You had me at “Orson Scott Card.”

It’s not an accusation if it’s true.

And in France, there’s 700 areas not controlled by their government.

Yet France won’t be declared to be in a civil war by the MSM.

Gary- if you think I’ve committed treason, please inform the FBI and tell them to arrest me. Otherwiese, STFU.

>Yet France won’t be declared to be in a civil war by the MSM.

Wow, I hadn’t heard about all the violence and bloodshed in France, Gary. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[backs away sloooooowly . . . ]

I gotcher authentic face of the right, right here.

Guys, Gary is yet again right. See the MSM continually shows us footage of the freshly painted schools of Lyons and Marseilles while not reporting on those 700 dangerous areas. In Iraq, they want the terrorists to win, so they don’t show any painted schools and obsess over the fact that there are death squads engaging in ethnic cleansing.

But I think that Gary and I have to prove it to you. I’ll tell you what, I’ll go to France Gary and report the truth on how dangerous it is. I’ll really put my neck on the line walking the areas of Paris where the radical militias of Jacques-al-Sadr run rampant and tell the world the truth. You go to Iraq and show the world how safe it is by walking around downtown Baghdad.

Oh, Gary.

What the hell are you talking about? Drop a link, at least, or bugger off.

Then again, just bugger off.

“And in France, there’s 700 areas not controlled by their government.”

Oui, c’est vrai! Le salle de bain de ma tante n’est pas controle par le government!

When Ted Kennedy can make an absurd and borderline-traitorous speech on the war, when Michael Moore shares a VIP box with the last Democratic President but one, when Barbara Boxer endorses a Democratic consultant/blogger whose view of American casualties in Iraq is “screw ‘em,� well, this is the authentic face of the Left.

It is not the face of the Left (sic). It is the face of Congress.

bwahahahahha, etc. putz.

Uh oh, the Wolverines are sharpening their butter knifes.

I sense a little wishful thinking in that write up.

“…shadowy forces use terror and assassination to trigger a civil war in an America sharply divided along Red/Blue lines.”

Some outside force will make the conservatives go nuts and start killing fellow Americans. After 8 years of bloodshed we’ll find out there was no outside force, just a bunch of idiotic, impotent, pasty, white men who want to be tough and manly like all those handsome, muscly movie actors.

This sudden Orson Scott Card fetish on the Right befuddles me. I have seen him mentioned two or three times now in various Righty blogs as “PROMINENT DEMOCRAT Orson Scott Card,” with the subtext of, “He’s our kind of Democrat because he believes in all the nutty things we do.”

Since when did Orson Scott Card become a “prominent Democrat?” Prominent SF writer, yes, and he’s written some interesting things, but how on earth can he be held up as an expert on anything political?

Also: I love the phrase “the last Democratic president but one.” It has a delightful air of a) grasping desperately to make some kind of meaningful connection with anything at all, and b) the snooty anglophilic fussiness of someone who wants to come of a just a leeeetle bit more toney than he actually is. Is he talking about Jimmy Carter? If so, why the hell couldn’t he just write “Jimmy Carter?” The guy has been demonized enough by the Right to have a recognizable name, hasn’t he?

Finally: am I the last person on earth to know that Atlas Pam was the publisher of the New York Observer?

OSC is not even a “prominent science fiction author”, or prominent anything else, for that matter.

Finally: am I the last person on earth to know that Atlas Pam was the publisher of the New York Observer?

No, that would be me. I had no idea until I saw your comment.

OSC is fairly prominent as a sci-fi writer, which is to say not at all. His first work was genius and he’s spent the rest of his career trying to convince us it was a fluke.

Sorry Pug.

I claim last person, I just found out now.

Actually, Orson Scott Card is a prominent MORMON and conservative, and always has been. (By the way: I’ve heard it stated that “Scott Card” was the name his parents gave him, and the “Orson” is something he picked up from a D&D character he played.)

It’s not an accusation if it’s true.

English. Do you speak it?

Oh, Card is prominent, all right. Best-selling author, and, up to maybe fifteen years ago a popular speaker at SF/fantasy conventions. Used to do a gig called the Secular Humanist Revival.

