Ender's Game and Homophobia.

[Audley Strange]

So I'm listening to the radio and there is a discussion on there about Orson Scott Card's anti-gay marriage stance and outspoken criticisms of gay culture and how this has lead to people calling for a boycott. One person took the what I assumed reasonable view that one should dissociate an artist's behaviour and opinions from such art. Even critic Mark Kermode, who's normally pretty sharp on the P.C. detector defended that line that one can divorce his sci-fi from his opinions on gay people.

Reasonable, yes! I was all for that. I write some horrible characters that bear no reflection on me or my opinions, a writer should. Still, I knew nothing about any of this movie or book, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Ender's Game (1985) is a military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperilled mankind after two conflicts with the "Buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are trained at a very young age through increasingly difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.

Reeeaaaaaally?

No one noticed that? No one? Do they come from the planet Homo Fagottus?

FFS Come on!

/rant

[cronus]

So I'm listening to the radio and there is a discussion on there about Orson Scott Card's anti-gay marriage stance and outspoken criticisms of gay culture and how this has lead to people calling for a boycott. One person took the what I assumed reasonable view that one should dissociate an artist's behaviour and opinions from such art. Even critic Mark Kermode, who's normally pretty sharp on the P.C. detector defended that line that one can divorce his sci-fi from his opinions on gay people.

Reasonable, yes! I was all for that. I write some horrible characters that bear no reflection on me or my opinions, a writer should. Still, I knew nothing about any of this movie or book, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Ender's Game (1985) is a military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperilled mankind after two conflicts with the "Buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are trained at a very young age through increasingly difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.

Reeeaaaaaally?

No one noticed that? No one? Do they come from the planet Homo Fagottus?



FFS Come on!

/rant

Tactics of No Mistake....Soldier ask not.

[JimC]

Got the Gordie Dickson reference, Scrumple...

I have enjoyed some of Orson Scott Card's SF (Ender's Game in particular), although his writing and his characters get a little strange at times...

But yes, I can dissociate any author's rants from the books they produce, and have always been able to do so...

[Audley Strange]

Got the Gordie Dickson reference, Scrumple...

I have enjoyed some of Orson Scott Card's SF (Ender's Game in particular), although his writing and his characters get a little strange at times...

But yes, I can dissociate any author's rants from the books they produce, and have always been able to do so...

Sure, but this is a book in which a kid basically commits genocide on "buggers". It is so front and centre to the work that it is inescapable. It's like people complaining that Tyr might be a Racist, but his new movie in which a band of Red Dawn style partisans take on the forces of an thuggish and ignorant orcish species called the Niggers by kidnapping them and lynching them on trees in no way references that racism. (No offense meant Tyr and I apologise if you think this is a mischaracterisation.)

[JimC]

Got the Gordie Dickson reference, Scrumple...

I have enjoyed some of Orson Scott Card's SF (Ender's Game in particular), although his writing and his characters get a little strange at times...

But yes, I can dissociate any author's rants from the books they produce, and have always been able to do so...

Sure, but this is a book in which a kid basically commits genocide on "buggers". It is so front and centre to the work that it is inescapable. It's like people complaining that Tyr might be a Racist, but his new movie in which a band of Red Dawn style partisans take on the forces of an thuggish and ignorant orcish species called the Niggers by kidnapping them and lynching them on trees in no way references that racism. (No offense meant Tyr and I apologise if you think this is a mischaracterisation.)

I doubt the "buggers" reference was anything other than a clumsy pointer to the fact that the aliens in question were giant insects...

Although his unconscious mind may have played tricks on him, I suppose...

[Audley Strange]

You say that, but I'd say given that he changed it later on and given that Ender lives on planet "love" Eros. I'd say its shockingly obvious. No one in the English speaking world, especially a writer is surely unaware of the various connotations of "bugger"?

And if is was an act of subconcious, one would think an editor would have spotted it and mentioned it prior to publication.

I don't particularly care whether he writes such shit deliberately or not. I was more interested in how people were saying it doesn't reflect his ideas when it seem they are front and centre and how my own reaction went from "right on" to "the guys a nut" with a little investigation.

[JimC]

I must admit I never saw any signs of homophobia in the books, not that I was analysing them...

[Animavore]

I can easily divorce an artist from his work but I'm avoiding it such as not to give the cunt money so that he can give it to that anti-gay marriage group he's involved in. I'll either wait 'til he dies or pirate it on principle.