From archive (archive) Subject: Review of Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead From: daemon@caip.UUCP Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Date: 31 May 86 09:18:04 SDT From: Anne Marie Quint {/amqueue} _Ender's_Game_ copyright 198 _Speaker_For_The_Dead_ copyright 1986 by Orson Scott Card Ender is a child, from what is essentially a breeding project for empathy. He is the most empathetic person on earth. Through a lack of love and a carefully conditioned environment, he is made into a killer and a survivor, kicking and screaming all the way, since he knows what he is becoming... empathy, don'tchaknow. He kills, and he survives, and then there is nothing for him to do. Such is _Ender's_Game_. In SFTD, he has been alive for 3000 years, through the relativity of near-light travel. He has seen his name run the gamut from that of Saviour to that of Destroyer, Maniac, Murderer. His empathy creates life and understanding from lies and decades long guilt, and averts a need for another like himself. He finds the atonement he has been seeking. I just got finished reading SFTD. The words drained, shellshocked, traumatized have significant meaning to my mental state right now. I am telling you the entire story of each book, and yet I am telling you nothing. Orson Scott Card could bring the walking dead to life, by showing to the insensitive of the world the life and love in all of us, creating in them the heretofore impossibility of understanding another human as human, another *species* as human. After the first chapter, the setting of the scene, _Speaker_For_The_Dead_ was predictable to me... the story had a necessity of form and character as a sonnet does, a ritual dance. Card writes simply, no sweeping descriptions, you don't know what the characters look like. But it doesn't matter, for it is their inner life you are looking at, the whole and the holes. The simplest truths are the most powerful. The talent that reached to the core of being in _SongHouse_, and showed you it's shape in _Ender's_Game_, molds you to it in _Speaker_For_The_Dead_. If you have any heart in you at all, read these books. If you don't, read them and hope to gain thereby. This writer deserves to shine, to be remembered. Even if you don't like his style, I don't think it is possible to be untouched. ------- From archive (archive) Subject: ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Date: 7 Jun 86 08:04:12 SDT ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card Tor, 1986, $3.50 A book review by Mark R. Leeper A while back I got justifiably flamed on the Net. I complained about titles and I used as an example a book I hadn't read, ENDER'S GAME. I said that the title implied that the book had something to do with endgame strategy and that it was, in fact, a cheat. The book was instead about someone named Ender. It's true, I should not have said that until I read the book. I have now. A bunch of people who apparently like Orson Scott Card and who don't know what an endgame strategy is were at least right that I should have paid paid my dues and read the book before making my complaint. My statement was just a lucky guess. ENDER'S GAME is about the training of Ender from age five to twelve, teaching him to be a great military genius. The idea is to combine the kid with the best raw material with the best military training and end up with not just the world's best 12-year-old military commander, but with a commander who cannot lose, period. And that is Card's chief failure-- Ender's abilities are just too unbelievable for his age. Even assuming that Ender has the best training possible and that the world has a much expanded population to choose from, it is still extremely unlikely that there would be someone as young as Ender with his abilities. Ender is never convincing as a person of his supposed age. In addition to this, though I have never seen an analysis, it seems that there are theoretical limits to how good a military commander can possibly be. Of course, superior force is a big advantage, but the commander who wields it is considered to be powerful, not good. The good commander is one who can be counted on to win a higher proportion of the time than would be expected from the size of his forces. The thing is that an army is a sufficiently complex organism that it cannot be perfectly predicted what it will do. This is what is wrong with ENDER'S GAME and Gordon Dickson's "Dorsai" novels like TACTICS OF MISTAKE. A good strategy will help a lot, and some commanders might have runs of good luck and win many battles, but eventually the law of large numbers takes over. A Dorsai can figure out in advance exactly what his enemy will do, but that is only because Dickson is contriving the situation so that the enemy has only one course of action to take. In real life, commanders use whims and hunches and weigh alternatives in ways Dorsai or Ender could not psyche out. And armies are not totally obedient monolithic organisms. One can postulate that Card's insect-like Buggers will follow the commands of their queen, but Ender is victorious over humans in battle and humans are not totally predictable. ENDER'S GAME is a good novel, though the reader becomes impatient for something besides training to happen, then it concludes itself very quickly. Saying more than that about the structure of the novel would be giving spoiler clues as to how the novel turns out. It is worth reading but not Hugo material. Mark R. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper From archive (archive) Subject: Re: _Seventh Son_ by Orson Scott Card From: PUDAITE@UIUCVMD.BITNET Date: 17 Sep 87 04:48:08 GMT In reading the recent collection of comments on Orson Scott Card's _Seventh Son_ and _Wyrms_ it was interesting to see the diversity of opinion on which novel of Card's was his best. My personal favorite is the first novel of his I read, _The Worthing Chronicle_ (I didn't know it at the time, but I had already encountered Card in a short story entitled 'Ender's Game'). I picked it up initially because it had an interesting looking cover, but what hooked me was the excerpt inside the front cover: Mother looked up at Father in awe. 'My elbow still hurts, where it struck the floor,' she said. 'It still hurts very much.' A hurt that lasted! Who had heard of such a thing! And when she lifted her arm, there was a raw and bleeding scrape on it. 'Have I killed you?' asked Father, wonderingly. 'No,' said Mother. 'I don't think so.' 