And then he went full-blown Mormon and became virulently anti-gay.

In a lot of ways, he’s a perfect spokesmodel for the Right — eloquent, passionate, religious, and he used to do this secular thing but not any more. They can bring up portions of his past, and not bother with why he’s alienated a whole bunch of his own audience.

He is a prominent science fiction writer with a very mixed output…. some of it very good, some of it absolute drek.

Here’s the Fagistan perspective:

science fiction writer Orson Scott Card thinks that we’re in enough danger

Let’s all get up and dance to a song by a Mormon whose best book is about little kids zapping giant bugs to save the world.

Nothing on the Observer’s masthead indicating her connection. If I’m wrong about this, however, I would be in the running to claim last-person-ness.

Lasties on Pam. Whoa that doesn’t sound just right.

Supermen defeated the Mole Men in like 1953. They should present no real problem. If I remember correctly, their favorite weapon was a manhole cover, or is it now a person hole cover….or, heavens forbid, a Pamhole cover. That image is too intense..forgive me.

Why just this morning I did battle against two unarmed chocolate croissants.

They lost! Bwa-ha-ha!!!

Actually, I think the real prize is a little further down the Reynolds article:

I’ve noted before that one of the great American accomplishments was to get over the Civil War without the kind of lingering bitterness that often marks — and reignites — such conflicts elsewhere.

What? No lingering bitterness at all? Not even a little bit?

Hold on…
I’ve noted before that one of Yugoslavia’s greatest legacies is the harmony between its different ethnic groups.
I’ve noted before that one of the best things about France is the beautiful tropical beaches that stretch down its Pacific coast.
I’ve noted before that one of Canada’s greatest accomplishments was the construction of a navy of immense moose-shaped Zeppelins with which to defend the Saskatchewan rock candy mines.

Glenn wants there to be Civil War, that’s why he talks about it, he’s promoting the idea amongst his trogolite fans. He’s trying to send one of them off the deep end so he can fulfill his fantasy of having a Democratic Congressmen hurt or killed.

He’s a sick little mind. The worst America has to offer.

ajay —

wow, good catch. it’s not even cluelessness, it’s just reynolds’ wishful denial of reality. and it always has been.

No one does shameless hypocrisy like the Ole Perfesser. He is truly one of a kind.

Actually, no. He’s a very common type, someone who, despite his pretentions to technosavvy, still has not fully absorbed the reality of the online world. Used to be, you could be talking politics at your favorite bar and say any damn stupid thing for immediate effect that you liked and nobody would remember a month later. Or if they did, they couldn’t document it. Even if you got that damn stupid remark into print, say a letter to the editor, if someone wanted to call you on it a year later it would take too much search time in the library to be worth it. Only the pro columnists had to worry about that, and even they didn’t worry very much.

Now, anyone who can spell google can find anything you ever posted easier than they can find their car keys. Until all these amateur pundits — and not just on the right! — really, really understand this, their own words are going to keep coming back to bite them on the ass again and again and again.

Card is simply a successor to the Heinlein school of SF, great (but diffident) man saves all. Very comforting for fourteen year old boys.

“When Ted Kennedy can make an absurd and borderline-traitorous speech on the war, when Michael Moore shares a VIP box with the last Democratic President but one, when Barbara Boxer endorses a Democratic consultant/blogger whose view of American casualties in Iraq is “screw ‘em,â€? well, this is the authentic face of the Left.”

I love this line of argument. What does it say about the “authentic face of the right” that, say, Curt Weldon hosted the coronation of Sun Myung Moon as Emperor of the United States? In a contest of our boogeyman is loonier than your boogeyman, the Republicans are always going to come out looking worse. At the end of the day “Michael Moore is fat, and Democrats hang out with him” doesn’t really cut it.

I’ve noted before that one of the great American accomplishments was to get over the Civil War without the kind of lingering bitterness that often marks — and reignites — such conflicts elsewhere.

Yeah that’s why the South still calls it ‘The War of Northern Aggression”, Confederate flags are everywhere, and South Carolina doesn’t really care much for celebrating the Fourth of July.

