4 ms·

It's not baffling. The same anti-gay, pro-genocide themes are present throughout most of Card's novels and short stories.

by myhf 10y ago

grandalf 10y ago
Examples please.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  Calling Ender's Game pro-genocide is a riot, but I guess if you didn't read the next 3 novels where Ender is trying to atone for his unwitting participation through an allegory on the book of Mormon, it works. There's Pastwatch which is so pro-genocide that it has a future civilization go back in time to inoculate the Americas against European diseases, and they successfully Westernize their technology just enough to make colonization moot. If I recall correctly in the Alvin Maker series, the main character sympathizes with the Native American population under pressure from alternate-history Colonial America. Let's see, what else... There's that allegory on the Book of Mormon - the pure allegory, the Homecoming one, meh, might be worth scrutinizing the last bits when they actually get to their little promised land and there's fractious conflict? Betting no one really reads that stuff outside of Utah, though - I certainly can't believe I bothered. (It was a slow summer that year and my standards may have been low.) Anyway, moving on... I skipped most of the horror except for the Sleeping Beauty novel... Oh! There's also the Songmaster stuff in which - in 1980! - had a homosexual main character who (while ultimately a tragic character) was treated with such human dignity and respect that Card had to fend off scathing criticism from his own church (and others') for doing so. Orson Scott Card is like Atticus Finch and we're all reading Go Set A Watchman. If all we can find for either of these characters today is hate and loathing and calls to pirate books, what kind of a future are we really setting ourselves up for?
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > Card had to fend off scathing criticism from his own church (and others') This actually supports my hunch that Card has been pressured to make a public pronouncement of homophobic values, since the messages in the Ender series are largely subversive and pacifistic. I'm not too familiar with the Book of Mormon, so any detail you care to share about the allegory would be appreciated.
    - fennecfoxen 10y ago
      Ultra-abridged version: The prophet sees a new, better way of living, gathers a few people to himself, gets rejected by society at large, and ultimately they wander off to the wasteland to found a city which will be a beacon to humanity by showcasing a more enlightened way of living. That's the Homecoming series plot (complete with the voice of a guardian spirit / computer system that only a chosen few hear), the (extended) Ender's Game endgame, the Alvin Maker endgame, the Wyrms endgame, and you can see deep dark shadows of it in Pastwatch and Treason, among others. Oh, and you can see clearly that the unfinished series that Lovelock is going that way to boot. It's not a bad tale, but the variety's a trifle lacking.

It's not baffling. The same anti-gay, pro-genocide themes are present throughout most of Card's novels and short stories.

by myhf 10y ago

It's not baffling. The same anti-gay, pro-genocide themes are present throughout most of Card's novels and short stories.

grandalf 10y ago

Examples please.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
Calling Ender's Game pro-genocide is a riot, but I guess if you didn't read the next 3 novels where Ender is trying to atone for his unwitting participation through an allegory on the book of Mormon, it works. There's Pastwatch which is so pro-genocide that it has a future civilization go back in time to inoculate the Americas against European diseases, and they successfully Westernize their technology just enough to make colonization moot. If I recall correctly in the Alvin Maker series, the main character sympathizes with the Native American population under pressure from alternate-history Colonial America. Let's see, what else... There's that allegory on the Book of Mormon - the pure allegory, the Homecoming one, meh, might be worth scrutinizing the last bits when they actually get to their little promised land and there's fractious conflict? Betting no one really reads that stuff outside of Utah, though - I certainly can't believe I bothered. (It was a slow summer that year and my standards may have been low.) Anyway, moving on... I skipped most of the horror except for the Sleeping Beauty novel... Oh! There's also the Songmaster stuff in which - in 1980! - had a homosexual main character who (while ultimately a tragic character) was treated with such human dignity and respect that Card had to fend off scathing criticism from his own church (and others') for doing so. Orson Scott Card is like Atticus Finch and we're all reading Go Set A Watchman. If all we can find for either of these characters today is hate and loathing and calls to pirate books, what kind of a future are we really setting ourselves up for?
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Card had to fend off scathing criticism from his own church (and others') This actually supports my hunch that Card has been pressured to make a public pronouncement of homophobic values, since the messages in the Ender series are largely subversive and pacifistic. I'm not too familiar with the Book of Mormon, so any detail you care to share about the allegory would be appreciated.
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    Ultra-abridged version: The prophet sees a new, better way of living, gathers a few people to himself, gets rejected by society at large, and ultimately they wander off to the wasteland to found a city which will be a beacon to humanity by showcasing a more enlightened way of living. That's the Homecoming series plot (complete with the voice of a guardian spirit / computer system that only a chosen few hear), the (extended) Ender's Game endgame, the Alvin Maker endgame, the Wyrms endgame, and you can see deep dark shadows of it in Pastwatch and Treason, among others. Oh, and you can see clearly that the unfinished series that Lovelock is going that way to boot. It's not a bad tale, but the variety's a trifle lacking.