'Then why does it bleed?...' Unfortunately, _The Worthing Chronicle_ and several other novels by Card are out of print. I've scoured used book stores and still haven't been able to obtain copies of _Hot Sleep_ (part of the Worthing Chronicle series) or _A Woman of Destiny_. Hopefully, with Card's recent success, some of his older novels will be reprinted. However, even though _The Worthing Chronicle_ is my favorite Card novel, I have to concur with Dan Tilque: _Hart's Hope_ is 'the best thing he has written yet.' But unlike Dan, I don't think I can recommend _Hart's Hope_ to everyone. From personal experience, I've found that people either think it's substandard Card (the majority, actually) or the best thing he's done. A most dichotomizing book. Card always seems to employ foreshadowing and symbolism, but he takes these techniques furthest in _Hart's Hope_. Of the two techniques, foreshadowing is the more risky. Failed symbolism can just be ignored if the surface content is interesting enough. But failed foreshadowing eliminates suspense without providing the reader anything else in return. Successful foreshadowing creates anticipation: the reader can't wait to find out how well the writer will SHOW the reader what the writer has just indicated to the reader (either cryptically or overtly) will/must happen. Works that successfully foreshadow can be read and appreciated many times, unlike stories that depend on a suspenseful plot to maintain interest. My experience is that most of the people I know don't even care for successful foreshadowing because they much prefer suspenseful plots. It's a matter of personal taste, I guess. One of my friends even thought that _Speaker for the Dead_ was ruined by excessive foreshadowing. I have to agree somewhat. I tried to read _Speaker_ a second time and only got through the first chapter. A fair amount of stuff isn't that interesting the second time through. For example, my friend noted (in a review I posted a while back): 'Of course we know all about Ender's past, so isn't it terribly tiresome to have his past discovered about half a dozen times by various characters throughout the story? And worse, these discoveries do nothing to advance the plot, they're just there to fill each character's vacuum of knowledge.' Still, in reading that first chapter of _Speaker, I did discover one subtle prefiguration (perhaps so subtle that it isn't even there): In the morning Novinha walked with them to the gate in the high fence that separated the human city from the slopes leading up to the forest hills where the piggies lived. Because Pipo and Libo were still trying to reassure each other that neither of them could have done any differently, Novinha walked on ahead and got to the gate first. When the others arrived, she pointed to a patch of freshly cleared red earth only thirty meters or so up the gate. 'That's new,' she said. 'And there's something in it.' Pipo opened the gate, and Libo being younger ran on ahead to investigate. He stopped at the edge of the cleared patch and went completely rigid, staring down at whatever lay there (_Speaker for the Dead_, pp. 27-8). This parallels the following passage from the Bible , especially when one incorporates the traditional exegesis (which appears in brackets): Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!' So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in (John 20:1-5, NIV). >From this perspective, the passage from _Speaker_ becomes a resurrection image. Rooter will rise again (literally). Indead, Rooter is already alive, just as Jesus was at the time Mary went to the tomb. Tenuous? Well, I have two supporting points. First of all, I read the passage from _Speaker_ to one of my friends, and he recognized the parallel, too. Second, Card has used even more blatant Biblical parallels in the past. For example: It was only then, in utter anguish, that Elijah wept. Only then that he himself gave water to the world. And as he cried, while his sons watched the awful fire, there came a cloud in the west, so small at first that a man's hand held out from his body could cover it (_The Worthing Chronicle_, p. 215). 'Go and look toward the sea,' he told his servant. And he went up and looked. 'There is nothing there,' he said. Seven times Elijah said, 'Go back.' The seventh time the servant reported, 'A cloud as small as a man's hand is rising from the sea' (I Kings 18:43-4a NIV) _Speaker for the Dead_ certainly had the potential to be the best novel written by Card. To me, it's the best science fiction story he's written, because it's the only one so far that features interesting science, rather than just employing the trappings of science and science fiction. I haven't gotten a copy of _Seventh Son_ yet, but I didn't think 'Hatrack River' was that good because there wasn't any significant inter- or intra- personal conflict in the short story (maybe there is in the novel). I am looking forward to the novel containing 'Runaway' because that was a far more thoughtful story. Does anyone know if 'Eye for an Eye' or 'America' also will re-appear in this series of novels? From archive (archive) Subject: THE ABYSS - Book/novelization *NO SPOILERS* From: www@sppy00.UUCP (Victor Shakapopolis) Organization: Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio. Date: 31 May 89 23:36:34 GMT I just finished reading "a novel based on the original screenplay" written by Orson Scott Card based on the screenplay/movie by James Cameron (THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS) called THE ABYSS. The story is very good, it's too bad that the two other underwater movies (DEEPSTAR SIX, LEVIATHAN) weren't so hot since they might scare people away from this one. To quote from Mr. Card's afterward, "The most important source ... was the film itself. ... I had stacks of videotape that *showed* me exactly what was happening from moment to moment in the story. The film was so valuable that I ended up throwing out everything I had done from the script itself ... I learned for a fact what I had suspected from the start - that a novelization written from the screenplay is worthless compared to a novelization written from the film itself." So, I suspect that this book is *very* close in "feel" to the movie. If that's the case then I can hardly wait to see the film! With movies such as GHOSTBUSTERS II, BATMAN, STARTREK V, and other out this summer I hope THE ABYSS isn't passed up. >From the back of the book: Deep in the Caribbean Sea, a U.S. nuclear submarine mysteriously spins out of control. When a U.S. Navy