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Orson Scott Card Reviews Everything
H_Fisher writes "Orson Scott Card, author of sci-fi classic Ender's Game and many other novels and stories, has posted his review of the much-discussed Joss Whedon film Serenity (which opened at #2 in the US box office this past weekend). Among other things, Card has this to say about Serenity: 'Those of you who know my work at all know about Ender's Game. I jealously protected the movie rights to Ender's Game so that it would not be filmed until it could be done right ... I'll tell you this right now: If Ender's Game can't be this kind of movie, and this good a movie, then I want it never to be made.'" With praise for Full House, Friends, Being John Malkovich, and Lost to boot.
like I was. Here is the count of mentions from the body.
Serenity: 7
Ender's Game: 6
So it really is more about Serenity.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
As a person I don't have alot of respect for OSC.
:(
However as a writer I have alot of respect for his work and his ability to tell an interesting and complex story. Enders Game and The Tales of Alvin Maker are great stories and series in and of themselves and I think it's nice to see someone who sticks to their guns for a change and won't let their movie be utterly butchered... like ULG's Wizard of Earthsea, that was so sad.
That is about the absolute best review I've ever seen for any movie and it's enough to make me go see the movie several days sooner than I had planned... I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie now.
Hopefully OSC can get someone to make Ender's Game the right way, hell I'd even settle for the Tales of Alvin Maker... (speaking of which there is an MMORPG coming out based on that-- same people who did A Tale in the Desert.)
Shadus
Biography at Wikipedia
Personality critique at Kuro Five Hin
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
How does a TV show go from being cancelled to being made into a top notch movie without somebody at the Network being fired?
I read Ender's Game about 10 years ago and thought it was brilliant and very dark. The political side of the story is the real meat and potatoes, but that's usually the first thing that gets cut when making a movie, as producers are more interested in what Ender Wiggin is doing, not why.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Amen! My wife and I both thought that this was the only serious flaw in the whole movie. They mentioned that the Reevers raped women, but do the Reever traits get passed down genetically? Do they let women who they've raped live long enough to give birth? Who raises the baby Reevers? Can infants who are "beyond insanity" survive infancy? Great movie, great story, but also a serious problem w/ the Reever social structure.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Then why doesn't he just get Weaton to direct it. I'm sure among the two of them they can scrape up enough money.
What? No reviews for Will and Grace or Queer as Folk...?
A couple of points about this...
If i remember correctly, the reavers have only been around for about 12 years at the time of the movie and there were about 3000 of them at the start. The lack of a propagation path isnt a real problem because they havent had time to die out yet.
The answer to how they propagate is actually explained in the series, though. They sometimes choose victims on their raids and torture them and make them watch their acts and participate in their acts until their minds snap. Then they start teaching them to be reavers. They dont breed. They make more reavers out of selected captives.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
If you want to see some of his best writing (and most
/. complainer), then you can learn a lot
diverse) get his short story anthology Maps in a Mirror.
It's also annotated, so it gives you a great peek into
his mind and how/why he writes certain stories. That
really shows off the brilliance of OSC as a writer.
Also, if you are or want to be a writer yourself (rather
than a typical
from OSC. His book on how to write SciFi is the best
on that topic. He also provides a lot of help for
writers on his website.
Really, what makes OSC great is perhaps not any particular
work, but rather his grasp of people, and that great
stories must be about the characters. Otherwise all you
have is a literary carchase and explosions, just special
effects with no meat.
Oh, and if the Full House thing at the end of the review
puzzles you, then you just haven't read enough of his
reviews to understand his sense of humor, or that he
is a devoted parent and thus sometimes cares about things
that may seem quite corny to adults.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til you understand who's in ruttin' command here.
Like most, the first book of his I read was Ender's Game. It isn't a bad book. But it isn't great, either. Everything in it has been done before, by better writers. Its popularity is due mostly to the "heroic geeky kid beats the adults and saves the world" theme, much like Harry Potter. The other couple books of his I've read seem pretty much the same.
Like I said, it's not really bad. I've got dozens of science fiction books on my shelves churned out by various writers that may not be great literature, but are still a fun afternoon read. Ender's Game should be one of them.
However, in the introduction to Ender's Game, he pretty much claimed to have invented the idea of wargames in the future. This "review" is pretty much just an excuse to talk about how great his book could be if made into a movie. This kind of nonsense leaves me with something of a bad taste in my mouth.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Ender's Game is slated for 2007, directed by Wolfgang Peterson and with a screenplay by Michael Dougherty. The IMDB report on the movie provides very little information, except that it was certainly in the works before the Serenity movie was publicized.
Dougherty doesn't have any high-quality screenplays under his belt (just X2, which was a fun movie, but not the greatest screenplay, and I would think Card agrees) ... does Card retain enough control to carry through with the above claim?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I'll just agree to differ in Opinion. I personally respect Card as writer. I also generally respect his opinions on movies and books. I can't say I fully agree with all his political Ideals. However there are some people attribute to him that simply are not true. Ender's Game is not an apology for Hitler. Card as spoken about this time and time again, that Ender and Hitler have some parallels, Yes. However he was in way even thinking of Hitler when he wrote the book.
