Boycott Orson Scott Card!

[Are_grits_groceries]

UPDATE: Orson Scott Card only joined the board of the National Organization for Marriage a week ago. I'm guessing there's a bit of buyer's remorse going on at the homophobe hotel right about now. Then again, maybe the rest of the NOM leadership agrees that the government is "our mortal enemy" and that gays should be thrown in jail. Perhaps someone should ask them.

People for the American Way has discovered that in a long rambling article about the ills of gay marriage, reeking of conspiracy theories, Orson Scott Card, a Mormon leader of the religious right's top anti-gay marriage organization, National Organization for Marriage, advocated the criminalization of homosexuality, labeled the US government "our mortal enemy," talked about the "insane Constitution" dying, and then appeared to advocate the overthrow of the US government "by whatever means is made possible or necessary." The article was published in the influential Mormon Times, a publication owned by the Mormon church. (And in all fairness, JoeMyGod spotted this connection a week ago.)

By whatever means necessary
Faithful sexual monogamy, persistence until death, male protection and providence for wife and children, female loyalty to children and husband, and parental discretion in child-rearing.

If government is going to meddle in this, it had better be to support marriage in general while providing protection for those caught in truly destructive marriages.

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.

http://www.americablog.com/

I knew he was hateful. It looks like he leads the wingnut parade.

[Posteritatis]

1. That kinda depresses me

I liked Card; the first things of his I came across were a book on writing science fiction and fantasy, and a copy of Ender's Game that I came across more or less exactly when I needed to read such a thing. They're both still sitting near at hand on my shelves. Just bugs me that someone whose works I enjoyed and respected turned around and when spiralling off into crazy-vile-motherfuckerdom like he did.

Sigh. I don't regret owning the books of his I have, but I decided awhile ago that he wouldn't be getting another dime from me.

[Ian David]

2. Everyone I have ever met who knows him despises Orson Scott Card as a human being.

He's a waste of skin.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

25. I've met him several times

and he's definitely a shithead. A big giant douche. A day-old turd sandwich. An egotistical prick. A delusional fuckwad.

Hope that wasn't too ambiguous...

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

11. Felt the same

about Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam AKA Steven Demetre Georgiou) when he came out calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie. This is the same guy who wrote "Peace Train"???

Card's descent into faith-based madness is as shocking, perhaps more so. He's basically dead to me.

[tbyg52]

16. As I understand it, he didn't really do that, exactly

I haven't dug into it in depth, so it may just be spin (or not, I dunno), but what I heard is that he was a recent convert at that time, and somebody asked him about jihads or whatever the war on Rushdie was called, and he, not terribly knowledgeable at that time, said "uh, uh, if it's in the religion, sure, I guess, whatever....."

I know *that's* not super good either, but it beats a thought-out "yeah! Kill him!"

[The Doctor.]

31. Well... sometimes brilliant people do inexplicable things

in order to further greater agendas.

Perhaps he's actually struck on a self-deprecating strategy to accomplish something truly noble.

Or perhaps he really is a douche.

If he's struck upon something, a level of strategy few have imagined... that'd be cool. For the moment though... he's a shithead.

[Laelth]

18. Me too.

Speaker for the Dead is one of my all-time favorites.

People change ... sometimes for the worse.

:dem:

-Laelth

[tblue37]

39. My fave in the Ender series ahs always been _Xenophobe_.

I loved the idea about a planet full of OCD geniuses who had to prove they were severely OCD to be considered worthy of status on their planet. It's their religion. Those who are OCD are "godspoken," and their OCD rituals are evidence that the gods speak to them.

Love that book.

[LeftyMom]

3. Not only that, he hasn't written anything interesting in two decades.

He's just milking his past success at this point, writing lousy sequels to Ender's Game.

[Posteritatis]

8. Shadow was an interesting idea...

... Of course, then he went and turned the sequels to that into Risk fan-fiction with about as much excitement and rather more sermonizing..

[LeftyMom]

12. Originally he was going to have other authors do the spin-offs.

I'm guessing he opted not to because there was more money in it to churn out his own crap. I'm guessing those might have actually been interesting, though saddling Bean with the least likable non-villain in the books (except maybe for Novenha) is crippling. Card is incapable of writing interesting female roles- they're all saints, bitter emotional cripples or dutiful movers of the plot with no real feelings one can discern.

[Posteritatis]

14. That's definitely one of the things that turned me off his prose

I ran into the "hrm, this guy's just not a good writer" realization about the same time I ran into the "hrm, this guy's an asshole" realization (and I'm pretty sure I kept those two seperate). I've got big heaping issues with how female characters are handled in a lot of science fiction anyway, but his handling kind of exemplified that.

It would be interesting to see what other authors could do with the setting though. As a worldbuilding exercise a lot of it is really interesting (running into the Locke and Demosthenes bit about the same time I discovered the Internet was a wee bit of a rush), but Card's got all the subtlety and nuance of an airstrike in bringing it to life.

