Orson Scott Card
This is the inaugural entry in my new sci-fi category, for the moment. Eventually, my other blog will get imported into MT and there will be plenty of back-entries on the topic. I’ve learned a lot from fandom, and one of the most important lessons is never let your real opinions slip out. But I’ve already alienated everyone who wanted to be alienated in fandom - an unintentional slash-and-burn, but a useful one nonetheless - so I can move the other blog here without any major worries that David Brin will hate me forever for my personal opinion of his fiction.
I went shoe-shopping yesterday, and, as usual, found no shoes. I came home with a bag full of used and remaindered books, though. You should have seen the one that got away… One of the ones that got away was a new anthology by Orson Scott Card, of the best stories of the century. I glanced through the table of contents and was pleased to see my favorite short story in there: “Dark they were, and golden-eyed,” by Ray Bradbury.
I wandered over to OSC’s page today to track down the title of the anthology, but I was distracted from my quest by his Open Letter
to fellow Mormons about whether he plagiarised the Book of Mormon for one of his novels. There are bits of the letter that are rather interesting, especially the part about science fiction being the only practical method of discussing moral and cosmological issues across the gulf between worldviews. He seems like quite an interesting guy. I had no idea he was a Mormon, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
For reader convenience, here are some (non-contiguous) quotes from OSC’s open letter:
You cannot plagiarize history.
[…] I nevertheless had in mind one of Milton’s goals: To make the central defining myth of my own people available to those who do not believe it as scripture but might nevertheless respond to it as story.
You don’t have to know the Book of Mormon to read The Memory of Earth, because if fiction works at all, it works as a story in itself without the reader resorting to specific knowledge of other literature.
Indeed, I believe that speculative fiction is the one literary tradition available today to writers who would like to deal seriously with great moral, religious, cosmological, and eschatalogical issues without confining themselves to members of a particular religious group. That is, if I want to write about the end of the world, and I do it in a specifically LDS context, then I will only be able to speak to other Latter-day Saints because my work, avowedly religious and tied to just one religion, could only be published within and for the LDS community. But when I deal with such issues in the context of science fiction or fantasy, the issue of belief is sidestepped and the ideas can be developed as thought experiments which a much wider audience can take part in, so that my speculations and explorations can be shared with and responded to by a much wider spectrum. Stupid people don’t read science fiction, and few closed- minded ones either, with the result that by writing stories dealing with issues that I care about and believe in, I can get a much more serious reception from the science fiction community than I would ever get were I treating such issues in the so-called “mainstream.”
In short, while never overtly talking about religion at all, I can deal with religious, theological, and moral issues with greater clarity in science fiction than anywhere else, precisely because science fiction allows the writer to set these issues at one remove, freeing writer and reader from biases and issues relating to particular religions or philosophies in the present world.
You can read the original Ender’s Game on OSC’s page. And don’t click on the “More” link below unless you’re ready for a slam from a Big Name Writer. (Don’t make me say I told you so…)
An excerpt from OSC’s Statement of Beliefs:
How far should this statement of beliefs go? I also believe the original Star Trek was badly acted and took place within a foolishly conceived fictional universe - but I also believe that it doesn’t matter enough for grownups to spend time talking about it.