the Lambs, in which all the information is there, but the viewer needs to separate the wheat from the chaff.

nhebb2• 15 years ago

I didn't mean deux ex machina. You can provide the information and let the audience infer the result, or you can explicitly show the result. As you build the storyline and subplots, judiciously allowing the audience to interpret what happened at intermediate points in the story or at the end can make it more interesting than simply laying it all out.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

Very classy. Plus gives a little insight into how a writer approaches it as a craft. Love to read things like this.

cschmidt• 15 years ago

It is a little funny to see Ender's Game on HN today. Tomorrow I'm going on a fishing trip with my 10 year old son. As our evening entertainment, he wanted me to read him Ender's Game. I've got the book already packed in my bag.

Orson Scott Card's Amazon Review of Ender's Game

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