[yodermon]

30. This is completely out of the blue, but for a *fantastic* female protagonist in Sci Fi

read Moving Mars by Greg Bear (I just read it so it's fresh, and this post caught my eye)

[mzteris]

4. he's a complete and total whack job

this is just another nail in the coffin.

Funny, he likes to write about "kinky" sex. One of his books had his underage character (I think she was 12) having astral sex with a grown man. . . ick.....

[mitchum]

5. I would like to, but I already don't read science fiction junk

[mzteris]

21. um - are you saying

all science fiction is JUNK?

[JerseygirlCT]

27. Poster doesn't know what he or she is missing

that's all I can say. There is so much really good, really creative writing in that genre.

Now, those dopey mysteries that every little old lady at the library attempts to point me toward... BLECH.

[Lerkfish]

6. well, it should be no surprise, the mormon church is heavy into the issue.

:shrug:

[Mojambo]

7. I had no idea he was a mormon.

Never read anything by him either.

Doubt that I ever will.

[JerseygirlCT]

28. I think you very well might have known he LDS had you read

some of his work. It was immediately apparent to me.

I didn't know when first reading him, that he was an asshole and bigot, however.

[tblue37]

41. He did his missionary work in South America (Brazil, I think). He speaks

Portuguese because of his missionary work. That's why so many of his short stories are set in South America, and why he has so many Portuguese characters--like the settlers on the planet in Speaker for the Dead, including the woman Ender finally marries.

[murielm99]

9. I stopped reading and buying his books as soon as I

became aware of his views. He is a vicious homophobe.

[Bucky]

10. He's a good writer of fiction. Quite a good imagination.

His ability to bury his view into and then accurately describe a fascinating-yet-dangerous alternate universe is commendable.

[Posteritatis]

13. That is one way of putting it

I usually don't try to determine an author's views through their prose - a good author can seperate the two pretty well. Card doesn't even try to. That's not a fault in and of itself - people write for different reasons - but some of the stuff that came out in his later works (like what someone else mentioned about how he writes woman characters).. yargh.

Now I'm trying to think of any fiction writers who wear their views on their sleeve, er, page, at the saner end of the spectrum...

[mn9driver]

15. Card has gone to Crazy Town.

I got about halfway through his rant before I lost interest--not the mark of a good writer. Gay marriage terrifies him. Being called a "homophobe" terrifies him, too; he complains that the term has MENTAL HEALTH implications---perhaps some homosexual psychiatrists will barge into his home at night and reprogram him?

He really is reduced to a state of yammering imbecility by the very idea, launches off into abortion = baby killing side rants, and, yes, he does seem to clearly call for armed insurrection if good, heterosexual couples are forced to become gay in order to get married.

He is nuts.

[OwnedByFerrets]

17. I stopped reading him long ago when I learned of his

wingnut views.

[csziggy]

44. Before I ever cared much about politics, I stopped reading Card

I didn't like his attitudes towards women in his books or many of the political and religious themes he used for his plots. I didn't know he was Mormon or any of his real life opinions, I just found the underlying philosophies his books showed to be creepy and distasteful.

[ismnotwasm]

19. I've been doing that for a while

And his shit takes up a lot of space in bookstores, both used and new. A prolific writer, but I don't miss him one bit. He's a POS asshole not worth my reading time or money spent.

[provis99]

20. am I the only one who thought Ender's Game was crap?

I finished the beginning few chapters, skimmed rapidly through the middle, and read the last few pages, and realized it was almost as boring as Atlas Shrugged. Terrible author; not surprised he's a right wing kook, like most other science fiction authors are.

[mzteris]

22. MOST ??

um - can you elaborate?

[pitohui]

29. you're not the only one who noticed ender's game is crap

of course ender's game is a derivitive piece of "woo it's all a video game/dream" type piece of shit that should have never been published or paid any attention to

however "most other" sf writers are not wingnuts or kooks or sf crazies

there are many wonderful sf writers who are not even remotely wingnutty, pk dick, ian banks, alastair reynolds, john varley, kim stanley robinson, the list goes on

the days of neo-nazi's like heinlein and pournelle ruling the genre are 20 years gone, the really interesting stuff is written by folks w. a brain -- the 70s have been over for a LOT Of years now, pick up a new book, you'll be amazed and pleased

[The Doctor.]

33. Funny....

I've always called the plot a 'brilliant gimmick', even though he touched on the power of the internet in his writing.

I was pretty thrilled with "The Mote in God's Eye", but I get your point.

[Posteritatis]

34. Reynolds is composed entirely of awesome

Gives me the fun kind of headache to read his stuff; picked up Galactic North on impulse last year, read it, and immediately bought everything else he'd written that I could find.

[Orrex]

36. +1

:hi:

[Starry Messenger]

23. I put him on my "don't buy" list a while ago.

He's a hateful nut. He's living proof that just because you can string sentences into readable prose it doesn't mean you aren't an asshat troglodyte bigot.

[saltpoint]

24. It kinda hurts my feelings that someone whose books I've read and

respected holds unacceptably rightwing social and political views.

