Remember how rapidly gay marriage has become a requirement.Take off your bands, gentlemen, and come with me.
-Orson Scott Card
First of all, I don't care what the Hugo judges thought, or what you thought when you were still a virgin: Ender's Game sucks, and the sequels suck worse than all the sequels and prequels to Dune and The Foundation combined.
Now. Card's peroration comes to me via The Editors, and, correct me if I'm wrong, he appears to be proposing that the Ozzies and Harriets of the world rise up and overthrow the government of the United States. Sure, honey, just let me finish with this laundry, and do you mind if we stop by the store on the way, because we're out of coffee.
25 comments:
"First of all, I don't care what the Hugo judges thought, or what you thought when you were still a virgin: Ender's Game sucks."
I have been trying to explain this to my sister for a very long time.
I strenuously object to whatever form of surveillance or clairvoyance allowed you to obtain this statement: "Sure, honey, just let me finish with this laundry, and do you mind if we stop by the store on the way, because we're out of coffee." I had an expectation of privacy!
Also, I can't tell you how many friends have tried to get me to read his books, saying how great they are. I kept picking them up and putting them down as unreadable after 10 pages. Glad I had no use for him as a writer before I had no use for him as a collection of human organs. Keeps things clean.
I don't care what ... you thought when you were still a virgin: Ender's Game sucks[.]
you cut me to the quick, monsieur.
ok, I read the damn post. well, most of it.
that dude is clearly not married.
You've got something against sucking, M'sieu'?
Sorry to disagree with the Great And Powerful Ioz, but I do. I liked the Ender tetralogy. But Card is a bigoted nut, and we need all the bigoted sf nuts we have now that Thomas Disch is gone.
I kind of liked the tone of outrage in the bit following your quote:
"When gay rights were being enforced by the courts back in the '70s and '80s, we were repeatedly told by all the proponents of gay rights that they would never attempt to legalize gay marriage.
It took about 15 minutes for that promise to be broken."
You 'mos. Can't just settle for the buttsecks, can you... you have to go and break the promise you made to Mister Card. Tsk.
And out of curiosity... how did the Mormon Times get on your reading list?
And out of curiosity... how did the Mormon Times get on your reading list?
I'm guessing the baking tips.
(1) Orson Card seems puzzled about the progressive movement. He needs to read up on his Mencius Moldbug.
(2) I liked Ender's Game, and much else written by Card. He was an important writer in moving human beings towards the center of SF, as vs props for gee-whiz tech.
(3) I'm also amused by "It took about 15 minutes for that promise to be broken." ... no sorry, Senor Card, according to your own reckoning, it took about 25 years.
(4) Card is married, and has been for a long time. Many people really do feel that way about teh gay; it's just that for the most part they are inarticulate.
leonard, are you suggesting that Card's babbling homophobic horseshit is articulate?
I wish Card and Dave Sim would just cut the shit and move in together, two bigger closeted dorks I've never seen.
He was an important writer in moving human beings towards the center of SF, as vs props for gee-whiz tech.
...this sounds like a quote from someone who has never read a single piece of Sci-Fi written between 1940 and 1980.
hats off to you !
never ending supply of these amazing pics !
I think Card may have confused the ERA with gay rights. It was the supporters of ERA who said that it wouldn't support same-sex marriage, and they were probably right, but it didn't matter because the ERA never passed.
leonard, leonard, leonard: Card is married, and has been for a long time. So were Ted Haggard, Jim McGreevey, and any number of other closet cases. Not that I'm saying Card is gay, but it does seem that mounting a public jihad against queers is tantamount to starting a countdown to getting caught with a hustler's dick in one's mouth.
Ashley, I have. You make me wonder, though, if you have not. Foundation as an inquiry into love and hate? God no. Starship Troopers for deep, complicated characters? Gosh, ya think? I'll give you Gateway, FWIW, but the tenor of the age was very Heinlein, very cardboard. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Dune? Ringworld? Forever War?
Philip K. Dick was writing existentialist science fiction when Card was still reading Marvel comic books.
While I haven't gone back and tried to read Ender's Game, or its sequels, since around the time I lost my virginity...no, Speaker for the Dead is not worse than the Foundation sequels or (ugh) the prequels. Xenocide, I'll grant. I couldn't get through that even as a virgin. But the Foundation books were so bad, they corrupted the existence of the original Foundation books AND the original Robot books. That's hard to beat.
leonard, you're moving the goalposts around as you go. First you said something about "moving human beings towards the center of SF, as vs props for gee-whiz tech." Now, Heinlein wasn't a great writer, but he did try to do exactly that, and he did it better than most Golden Age sf writers. But now you want inquiries into love and hate, deep and complicated characters. I don't think you'll find those in the Ender books either, but to each his own.
From the 1940-1980 period I'd also mention Sturgeon, Edgar Pangborn, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel Delany, and others who worked to move human beings closer to the center of sf. Not Philip K. Dick, though. Aside from The Man in the High Castle, which has been a favorite of mine since I first read it in the mid-60s, I don't see him as much interested in people.
Wait a minute. It just occurred to me that the enemy race in Ender's Game is the BUGGERS!!
Aiiieeeee!
"Philip K. Dick, though. Aside from The Man in the High Castle, which has been a favorite of mine since I first read it in the mid-60s, I don't see him as much interested in people."
Insomuch as one of the most prevalent themes in his stories was the question of existence, and as the question of existence is a concern of, well, humans, Philip K Dick certainly must be interested in people.
Um, no. Every topic in sf, or in literature, is "a concern of, well, humans", so by that logic all sf writers "must be interested in people." Many of them are much more interested in the question, "Why Can't a Human Be More Like a Machine?"
There's so single "question of existence"; it's an abstract metaphysical conundrum, often used to get away from our humanness. My impression of Dick is admittedly based on having read too little of him, mostly his early work; I'm trying to correct that now.
"Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn."
Hysterically Ironic, coming from a guy who belongs to a church that had their own definition of marriage:
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/history/plural_marriage/History_EOM.htm
It's all to too too.
"Ashley, I have. You make me wonder, though, if you have not. Foundation as an inquiry into love and hate? God no. Starship Troopers for deep, complicated characters? Gosh, ya think? I'll give you Gateway, FWIW, but the tenor of the age was very Heinlein, very cardboard. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Dune? Ringworld? Forever War?"
I don't think The Forever War belongs in that collection, and you do Haldeman a disservice, since the book is really about the personal experience of someone who's been ripped out of his time and place for no good reason. He's really between Heinlein and Card, and certainly not a Golden Ager.
But you make a mistake focusing on a few big names from the Golden Age. (Though you left out the usually-sterile Clarke.) Those aren't the same writers who were the immediate predecessors of Card - he was actually following behind some far better writers who gave dimension to the characters and made the people important. I'm not aware of Card introducing anything new to that effort.
"Wait a minute. It just occurred to me that the enemy race in Ender's Game is the BUGGERS!!Aiiieeeee!"
Yeahbut (SPOILER AHEAD!) at the end of the book Ender realizes / discovers that the Buggers are human too, and devotes the rest of his life to trying to make restitution for the harm he did them. Ender is really morally superior to his creator, which is something I've noticed in some other writers.
As a denizen of the otherwise charming city of Greensboro, NC, I'm terribly embarrassed that Card is our best-known local resident. I'm told that parts of the Ender novels are set here, but I have absolutely no interest in reading them for myself.
"Yeahbut (SPOILER AHEAD!) at the end of the book Ender realizes / discovers that the Buggers are human too"
Oh yeah. But still.
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