SEAL team and the crew of DEEPCORE - an underwater oil drilling station - dive down to investigate, they are trapped at the edge of a vast underwater trench. Now, as the world above stands poised on the brink of nuclear destruction, they prepare to enter the abyss. If enough people are interested I'll post spoilers to the novel... BTW: I'm not sure any postings are leaving this site, could you let me know? Thanks in advance... -- ========================================================================== William W. White {att|pyramid|killer}!osu-cis!sppy00!www **** These are my views, not my employers (standard disclaimer) **** ========================================================================== From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Jul 2 09:15:03 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!samsung!know!tamsun.tamu.edu From: cab6898@tamsun.tamu.edu (Carl Brown) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Orson Scott Card's XENOCIDE (There's a spoiler in the book!!!) Summary: If you liked _Speaker_ you'll like this one, too Keywords: Ender Ender's Game Speaker For the Dead Message-ID: <30563@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 29 Jun 91 05:04:46 GMT Sender: wex@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: cab6898@tamsun.tamu.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station Lines: 79 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com _XENOCIDE_ By Orson Scott Card Review Copyright (c) 1991 Carl Brown %T Xenocide %A Orson Scott Card %C New York %D August 1991 (Hey, that's what it says...) %G ISBN 0-312-85056-5 %I A Tor Book %I Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. %O hardback, US$21.95 %P 394 %S ENDER ***WARNING*** There is a SPOILER in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS of _XENOCIDE_. On the first page of the acknowledgements. It spoiled for me what would have been an interesting mystery. Don't say that I didn't warn you. There will be NO spoilers for _XENOCIDE_ in this review. People who have not read _Ender's_Game_ or _Speaker_For_The_Dead_ may not want to read this review. First of all, let me say that _Ender's_Game_ and _Speaker_For_The_Dead_ are two of my five favorite books (and I've read a LOT). I've been waiting for _Xenocide_ to come out for a long time. I was not disappointed (although I might still be). _Xenocide_ takes place almost immediately after _Speaker_ left off. I read _Speaker_ for the last time in April and I didn't have any trouble figuring out where the story was. It is explained very well and doesn't spend too much time on flashbacks. _Xenocide_ is a lot like _Speaker_ in that most of the real action takes place in conversations, and in the interactions between the characters. Those of you who liked _Ender's_Game_ for the combat and thought that _Speaker was too slow will probably be disappointed again. Card takes his usual trips through ethics, (meta)physics, humanity, xenophobia and mob psychology, to name just a few. As always, they're very well thought out and come from that disturbingly honest perspective that has characterized this series, and it strikes deeper to the heart of the human soul that either of the other two. The physics theories are interesting and well described, but...unsatisfying (then again, I do Physics research, so I'm not the best judge). The ethical connotations are disturbingly realistic. The title is appropriate. Each race in the book has to face the choice of exterminating the others, and the fear of being wiped out in turn. The aliens are intelligent and convincingly alien (given the fact that they've been influenced by they're interactions with humankind), the characters well written and the plot is intriguing. There is a big surprise toward the end. It was (to me) completely unexpected. I still don't quite understand it, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense (I finished reading it about 2 hours ago). The only real sore spot for me (it got a bit slow at times with the philosophy, but it was worth it) was the way it ended, or rather, the way that it didn't end. It was like _Speaker_, There is a solution to the immediate problem, but the situation as a whole goes unresolved. I was very upset right after I finished it, but I don't mind it now. I will, however, be quite put out if another sequel is not forthcoming (can you say "Alvin Maker"?). In short, if you liked _Speaker_, you should like this one, too. And now, the bottom line: _________________________________________________________________________ (Sorry, bad joke) Am I glad that I read it? Yes. Would I pay $22 for it again? In a second. Was it worth it not wait until the paperback? For me, yes, but I'm a die-hard fan. If you have to ask, you might as well wait. Enjoy Carl Brown From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Oct 15 09:29:26 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!pacbell.com!pacbell!pbhyc!djdaneh From: walley@vax.oxford.ac.uk Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: XENOCIDE by Orson Scott Card Message-ID: <6855@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> Date: 14 Oct 91 19:49:08 GMT Sender: djdaneh@PacBell.COM Lines: 44 Approved: djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com Xenocide by Orson Scott Card A Review by Andrew J. Walley (copyright 1991) Having finished this novel only minutes ago, I thought I'd give you my first impressions. Since this is the third part of the most successful trilogy in SF in terms of awards (Parts 1 and 2 - Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead - won the Hugo and Nebula awards for the year they were published) I was expecting a suitably rousing finale. Xenocide is good but not the masterwork it needed to be to finish this trilogy on a high note. I'm not faulting Card for this as he had already done the impossible writing a better, more thought provoking book than Ender's Game but Xenocide remains a disappointment. Resolving storylines generated in the first two books seems to be Card's main aim, together with the introduction of the strange society of the planet Path for variety. Card's ongoing ethical dilemma of whether anyone has the right to destroy a species, amply explored in the first two books, is watered down and wasted in the third book, whose title seems simply ironic now I've finished it. Card fails to deal with some of the elements of the plot which is simply frustrating after wading through pages of discussion about the nature of sentience and the origins