I also disagree with his point of view on the whole "Gay" marriage thing. My opinion differs, it doesn't however make me detest him as a person and I still read and enjoy his books. He is a Religious Family man and his views of the world stage are tinted by that fact. He beleives it is the role of our government to uphold some of his ideals. I think its the role of the governemnt to uphold some of mine too, they in someways differ form his, but it is what it is.
We even have a few incommon, for instance he believes that he has the right to rip music to MP3 just like I do.
Many people on the site do not even dig that far into the man however. They respect him as the writer of Ender's Game one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever published. They do not need or want to know anything more than that about him. And thats fine too!
The writer of Ender's Game likes Serenity...and thats good enough for them. I don't think this in anyway contributes to or shows any decay of the site.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Never saw the show. LOVED the movie. It was character driven, had a plot, character development, a couple of great villans, tension and humor among the heroes, and a good zing at the end.
There were moments that I thought "Huh. I bet that's really a big deal if you're a fan of the series," but they didn't slow the movie down. You sympathized with characters in the movie because of their actions in the movie, not because of the series (which I haven't seen).
I will admit I walked out and put Firefly on my Netflix Queue as soon as I got home.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Orson Scott Card is a mediocre writer with an ego that is completely out of proportion to his talent.
I've never met the man, so I can't address that specifically. However, any author whose first novel wins both the Hugo and Nebula awards -- and then goes on to do that again the very next year with the sequel (Speaker for the Dead), certainly has a right to at least some of that ego.
-- Alastair
I don't know about you.
But. Writing sentences like these.
Makes reading the review. Like.
Riding a really, really bumpy vehicle. You know, car.
It's so sad.
I have a caveat. I thought Ender's Game is boring.
I mean, really boring. The ending was so blatantly obvious.
I knew what was going to happen half way through the book.
Chill dude. Go see the moview anyway.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
For whatever reason I've had five or six personal run-ins with mid-tier science fiction and fantasy authors. They've all fit your description: okay writers with colossal egos.
One example sent in a bombastic resume for a position we were hiring for. He asked for roughly twice the going market rate on the long-term contract, and his cover letter was two-plus pages of wildly arrogant justification for that. We all sat around reading it aloud and laughing, which was kind of low-class, but it was that unintentionally funny. Perhaps as a consequence of the unvarnished ego represented, he had also failed to edit it with any especial care.
That same guy shows up around the city I work in giving flambuoyant courses on the handling of concealed weapons.
Maybe the trials of getting published just select for people with more-than-healthy egos... But you know, I worked in book stores for a while, and then in a small publishing house, and other genres of book did not seem to be exclusively written by maladjusted ego cases. (Other genres didn't seem to be written almost exclusively by far-right-wing types, either.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Personally, I preferred the camera work in this film to that of most big budget films of late.
The main reason is that the camera wasn't afraid of holding a shot for a long time in a battle sequence. Since Gladiator, every big budget film has felt the need to feel 'gritty' by playing with framerates, shaking the hell out of the camera and flitting between viewpoints like mad. It has been making things all but unwatchable. I "watched" half of the Bourne Supremacy without looking at the screen simply because they wouldn't hold a shot long enough to let you get your bearings and would shake the hell out of it just to keep things edgy.
Sure Joss is a huge fan of the two-camera over-the-shoulder dialog sequences, but the simple camera work in that case is effective and does not distract from the dialog, which is his real strong suit.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
As far as Stilson and the other jerk he killed in self defense, they got justice -- even if you think their punishment was too harsh, they're definitely the guilty parties. This isn't the questionable morality found in a drunk driver's excuse for killing a bicyclist. It's not a matter of Ender's intent being used as an excuse -- even though it's the only way he can justify it to himself. The truth is that they chose to enter a battle to the death with him, fully expecting to kill him, rather than to be killed by him.
Sorry, theorize all you want, but Ender fails to be eqivelant in any way to Hitler.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
I wouldn't read several in a row, it would upset my sensibilities.
Does the world you live in have the same effect on you? The vast majority of the world is religious or has religious beliefs, so discounting or ignoring religion in any piece of literature is to ignore a fundamental foundation of society.
While Card inserts religious themes into lots of his works, it's not usually the overriding message or story (with exceptions).
--trb
It's become fashionable in the last few years for geeks to bash on Orson Scott Card, especially those who disagree with his worldview. My theory is that it gives them geek cred to say "I'm so morally pure that I'm not afraid to tear down one of my past idols when he disagrees with me." It's quite cliche by now to read the three following statements in any online O.S.C. discussion:
/. discussions about the man to say "Harlan Ellison is a horse's ass! He's never been that good of a writer, and you should all dismiss everything he writes without thinking about it critically." It's not germane to the discussion, and worse, it's not even intelligent.
