Orson Scott Card's Amazon Review of Ender's Game

In my humble opinion, it is not unreasonable to judge a person by their publicly stated opinions.

The author misunderstands what Card is trying to say in response to her questions. Also, she evidently misunderstood Ender's Game quite a bit as well.

Ender was suited to be a brilliant military commander precisely because he hated killing so much. A more bloodthirsty commander would have fallen for certain traps, committed certain errors of judgment that Ender was immune to. The nuance here is that Ender's strategic advantage came from a tremendous empathy with his adversary.

In the end, Ender had to be fooled into destroying the Buggers precisely because of this empathy. He never would have been able to commit a genocide if he thought it was actually a genocide, but he could do it in the context of a video game.

And, for what it's worth, the childhood bullying delivered by Ender's brother was also a function of Ender's love for his brother. We see very soon that Ender is capable of tremendous violence, but he tolerates mistreatment from Peter because he loves him so much.

It is this victimhood which endears Ender to any reader who has felt victimized, by showing that in some cases there is great physical and moral power beneath the surface.

The author of this strange hit piece is clearly trying to rile up various reactive political groups against Card. Sure, card is a Mormon and appears somewhat socially conservative in his personal beliefs. He is clearly not homophobic and became defensive when he sensed that the author was trying to broach the subject which had probably caused him much pain.

Sure some people believe that anyone who doesn't advocate same sex marriage qualifies as homophobic... The author of the Salon piece clearly thinks that state recognition of same sex marriage is hugely important.

I'd argue that through his books Card has done far more good (by enlightening people about important moral issues) than any harm caused by his traditional view (restricting the word "marriage" but not the state sanctioned bond between two people).

The remarks about Card yapping and flirting suggest a very immature person wrote the article. Clearly at a certain point Card was trying to be polite and let the interview finish without incident... something that was framed as "shutting down"... Bizarre stuff.

> "let's make all the characters naive children who eventually realize all the adults are manipulative".

I can't agree. Speaker for the Dead (and sequels) characters have a lot of complexity in their arcs – perhaps because they're mostly not children. I'd say the Speaker series is a perfect example of how to create characters with nuance, depth and multiple motivations.

Check out 'A Memory of Earth'.

(Or better yet, don't. It, enders game, and enders shadow all did it. Three strikes and you're out imho, certainly when one of them is the book the author is known for)

Hear, hear. I didn't find anything in this interview that identifies him as a "terrible person". Yes, things he says are unpopular on the internet, given the internet's demographics - young, liberal, etc. But I think someone who calls him a "terrible person" based only on views he expressed hasn't met many terrible people in their lifetime.

And before I get accused of being his fanboy, I can't stand Ender's Game. I think it's the most overrated piece of garbage in history of sci-fi.. sometimes it reads like a work of a 12 year old. Terrible writing, worse, incredibly naive plot, I have no idea how it can be considered a "classic" and works by far better sci-fi authors like Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley, Henry Kuttner, Alfred Bester, etc are unfairly forgotten.

Having said that, I think the Card's masterpiece is the insults he wrote for Monkey Island game... now that's a great piece of writing!