of the soul. These are deep philosophical issues that Card proceeds to gloss over with an appealing mixture of pseudo-science and mysticism which then allows him to solve some of the problems confronting his characters in ways which are no more than wish-fulfilment (literally !). Equally bad is the fact that many plotlines are simply left unresolved. There is an obvious market for a sequel and if Card is playing his readers for the fools that marketing men think they are then he has been sadly misled. Xenocide fails to deliver the satisfaction that I derived from the first two books where insight and empathy were coupled to an action/adventure plot in a way that has been rarely seen in SF. Read it but expect to feel cheated when you turn that last page. I did. %A Orson Scott Card %C London %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-7126-4773-2 %I Legend, Random Century Group %O Hardback %P 463 Pages %T Xenocide From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Feb 24 12:48:22 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!funic!fuug!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: jt8@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (James Terman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Orson Scott Card: The Memory of Earth Message-ID: <1992Feb20.233157.19606@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 20 Feb 92 23:31:57 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 93 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu Homecoming: Volume I The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card Book Review by James L. Terman Copyright 1992 by James L. Terman People seem either to love or hate Orson Scott Card, often with a surprising intensity. I suspect that people react this way because he so often touches upon themes that people value greatly - questions of morality, of people's responsibility to themselves, to their family, to society, and even to Go. We all deal with these questions on a very personal level and it should not surprise anyone that people react strongly to these issues. I say this because I think few other SF authors (at least of those that I have read and that most people read) deals with these personal issues in their works as much as Orson Scott Card does. Many SF stories have strange science, strange aliens and strange societies but they often read as academic exercise in a game of what if? rather than trying to challenge our conventional notions. Card's works interests me so much, I suspect, because he lives in world so different from mine or that of most SF authors and fans, i.e. that of a God- fearing, pious elder of the Mormon church. Yet, he creates characters with compassion and humanity and puts them in struggles that test their mettle. In this way, Card quite often preaches at us, but in a way that makes us thoughtful instead of leaving us just to agree or disagree with him. Because I have so little doubt that The_Memory_of_Earth sets out to do just this, I would say that anybody who does not agree with the previous two paragraphs and does not like Card (except for perhaps Ender's_Game and the Alvin Maker series) will certainly not change their mind about him after reading this book. On the other hand, if you do like Card and do agree with the previous paragraphs, rush out and buy this book. For those of you who say, "Hey, I'm not sure I agree with your pretentious freshman-english analysis of Card's work, but I do like quite a bit of his stuff.", I would say, wait for more of the series to come out before deciding whether or not to read it. Like Seventh_Son, The_Memory_of_Earth starts out slowly, seems to spend most of its time introducing the characters and what they will have to struggle against without really coming to a definite climax at the end of the book. Oh, it has an ending, but with the sort of ending you get from the last scene a Dr. Who episode with the subtitle at the bottom saying "Continued Next Week". This does not have to make it a bad book, it just makes it hard to judge The_Memory_of_Earth (or Seventh_Son) without having read the rest of the series. With these caveats aside, and with a minor spoiling warning alert in effect, I will talk about the setting of the book. The story takes place on a planet called Harmony in a future in which a nuclear holocaust has destroyed the Earth (presumedly nuclear, in any event, it involves the use of hi-tech weapons). The remaining survivors of humanity leave the Earth to let it recover and, after entrusting its welfare to the Keeper of Earth (a computer, I think, but that should become clearer in future books), they settle the planet of Harmony. Rather than repeat the mistakes that lead to the destruction of Earth, the colonists build an intelligent computer (called the Oversoul by the inhabitants of Harmony) and a host of satellites to watch over the planet. They have genetically engineered themselves so that the Oversoul can influence and indirectly communicate with the colonists. The Oversoul can keep the inhabitants of Harmony from creating any weapon of war that would destabilize the society but allow them complete freedom to act in every other way. Obviously, the society functions at a psuedo-medieval technological level for the most part. However, the Oversoul provides (and keeps control of) some hi- tech items that the colonists can use in the development of their societies. Mostly they have access to communication gear that allows all the societies on Harmony to exchange culturally with one another plus some limited hi-tech personal weapons. The Oversoul has only limited influence over the colonists, and it governs mostly by confusing or misdirecting people when they get close to thinking about a forbidden concept (like a "war wagon"), or by talking to people in their dreams or through especially sensitive humans (seers). The founders of Harmony hoped that in a few million years of development, the colonists on Harmony could develop a society that could use advanced technology without blowing itself up. They programmed the Oversoul with the task of watching over the colonists, awaiting the development of such a society and then returning the colonists back to a restored Earth. The book opens up 40 million years later (about 4 times longer than they projected it would take :-), and the Oversoul has come very near to the end of its existence. Many of its satellites have ceased to function, pushed beyond their projected operating lifetimes, and Harmony continues to slip out