1.) "Orson Scott Card is a great writer. Too bad he's such a nut."
2.) "I used to love Orson Scott Card until I read some of his political essays. Now I refuse to read anything he writes."
3.) "Orson Scott Card is overrated. I've never thought he was any good. No, really!"
Frankly, it's tiresome, and it's rare to find anyone who will take on his point of view with a real argument before dismissing him outright. The essay about "Innocent Genocide" that's floating around this discussion is an unusually intelligent exception, and even that spends its time trying to prove that Card is saying something specific without refuting it in any meaningful way. It's taken as a given that once Card's "true" meaning is known, the reader will automatically reject that meaning as false or dangerous.
Personally, I think Harlan Ellison is a horse's ass, but I don't pop up in
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
It's actually incredibly shallow. It's something I might recommend to kids as "my first SF novel" but that's about it.
ender's game might make an okay movie, but then modern movies - especially SF - are not particularly known for being cerebral masterpieces.
There's much better SF out there than enders game. For instance, any of the known space stuff by Niven. Greg Bear. Asimov. Herbert. Clarke. Those are great SF writers. OSC is a novice hack by comparison. He can write decently enough, but his stories are shallow, he telegraphs events light-years off, and story development is as subtle as being clubbed over the head with a baseball bat.
i'd really much rather see a larry niven or greg bear movie than an osc one.
The first time I read it, I was in middle school or early high school, and thought it was the best damn thing I ever read. I reread it late in college, and couldn't shake the feeling that something about it was very, very wrong---but I didn't really know what it was until I read that article, along with "Sympathy for the Superman". It's an astonishingly well-constructed fanwank, playing to the infantile fantasies that people like us eventually grow out of. (Taking over the world by talking smack on Slashdot? Saving the world through gaming prowess? Killing endless waves of slavering bullies jealous of his ubermenschen nature because he's just that superior?)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Alright I'll bite. I in no way agree with everything that Card says. For one, I'm not (nor would I ever want to be) a Mormon. That said, if you're going to demonize a man, at least use what he actually said to demonize him, rather than taking a slanted reading with a side of hyperbole. I just read the reference you provided (all of it), and nowhere do I see Card advocating unchecked censorship of the media. In fact, the only thing I see him call for is consequence for the media when they publish something that they should have known was false. Do I agree? Not really. Even though it's a nice idea to hold the media accountable, I think it's too likely to be abused. Do I think that expressing the opinion that it might be a good idea (while seeming to also realize that it's untenable) makes Card into some hard-right statist who wants to control my life? Not by a long shot.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Alien costumes were
One of your crack-induced hallucinations.
You can't take the sky from me...
Two thoughts:
First, OSC may have quite different political ideas than you. You may think he's a crappy writer. You may think he has bad breath.
But you (and the GP) didn't say any of those things. You said *he's insane*.
Now, think for a moment. You know how sometimes you hear about how what's wrong with America is how we demonize people who don't agree with us? About how far political discourse has fallen, because instead of talking about ideas, all we do is call each other names? About how the few voices of reason get drowned out by all the voices shrieking hate?
Well, now consider this: I bet, when you do, it never occurs to you that they're talking about *you*.
OSC's views are, as far as I can tell, well within conservative mainstream. You may *disagree* with them, but that doesn't mean they're extreme, or that he's "batshit insane." Calling them "batshit insane" doesn't say anything about OSC -- if anything, it tells us about *you*, and how seriously we should take anything you say.
Understand? I think gun control advocates, for example, are wrong and misguided. But I don't think they're "batshit insane."
My second thought, to the moderators: I just wanted to point out that you took a post that said, essentially, "Me too," and modded it INFORMATIVE. Nice.
- Alaska Jack
Ender's Game may not be your favorite novel; in fact, you may not even like it.
The themes expressed, however, are important and compelling. Forget the strawman Hitler argument. How plain can the differences between Ender and Hitler be made? Ender committed atrocious acts with no knowledge of their effects. For Hitler, the same cannot be said...
Did you know that Ender's Game is on the Marine Corps' recommended reading list for Junior elisted personnel? At first glance, you might think it is because of the various strategic approaches that Ender is forced to employ, but that's just the surface.
The reality is that the underlying theme of the book, that intent makes makes all the difference in measuring good and evil, that an otherwise "good" person may be obligated to commit horrible deeds in the name of the greater good... That's the message that matters, because that's the position that our people in uniform have routinely found themselves in throughout our history.
Pacifism is the default posture for most people. There's not a person in the service that would prefer to be at war, rather than at peace. None of you would rather fight with someone rather than peacefully co-exist. Still, in the face of aggression, there comes a point where action must be taken, and that aggression must be checked.
The morality of intent is what allows people to do the terrible things that sometimes must be done in all of our names, and live with themselves afterward.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.