Speaker for the Dumb

Via IOZ, here's Orson Scott Card demonstrating some of his self-professed centrism:

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

That's definitely some high-grade lunacy, though my personal favorite part of Card's howling screed is his horror that "A vast number of unmarried men and women have such contempt for marriage that they share bed and home without asking for any formal recognition by society."  Perhaps he thinks we should rename it a "copulation/cohabitation license" and emphasize that it's a license in exactly the same sense as a driver's license (in which case you have to wonder: how far could you go with your learner's permit? and would you have to have an adult in the front seat with you?).

But the most boggleworthy thing I've seen from Card would have to be this bit, from 2006:

In our country, our sharpest foreign policy mind is in the White House. And he has a majority of both houses of Congress at least nominally supporting his correct actions in defense of western civilization.

Yes, he's really referring to George W. Bush.  Go ahead, read it again and again.  It'll still say the same thing.  And you can read the rest of it for gems like this: "if Bill Clinton is the center -- well, there's only about three inches of Left to the left of Bill."

There was a time when I respected Card, who was easily one of the finest short story writers in science fiction.  I always assumed he was socially conservative based on his preachy Mormonism, but I had no idea how far that went until I read that in his book Empire, "a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States," apparently in retaliation for Gore's failure to claim his victory in the 2000 election.  Ha ha!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha!  Ha ha ha ha!  Stop, my sides, you're killing me!  And as you can see from the snippets above, dude is serious about this stuff (which is why the subtitle of the book is "A disturbing look at a possible future").  All of which led me to the conclusion that I wouldn't be reading much Orson Scott Card in the future.

[ Not much of a loss, since it's been years since Card has written anything as good as (say) Treason, and his penchant for reworking tight novellas into bloated novels—most egregiously when he padded out his short story "Lost Boys" with hundreds of pages of mind-numbing details about Mormonism—has always gotten on my nerves. ]

Comments

[Save the Oocytes]

I've read the whole "Ender" series, and was disappointed when, about six books in, I found the website for Card's blog on one of the books. I remember reading two things. First, he said that the Bush administration had been a success by all possible measures, and he was amazed that Democrats could disagree. Second, he said something to the effect of "Liberals say the war is about oil. So what? What do liberals put in their cars?" Most people defending imperialism don't give away the whole game quite like that.

It makes me wonder why I haven't penned dozens of novels, if this repulsive moron can?

[John Caruso]

I stopped with Ender's Shadow, where Card's creepy child fetishism had him asking us to believe that an infant could do the Steve McQueen routine to escape from a laboratory. I decided to bow out before he wrote an entire book about zygotes.

Card may be a repulsive moron at this point, but he did have enormous talent at the beginning of his career, and even though that's largely dissipated now the craft is still there. But I've read a few science fiction books that made me think, wow, the bar's really that low? Like anything by Jack McDevitt; I don't know what the guy had to do to get that insufferably wooden dreck of his published, but I'm guessing it's even illegal in Amsterdam.

[Dan Coyle]

Last time I looked at anything by Card was the first two issues of Ultimate Iron Man, where Tony Stark's scientist mother contracted some sort of weird toxin during an expierment gone wrong. So were' treated to, I shit you not, ten pages or so of a pregnant woman writhing in pain, she won't take painkillers because it might affect the baby.

Second issue, Tony Stark is born- with blue skin because of the toxin, or whatever. A toddler Tony is kidnapped by villains and the issue ends with a five year old boy having a weird crown device with spikes curled toward his head being jammed onto his head. Seriously, Card should not be allowed near children.

[Jonathan Versen]

Now you know how the people who used to dig David Mamet feel. It was also a gradual awakening, as his irritatingly arch tick-tocking dialogue moved from being novel to just an affectation. And then we found out about his wacko politics...

[John Caruso]

Yep, I've got the Mamet thing going as well; in fact I avoided his most recent film based on his asinine political views (which may or may not have been apparent in the film, but I didn't want to send any more money his way whether directly or indirectly).

I still enjoy his dialogue—which my friends and I refer to as "Mameting"—even though (ok, maybe because) it's so affected.

[Duncan]

Card's homophobia went more or less public in 1990, when he published an article attacking queers in an LDS publication, which got circulated among gay-friendly sf readers very quickly. So it's not exactly a "gradual awakening." Same for Mamet - didn't he esablish himself as a pig with that play about sexual harassment, almost as long ago?