from under the Oversoul's control. The colonists, unchecked, now build weapons of war and carve out empires where none before had existed. It must now start to gamble, and it places it's hope on a 14 earth year old boy, Nafai (actually, somewhat old for a typical Card hero :-). At the end, one cannot really see what the Oversoul plans to do, but it does seem to involve a return to back to the Keeper of Earth. The_Memory_of_Earth does seem to recall elements of past Card works such as the Shinning Bright subplot in Xenocide and A_Planet_Called_Treason. Certainly, this work reads with a very typical Card voice and does not impress the reader with the originality of Ender's_Game or the Alvin Maker series. For the most part, it only delivers a lot of promise which only further books can fulfill. %T The Memory of Earth %A Orson Scott Card %C New York %D March 1992 %I Tom Doherty Associates, Inc %O hardback, US$21.95 %G ISBN 0-312-93036-4 %P 294 pp From archive (archive) Subject: Re: "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card I feel compelled to disagree with the preceeding review of "Speaker for the Dead." I have read all three works involved, the original short story version of "Ender's Game," the complete novel, and "Speaker for the Dead." I enjoyed the short story version of "Ender's Game," but the novel was vastly better. Card succeeds in letting us get inside Ender's head to a remarkable degree. The entire story he creates is internally consistent and believable. He manages to develop the characters so naturally and consistently that we forget they are children until he rubs our noses in it, reminding us that these "soldiers" are only ten years old. It is emotionally a very powerful book. I didn't think "Speaker for the Dead" was quite as good as "Ender's Game," but it is still a fine book. I do not regret that I went out and bought the hardcover edition when it was first printed. (Something I very rarely do). I agree that it doesn't finish the story of the Hive Queen, but I disagree that that is a fault. He has created yet another consistent world for this book, and to try to carry on the Hive Queen's story in the same book would be trying to put far too much into a single volume. Her hatching and how humanity deals with it should be its own story, which I hope will be written someday. These are, of course, strictly my own opinions, and it is distinctly possible that no one else out there on the net will agree with them. However, the same hold for the author of the preceeding review. Don't skip these books because he didn't like them. Read them for yourself. They are well worth the time involved. Personally, I think that "Ender's Game" will become one of the classics, and would not be at all surprised to see it pick up a Hugo at this year's Worldcon. I think it deserves it. Kathryn Smith (...decvax!gsg!kathy) General Systems Group Salem, NH From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Dec 22 16:01:06 1993 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:453 alt.books.reviews:1887 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!newshub.nosc.mil!crash!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (Gareth Rees) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,alt.books.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: Maps in a Mirror by Orson Scott Card Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <1993Dec17.114335.16096@infodev.cam.ac.uk> Date: 22 Dec 93 02:18:35 GMT Lines: 138 Maps in a Mirror by Orson Scott Card A book review by Gareth Rees Copyright 1993 Gareth Rees I'm never quite sure what to make of Orson Scott Card's fiction. Sometimes I think his work is brilliant, with insight into character and a marvellous emotional power in his writing. At other times I perceive in his work a saccharine sentimentality, a banal morality that forgives the worst atrocity if the perpetrator's guilt is sincere enough and his (almost always 'his') atonement is painful enough. The publication of the massive short story collection Maps in a Mirror gives ample opportunity for consideration is this questions, and there's plenty of evidence for both points of view. Now, when I say 'massive', I mean it. Maps in a Mirror consists of nearly 700 pages of close-printed text, and with the exception of the Worthing/Capitol stories (collected in The Worthing Saga) and the Mormon stories in The Folk of the Fringe, the 46 stories here represent all of Card's short fiction so far, or at least all that he is willing to see reprinted. This is a collection that deserves careful savouring. Seeing these stories together stresses the theme that is most noticeable in Card's writing, the pain and mutilation (emotional and physical) of his characters. Card deprecates the tendency in the horror genre towards the graphic portrayal of violence and claims, "I don't write horror". Yet we have 'Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory' (man tormented by malformed children who seem to be exteriorisations of his evil character), 'Fat Farm' (hedonist becomes grossly fat, has himself copied to a new, thin body, leaving his old self to be tortured back to thinness), 'Closing the Timelid' (when time-travel makes it possible to commit suicide non-fatally, death becomes the ultimate trip for drug-addicts), 'Memories of my Head' (man trapped in unhappy marriage blows his head off but even then cannot escape), 'A Thousand Deaths' (repressive government tortures dissident by repeatedly killing him and bringing him back to life again), 'Unaccompanied Sonata' (musician is forbidden to play, disobeys, and his fingers are amputated so he cannot disobey again), 'Kingsmeat' (human-eating aliens take over colony and slowly dismember and consume the inhabitants). I could also mention the archetypal example of Card's "limb fiction", the novel A Planet Called Treason (hero grows lots of extra arms and legs and then has them chopped off). Are you an Orson Scott Card character? Then count your limbs. These are just the physical traumas that Card puts his characters through; many more stories are constructed around emotional pain no less traumatically portrayed, but less easy to give the flavour of in a short review. I detect two strands to these stories of pain. The first, and less important, portrays pain as punishment, and includes 'Eumenides', 'Fat Farm', and a few others. I have no real disagreement with these stories, and despite Card's claims not to write in the genre, they're fine horror stories, on a par with those of