As is the case here.

'Am told that a film of ENDER'S GAME is in the works. I don't know who's in it, or who's directing it, or any other details, but the talk centered around his having significant input to the production.

[JerseygirlCT]

26. Though I had found some of his books entertaining, I have been

boycotting the creep for years, after I read one of his hateful screeds toward gay people.

This latest jerk move doesn't surprise me in the least.

And do they not see the distinct irony in the title they gave this group? It's right up there with all of the law names under Bush - so Orwellian. A group to prevent people from getting married calls themselves the National Organization for Marriage...

[yodermon]

32. His books are full of creepy SuperChildren, i realized. Not just the ender stuff.

such a waste.

[The Gunslinger]

35. The Ted Nugent of fantasy authors

Not getting sales like you used to.............Become a complete far right nut job to get attention. I'm glad the only two books I read by him I got form the lbbrary.

[tblue37]

37. He is such a fascist. I have read many of his sf series (I am a big sf fan.)

I especially liked his Ender series and his Alvin Maker series. Even as I read them I realized that they had a fascist undercurrent, but I enjoyed reading them anyway.

But his later boks, even in the Ender series, have become almost nonstop polemic, with little characterization at all--all "tell," with almost no show. He commented in the afterword to his lastest Ender book that he is a better and more expereinced writer now than he was when he was younger. He isn't. He is by far a worse writer than he used to be.

And if you want to read fiction that sounds like it was cobbled together from FOX News talking points, check out his novel Empire. In it he even has his hero go on O'Reilley's show, as the only one he can trust to present the news without spin. I blew coke through my nose when I read that part. All he does in his book now is complain about liberals.

Anyway, after his most recent Ender novel, I realized that I can't read him any more. The good stuff in his books has gotten so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. The rest is just raw sewage.

Oh, and his "good guys" are perfect and virtually all-powerful, while his "bad guys" (mostly liberals) have no redeeming qualities at all.

[Canuckistanian]

38. I listening about him right now on Mike Malloy's show

This dude is a serious MoFo.

[Hugin]

40. Done and done...

To be honest, when I heard one of his books was going to be playing on a book radio segment awhile ago... I thought of listening. Until I did a web search.

Yup, no reason to listen to that pap.

[populistdriven]

42. I am selling all of my OSC books! Wouldn't a real boycott would involve selling all your OSC stuff?

He gets zero of the money and it drives the price down. Publishers often destroy thousands of books to keep the supply down and support prices!

[Fumesucker]

43. Card used to do a schtick called "The Secular Humanist Revival Meeting"

And it was fucking brilliant, I had it on tape about twenty years ago, I think the tape I had was done at Chattacon..

Card had the revival preacher down cold, he would thunder out "DO YOU BELIEVE?" and the crowd roared "YES!" and then Card said "HOW DARE YOU ANSWER THAT QUESTION WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT IT IS YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE"..



http://mooreslore.corante.com/archives/2005/06/06/second_secular_humanist_revival_meeting.php

Two decades ago, a saint came before us to preach the American values of a secular nation in the humanist tradition.

His name was Orson Scott Card. He called his preaching the Secular Humanist Revival Meeting. He was a Saint of the Latter Day.

And as time went on the warnings he gave came true. Religion crept into our science classrooms. Children were told how to pray by bureaucrats. Churches were corrupted by government money, corrupting themselves in the process.

Now we are engaged in a great World War, a Crusade between the Christian and the Muslim world, bomb matched by bomb, atrocity by atrocity.

And in that conflict, where are we? For that matter, where is Card? Gone to the other side, I’m afraid, writing plays and books where only those of the One True Faith find redemption, where only the Chosen are heroes, where action is motivated mainly by belief.

Do you hear me? Am I talking loud enough?

That’s how Saint Orson began his preachings, and how he grounded them too. Because he could never talk loudly enough to shake the soul on behalf of what made America great.

So now with creation science, renamed Intelligent Design, worming its way into our secular classrooms, with churches grabbing for the state’s money with both hands as “faith-based charities,” with a Millenialist in the People’s White House working toward the Final Days, the time has come for a Second Revival, one more hope of secular redemption.

Much more at the link..

[frogmarch]

45. What a puke.

I read Ender's Game (skimmed through parts of it) and his novel about the ghost of a murdered boy. I can't remember the title. The ghost book creeped me out, not so much because it was about the death of a child, but because it was preachy to the point of being sickening. I knew after the first few pages that the author was some kind of religious nut. I don't remember how the book ended. Maybe I didn't finish it.

I just found this Mormon Times article by Card. Ick!

http://www.mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/?id=3237

[GaYellowDawg]

46. At least boycott buying new.

I used to really like his writing - but once I found out his politics, I didn't buy anything new, and would occasionally buy something used from Amazon.com or eBay, where I knew he wouldn't benefit from it. For some time, I've stopped altogether, as Card has grown increasingly shrill and right-wing. He's as bad as Tom Clancy.

[eppur_se_muova]

47. I already do. nt