Sweet Jesus. Pamela of Atlas Shrugs was never Publisher of the New York Observer. Until recently, it was Arthur Carter, who founded the paper.

The shrieking harpy was merely an associate publisher, meaning she oversaw the sales staff. She was, in other words, a well-paid baby sitter.

I hate to get all Instapundit on ya, but I laid this myth to rest here. (http://tinyurl.com/y6tyfk)

i’ll take michael.m/jimmy.c @ a convention over ahmed.c/laura.b@ a convention any day of the week

http://www.jar2.com/4/Pictures/Bush-Chalabi-Union.jpg

OSC published the ‘Ender’s Game’ novella in 1977! The novel came out in 1985. There have been 20 years of sustained dreck since then.

He is prominent like the writers of ‘Macarena’ are prominent.

Glenn wants there to be Civil War, that’s why he talks about it, he’s promoting the idea amongst his trogolite fans. He’s trying to send one of them off the deep end so he can fulfill his fantasy of having a Democratic Congressmen hurt or killed.

yep. They can’t stand the fact that they lost BIG TIME three weeks ago, so they fantasize about killing all their enemies and seizing power. That’ll shut those liberals up, for good.

It’s Glenn’s Final Solution to ‘the liberal problem’.

Of course, you won’t find Glenn or any other of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists on the front lines of this civil war.

I don’t see much of a sign that the American public — which, after all, overwhelmingly favored centrists in this month’s elections — is as divided as Card suggests.

I haven’t been keeping up with the blogs for the last week or so, so I have to ask: is this “centrist landslide” concept the meme they’ve actually decided to go with?

At risk of revealing myself as a closet fascist, I must retort: Card is not fit to sniff Heinlein’s dead asshole. It’s like comparing George Carlin to Larry the Cable Guy, assuming that Larry managed to be funny one time early in his career.

I read a lot of early Orson Scott Card in the 80’s and was quite impressed (“Unaccompanied Sonata” is a master work, IMO). I started to lose him with the “Alvin Maker” series, however. Too much pseudo-Americana hooey for my taste. As to his politics, who cares?

is this “centrist landslide� concept the meme they’ve actually decided to go with?

Pretty much, except when they’re saying “The Democrats lost by winning”.

Orson Scott Card and Instapundit? Dear God, it’s like a real-life Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom team-up.

Ironically enough, they consistently ignore a REAL master of both science fiction and hard science, Isaac Asimov, who once said “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

I am just waiting for the Samuel Delany novel about an American civil war.

Steve, the centrist meme actually began before November 7, when it became clear the Republicans were going to lose.

Funny thing, the voters rejected right wing corruption, and the right wing occupation of Iraq. This was quickly interpreted to mean that the Democratic party should move to the right, by war loving centrist interpreters.

Card is the epitome of Sensible Centrist turned Wingnut. He literally ran a website preaching his “moderateness” and all that.

Ender’s Game was good. The rest of the series was decent, though it never came close to EG, let alone more prominent writings. The rest of his stuff is utter crap. Shame I have some of it on my shelf…

That thing don’t look like no mole I ever seen.

Also: I love the phrase “the last Democratic president but one.� It has a delightful air of a) grasping desperately to make some kind of meaningful connection with anything at all, and b) the snooty anglophilic fussiness of someone who wants to come of a just a leeeetle bit more toney than he actually is. Is he talking about Jimmy Carter? If so, why the hell couldn’t he just write “Jimmy Carter?� The guy has been demonized enough by the Right to have a recognizable name, hasn’t he?

I think the professor intends “the last Democratic president but one” sounds much, much more recent than “Jimmy Carter, you know, that one-term guy way back before Reagan? Didn’t you guys have ‘Jimmy Carter Era’ as a prom theme last year?”

And wasn’t Mr. Weighs-Moore invitied into the box by Amy Carter? Maybe Jimmy was just being polite.

… If Lex and Dr. Doom spent all day in their underwear munching cheetos and writing internet stories about how someone ought to rule the world with an Iron Fist because humans are a bunch of lazy, ignorant, cheeto-munching animals.

Why doesn’t he cut the foreplay and just go straight to hyping the Turner Diaries?