George R R Martin or Ian Watson, and certainly Card has no shortage of gruesome invention or nastily observed character detail. There is, perhaps, evidence of an ascetic dislike of bodies, perhaps most obvious in 'Fat Farm', which Card describes as 'physical autobiography' in his afterword. The second strand is much harder for me to get to grips with, and the closest I can come is, pain as affirmation. These stories comprise the balance of the stories described above, and much of Card's most important novels, including Hart's Hope, Songmaster, Ender's Game and Red Prophet. In these stories the hero (almost always male) undergoes terrible physical and (more importantly) emotional pain, but emerges with the realisation that it has all been very important and worthwhile. In these stories, pain becomes the raison d'etre of the character; proof that he is worth something, that his beliefs are important; pain is badge of pride. These are stories of martyrdom. It is as though Card has a burning desire to write fiction that strikes at the heart of its readers, fiction that grapples with universal truths, fiction that is 'important'. And he knows how this is done: important fiction involves the suffering of the protagonist; important fiction is tragic and painful. And he knows that out of pain come wisdom and insight. But there are traps in this schema, and Card falls into them. The first is to presume too much, to tell the reader how wise the hero is, how much pain he is suffering, rather than showing this convincingly. Suffering does not automatically make one a saint; pain and guilt are not in themselves enough to convince: there must be good writing and excellent characterisation as well. Otherwise, the torment becomes hysterical posturing, the catharsis does not convince. I think that Songmaster falls into this trap, as does Speaker for the Dead. The second trap arises out of Card's tendency to portray redemption as the outcome of the suffering. In these stories, suffering and guilt are enough. You can be forgiven of your sins if you suffer. Terrible things happen, but through pain the wound may be healed. These stories tend towards an artificial sentimentality. An example of this is 'Lost Boys' (a family who lose a difficult child to a murderer, but when he comes back as a ghost they are able to give him the perfect Christmas he never had when he was alive), which has (apparently) attracted a great deal of controversy and criticism because Card tells the story as though it concerned his own family. Card quotes Karen Joy Fowler as being the most succinct of the critics: "By telling your story in the first person with so much detail from your own life, you've appropriated something that doesn't belong to you. You've pretended to feel the grief of a parent who has lost a child, and you don't have a right to feel that grief." Well, I don't object to this; Card's use of his own family in the story is his own business, surely. But this issue may have obscured a deeper flaw in the story, which by placing the schmalzy Christmas scene at the end, gives the impression that because the family are sorry that the son has been killed, it is somehow alright, that everything is OK at the end of the story. Something of the sort goes on in the novel Ender's Game, where humanity destroys an alien race, and then through Ender's pain and guilt is given a second chance at peaceful co-existence. Related to this issue is Card's use of the perpetrator of suffering as a messiah figure. I have already noted Ender, but there's also the Shepherd character in 'Kingsmeat' (who saves his people from being killed outright by the flesh-eating aliens by the expedient of slowly dismembering them instead). Card himself refers us to Gene Wolfe's use of the torturer Severian as the messiah in The Book of the New Sun: "I think it's interesting that when Gene Wolfe set out to create a Christ-figure in his Book of the New Sun, he also made his protagonist begin as apprentice torturer, so that the one who suffered and died to save others is depicted as one who also inflicts suffering: it is a way to explicitly make the Christ-figure take upon himself, in all innocence, the darkest sins of the world." I've tried to indicate what goes wrong in Card's writing, but there are occasions on which he gets it right, and doesn't fall into any of these traps. 'Kingsmeat' is one, 'Unaccompanied Sonata' another, and Hart's Hope is a third. And when he gets it right, his writing does have a mythic power to it. And there are stories that don't involve pain or amputation. The best story in Maps in a Mirror is 'The Originist', a very well thought out and well-written novella about family and community that is set in the milieu of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. It is interesting to note that Card "poured a novel's worth of love and labour into it" (if only he did this much work on every story of his!) and a little sad that he "firmly [believes that Asimov] is the finest writer of American prose in our time, bar none." In the end, I am prepared to forgive the bad stories in Maps in a Mirror, and to treasure the good. And you should certainly read it - read it with care - and judge for yourself. %T Maps in a Mirror %A Orson Scott Card %I Legend %D 1991 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 15 15:50:29 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!news.csc.fi!news.eunet.fi!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!convex!news.utdallas.edu!rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com!aur.alcatel.com!