I'd never read any of his stuff. So, I had a gift of "Ender's Game", I very much enjoyed it. Just started "Speaker For The Dead" last night.

Why had no one told me about Mr Card before? With a respectable body of work, am I going to be disappointed and find that there was one good story and nothing more?

No, but the series is very uneven after that. Card is a practicing and believing Mormon, and sometimes it influences his writing in ways that aren't helpful. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are very good, though. I reread EG every few years.

Jude picked up EG for .50 at a book sale, so, I have him reading it -

I'd meant to google Card's religious affiliation, because, you can tell he does not "hate religion" the way some SF writers do.

As you will see when you progress through Speaker for the Dead:

1) He has a fairly kind heart toward Catholicism;
2) He doesn't understand it nearly as well as he thinks he does.

The whole Archcardinal and female monk were my first two clues...

Also try ENDERS SHADOW.

I find his stuff uneven, but I like him. He was very helpful when I asked him for a favor, years back. Going to see the EG movie in a week or so.

GKC

It makes me sooooo sad that I can no longer sit through a movie in a theater This is one I'd love to see on a big screen with crash boom bam sound. Oh well, I will wait til it comes out on DVD, watch it on my retro analog set with the lights out and pretend

I'm sorry that you have to do that.

I'm taking my wife, though she has never read any Card. I did the same with the various Marvel movies, and she took to them avidly. I hope it happens again.

GKC

I am psyched about the movie.

Keep in mind it takes place about a 1,000 years in the future (and that is BEFORE he goes even further forward in time and gets to be about 3000 years in the future) he knows that there is no such thing as an 'archcardinal', that was his way of suggesting that the Catholic Church 1,000 years from now is a little different, that after awhile there were so many cardinals that it was no longer prestigious and therefore new, higher rank of 'archcardinal' would have been invented. That is certainly not impossible, who knows what the next 1,000 years might hold. Like a lot of science fiction authors when he sets stories in the future he likes to include 'future references' to show that life in the future is a little different. Later on in the series he talks about how they released new revised Bible translations, and the Catholics are using 'the latest version of the Douay Rheims' while the Protestants are using 'the latest version of the King James Version'....he includes that to show that even though some things are different there are nevertheless some other things, such as the fac that people just refuse to abandon their favorite Bible translation no matter how obsolete it might be.

I agree with Doom.

GKC

What are the Mormon bits?

I don't recall any in ENDER. I defer to Fr. Obi-wan.

His Alvin Maker series and Homecoming series (IIRC) had Mormon bits, but it's been too long to recall them.

GKC

Alvin Maker is Joseph Smith, and Homecoming is the Book of Mormon.

There's not too much mention of Mormonism in Ender--it comes on stronger later.

I've read the entire 'Ender' series (but not Ender's Shadow) and never noticed any crypto-Mormonism in it, even though I was looking for it.


One thing to keep in mind about OSC is that he is different from most other authors in that he doesn't usually have an 'author avatar' in his books, some authors, like Robert Heinlein, always tend to put themselves in their novels as a character, every Robert Heinlein has a character where you know 'this is Robert Heinlein speaking'. An extreme case of that would be the novels of Ayn Rand.

Orson Scott Card isn't like that, most of his novels don't have a character who speaks for Card, indeed most of his heroes have views which are antithetical to his own views. It's not always easy to know where Card stands on an issue, because often none of his characters actually represent his own view. Ender Wiggins certainly does not.

Children of the Mind explicitly deals with pre-existence of souls.

That I do remember, but one can't reasonably an author not to be influenced by his background, even subconsciously. But there is no 'preaching' at the reader, there is no 'religious allegory' to the story the way there is in, say the Narnia series, and there's no attempt to try to push Mormonism on the reader, either overtly or covertly. That's kind of what I meant by 'crypto-Mormonism'. I fully expect a Mormon author to show the influence of Mormonism, even if he' trying to avoid it. And honestly I think most readers would assume that 'pre-existence of the soul' was more of a New Age concept before they thought 'Mormon'. Now in some of his other words, Card definitely does push Mormonism, not so much in the Enderverse.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that he was preaching Mormonism, and I agree that an author can't help but be influenced by his beliefs (nor should he try to prevent it).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiMineG1w3U NAR

I was reading Science Fiction since I was able to choose my own books. What takes me away is an author who creates a world that is "other" yet the characters are complex, not the simple formula of much Sci Fi drek "and we landed on this world where ducks were the rulers and they acted exactly like people, but, don't forget, they had white feathers and yellow beaks". There is also the SciFi that is just wrapped up in the IDEA "and video games became implanted in us and people are slugs hooked up to machines where they have adventures or drugs become the way to control people and people are slugs who used drugs where they have adventures" that they think is so COOL.

I do not want to take a vacation in another world, I want to BE an observer of the culture and the religion and what makes these beings tick. Octavia Butler did that for me. On the other hand, I am not a huge fan of novels that are so complex that I need to draw charts to remember who is what.

The Card books so far, I am so intrigued by this other world, these others, the sign of a good book in my hands is one I cannot put down YET, I choose to put down because I don't want to reach the end. GOTTA get that library fine paid off