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: Humphrey Aaron V Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--Orson Scott Card:The Memory of Earth Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 16:43:48 GMT Organization: not specified Lines: 71 Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <94Mar13.203419-0700.138935@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: aursag.aur.alcatel.com Orson Scott Card:The Memory of Earth [some spoilers] I confess, the first thing I thought when _The Memory of Earth_ came out was, "He's in the middle of two series(at least), and he's starting _another_ one?" But eventually I calmed down and figured that if I bought this one, he'd be more likely to continue with something I was reading. So I did. Card is one of those authors who continue to surprise me. His style is quite consistent(barring anomalies like _Hart's Hope_*)and eminently readable. But I guess it's more a case of "Where does he get his ideas?" Background: Earth gets blown up in a nuclear holocaust. The survivors, so disgusted with what they've done, abandon earth into the hands of a "Keeper"(I think a computer, but I'm not sure yet), and go off to settle another planet, called Harmony. To make sure it lives up to its name, they design a computer, the Oversoul, with the overriding purpose of keeping humanity alive. Then they engineer their descendants so that the Oversoul can influence them to make sure they don't blow themselves up. The Oversoul selectively suppressed technological ideas that may prove harmful; thus we have the bizarre situation of computers, holographic projectors, antigrav devices, etc. being commonplace, but nobody having come up with wheeled vehicles(which are harmful because they can be turned into chariots). So, fine. This goes on for forty million years. But the designers of the Oversoul had figured that humanity would reach a better state by ten or twenty million at the most, and the Oversoul wouldn't be necessary anymore. Far too optimistic, they. Now the Oversoul is breaking down; people are becoming less receptive to its control, not to mention a fair number of the satellites it uses to broadcast dying of attrition. And so people are starting to come up with forbidden technologies. In despair, it turns to one family, in the city of Basilica, who seem to be more receptive than average. For most of the book we follow some member of this family: mostly Nafai, who is fourteen and thus extremely annoying for most of the book. Going into the society of Basilica would be overlong here; suffice it to say it's quasi-matriarchal in structure, with men allowed to own property only outside the city walls, and women the ones who decide on who they'll contract with for marriage. The book proper(this is just the setup!)deals with Nafai and his family, and intrigue regarding these newfangled wheeled-carts and those unscrupulous enough to sell them to other cities. Having gotten this far, I don't know what to say about the plot, except that it gets most of its strength from the characters of Nafai, his brothers, and his parents. Nafai's interaction with the Oversoul matures him visibly over the course of the book, though he still makes some dumbass blunders. And at the end we seem ready to leave the city of Basilica behind...though this could be deceiving, and I almost hope that with all the work he put into it we see more of it in the next book... %A Card, Orson Scott %T The Memory of Earth %I Tor %C New York %D March 1992 %G ISBN 0-812-53259-7 %P 332 pp. %S Homecoming %V Volume 1 %O Paperback, US $5.99, Can $6.99 * Don't get me wrong. _Hart's Hope_ is still my favourite Card to date. -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--The Waterboys:Dream Harder Current Read--Mike Resnick:Purgatory "curious george swung down the gorge/the ants took him apart" --billbill Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.online.be!bignews.mediaways.net!blackbush.xlink.net!newsfeed.tli.de!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!gatech!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: "Aaron M. Renn" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Sep 1999 14:13:55 -0400 Organization: GNU's Not Unix! Lines: 62 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2456 Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn Conclusion: Recommended [ Warning: This review contains major SPOILERS for Ender's Game. Those who have not read that volume should NOT read this review. ] . . . . . I've always suspected that Card wrote Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide to get back at all the people like me who cheered when Ender wiped out the Buggers. Believe you me, if I'd been the one who got ahold of that Hive Queen cocoon, I would have stomped that bitch into a greasy stain on the sidewalk! Uh, wait a minute, my genocidal rage is getting the best of me. As I was saying, I think Card proved me wrong with this one, or else he feels we've had enough penance. Ender's Shadow not only parallels the story line of Ender's Game, it also echos the same writing style and tone. He lets those of us who want to enjoy this as a mindless, sadistic adventure to do so, while dropping in a few subsurface themes of a more serious note. There is far less of a serious nature in this novel than in it's precursor though. In fact, this book is mostly just mind candy. But at least it's pretty darn tasty mind candy. Ender's Shadow is the story of Ender's companion Bean from his days as a homeless beggar on the streets of Rotterdam to Command School. Bean is one smart guy. In fact, he's so smart and savvy that there are a few people at Battle School who think he might be the one to take on the Buggers instead of Ender. Of course we know that doesn't happen, but Card does a masterful job of keeping us interested in his life even though we already know how the story turns out. The two main ways he manages this are by bringing back things from Bean's pre-Battle School past, and putting a new twist on some things we thought we knew in Ender's Game. As it turns out, Bean played a far more critical role in Ender's success than we believed him to. Though of course that's obvious without even reading the book. If it weren't, why would Card have even bothered? I don't consider this Hugo material - though I'm sure some people will - but it was a quick and enjoyable read. As you might expect, Card leaves a door open for a sequel big enough to drive a Mack truck through, so I wouldn't be surprised to see another episode in the life of Bean coming up soon. %A Card, Orson Scott %T Ender's Shadow %I Tor %D 1999-09 %G ISBN 0-312-86860-X %P 379 pp. %0 hardcover, US$24.95 Reviewed on 1999-09-13 Aaron M. Renn (arenn@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/ Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!netnews.com!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written From: Excession Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ender's Shadow Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Organization: yeah, right. Reply-To: dac@nospam.pcug.org.au Date: 20 Apr 2000 14:56:56 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 69 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 956257018 10975 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2689 Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card Review Copyright 2000 David Andrew Clayton. * WARNING -MAJOR- SPOILERS for ENDER'S GAME * Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ has received quite a lot of attention over the years; people dismissing the novel as a quaint attempt to Make More Money from the 'quite decent' short story of the same name, people dismissing the entire story as 'an exercise in cruelty to children', and various other accusations about Card's religious beliefs. I *liked* _Ender's Game_, I liked it a lot. I picked it up 'on spec' from the Australian National University Co-op bookshop, and was very impressed/moved by the story. The sequels that followed (_Speaker for the Dead_, _Xenocide_, _Children of the Mind_) were nothing like the original story, and were 'disappointing' to people who expected more of the Battle School shenanigans. Card has succombed to either public requests, or a push by his editor, and written a 'parallel' novel, centred on 'Bean' from the original book. It takes part in the same timeframe as _Ender's Game_, focussing on the early childhood of Bean, his rise to Battle School, and his activities there with Andrew "Ender" Wiggin. The book is pretty well congruent with the original story, although told from a different perspective, you get more insight into the chicanery of the IF heirarchy, and the political machinations going on outside Battle School. Bean's character starts out young, and smart, and gets smarter as the story progresses. I found the 'smart kid' syndrome to be a bit underwhelming -- the cognitive leaps and bounds that Bean makes, whilst his emotional abilities remain almost moribund, struck me as being unbalanced. The degree of 'happy circumstance' is just too trite; my suspension of disbelief was shattered on a number of occasions by certain clumsy coincidences regarding Bean and his chance encounters with various other characters. Also distressingly perverse was the inelegant 'hacking' performed within Battle School, and the idiotic policies of the IF administration who 'let' Bean into the system with almost total free reign over the data -- as a computer person, that just didn't strike me as being a valid course of action; perhaps I'm a little too close to the computer security side of reality to let that kind of breach slip. Some interesting insights into how Battle School works, and a disturbing future description of an overcrowded Rotterdam, plus the wierd inclusion of a Catholic nun, who appears to have way more resources at her fingertips than most governments. The book finishes at the same time as the original, with the destruction of the Bugger's homeworld, which we already knew about from the original novel. A toasted cheese and tomato sandwich (with yukky "soapy" cheese) on the ever bizarre Sid and Nancy scale. %T Ender's Shadow %A Orson Scott Card %C Britain %D 1999 %G ISBN 1-85723-975-X %P 380pp %O Trade Paperback, $AU24.95 %I Orbit Books David Andrew Clayton # Please remove NOSPAM. when dac@NOSPAM.pcug.org.au # sending email replies. I post therefore I am. # ICQ 6862357 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: Excession Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Ender's Shadow Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Organization: yeah, right. Reply-To: dac@pcug.org.au Date: 31 Aug 2000 12:58:23 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 68 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 967741105 9434 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2786 Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card Review Copyright 2000 David Andrew Clayton [contains major spoilers for ENDER'S GAME --AW] Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Game_ has received quite a lot of attention over the years; people dismissing the novel as a quaint attempt to Make More Money from the 'quite decent' short story of the same name, people dismissing the entire story as 'an exercise in cruelty to children,' and various other accusations about Mr Card's religious beliefs. I *liked* _Ender's Game_; I liked it a lot. I picked it up 'on spec' from the Australian National University Co-op bookshop, and was very impressed/ moved by the story. The sequels that followed (_Speaker for the Dead_, _Xenocide_, _Children of the Mind_) were nothing like the original story, and were disappointing to people who expected more of the Battle School shenanigans. Card has succombed to either public requests, or a push by his editor, and written a 'parallel' novel, centred on Bean from the original book. It takes place in the same timeframe as _Ender's Game_, focusing on the early childhood of Bean, his rise to Battle School, and his activities there with Andrew "Ender" Wiggin. The book is pretty well congruent with the original story, although told from a different perspective, you get more insight into the chicanery of the IF heirarchy, and the political machinations going on outside Battle School. Bean's character starts out young and smart, and gets smarter as the story progresses. I found the 'smart kid' syndrome to be a bit underwhelming -- the cognitive leaps and bounds that Bean makes, whilst his emotional abilities remain almost moribund struck me as being unbalanced. The degree of happy circumstance is just too trite; my suspension of disbelief was shattered on a number of occasions by clumsy coincidences regarding Bean and his chance encounters with various other characters. Also distressingly perverse was the inelegant 'hacking' performed within Battle School, and the idiotic policies of the IF administration who 'let' Bean into the system with almost total free reign over the data -- as a computer person, that just didn't strike me as being a valid course of action. Perhaps I'm a little too close to the computer security side of reality to let that kind of breach slip. The book also has some interesting insights into how Battle School works, and a disturbing future description of an overcrowded Rotterdam, plus the wierd inclusion of a catholic nun, who appears to have more resources at her fingertips than most governments. The book finishes at the same time as the original, with the destruction of the Bugger's homeworld, which we already knew about from the original novel. A toasted cheese and tomato sandwich (with yukky "soapy" cheese) on the ever bizarre Sid and Nancy scale. %T Ender's Shadow %A Orson Scott Card %C Britain %D 1999 %G ISBN 1-85723-975-X %P 380pp %O Trade Paperback, $AU24.95 %I Orbit Books David Andrew Clayton # Please remove NOSPAM. when dac@NOSPAM.pcug.org.au # sending email replies. I post therefore I am. # http://www.pcug.org.au/~dac