“Uncle Orson” Sucks he lives here in Greensboro. He writes a lame ass column for a righty tabloid (rhino times) titled uncle Orson Reviews Everything.

Sorry TC, now *I* claim last person! Eat it!

(If we were playing The Price Is Right, this is where some dickweed would come in and bid $1.)

Just to give you a taster of what OSC is writing today you can have a look at chapter 5 of his new near-future novel, “Empire” here.

http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/empire/empire_05.shtml

The White House has just been blown up, the President of the United States has been killed and the protagonist is talking to a guy in the National Security Advisor’s office on the White House lawn. Is he discussing how to get the Government up and running again, finding out who did it, anything like that?

“Yeah,” said Cole. “The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy.”

Nope. The worst thing about this tragedy as far as he’s concerned is that some Europeans who exist only in his xenophobic imagination might feel satisfaction over the assassination of the President.

Orson’s lost it. He’s written a few good books in the past, a lot more stinkers more recently but he’s now decided to dispense with plot and story and simply write America-uber-alles wankfests and get people to buy them.

The SF community calls this phenomenon “The Brain Eater”. Heinlein succumbed to it eventually. There are a few others — James P. Hogan has turned anti-Semitic and Velikovskian recently, for example, and there’s also Dan Brown from the technothriller end of the spectrum. Once the Brain Eater has started chowing down on that tasty ol’ grey matter it’s time to cross the author off the “must-buy” list as there seems to be no cure, sorry to say.

Any relation to Andy Card?

That’s too bad about James P. Hogan.

I liked a lot of his stuff.

The Brain Eater explains a lot, including Dennis Miller.

r€nato said,
November 29, 2006 at 17:44
…South Carolina doesn’t really care much for celebrating the Fourth of July.

I wish. They start lighting fireworks 2 weeks beforehand, and a sulfurous smokey pall hangs over the whole state on the 5th.

OTOH, the SC GOP doesn’t have a “Lincoln Day Dinner” cause… well, you know.

Atlas Pam is the owner of Universal Motors. It’s her husbands family business. They sell shitloads of FORDS to the yellow cab industry.

ONE DOLLAR!! ONE DOLLAR!!!

Seriously, though, isn’t Ol’ Perfesser in Tennessee, and applauded a guy in South Carolina who wrote that blue states would secede!? Have they ever bothered to look out their window at all the Confederate flags?

Face it, Glen, it wasn’t the blue states that seceded in 1860 (South Carolina, I believe, actually seceded twice), and it sure as hell ain’t the blue states having “issues” romanticizing last century’s traitors.

By the Perf’s logic, it would pretty much only be bloggers doing the fighting anyway, and we all know how eager the wingnut bloggers are to actually participate in war, rather than just cheerleading for it. I don’t see what kind of violence the Perf is hoping for, unless the wingnuts plan to threaten us with cheetos of mass destruction.

“We must act now. We can’t let the smoking gun turn into a cheeto-dust cloud”

I saw that book on the shelf in a B&N the other day, and thought it was dumb.

Go look at the most recent places there have been actual ‘revolutions’ the last century. Did any of them even remotely resemble the USA before it happened?

I’ll answer that for you: No.

Any sort of ‘revolution’ or armed revolt against the Federal Govt. would mean that large amounts of various state and local governments were revolting, say, like in 1861.

And that, simply isn’t going to happen. There’s nothing that even comes close.

I think the comment about ‘brain eater’ is quite apt.

Short list of great science fiction authors with blogs who haven’t gone completely coocoo bananas born-again Christian apocalyptical:

David Brin.

Someone help me out here, is that all we have to fight this insanity?

Iain Banks has a website, but not a blog.
Douglas Adams has gone to the Restaurant at the End of The Universe.

Who am I missing?

Joy! We can read the first five chapters of Card’s latest opus online:

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006_11_26_alicublog_archive.html#116481609430550766

I think the Conservative Humor Movement has found a new member.

Iain Banks.

Read them all. Then send email imploring him to write faster, dammit!

Also, this topic might make a good category for the photoshop duel. “The blogging civil war”.

(And if this topic does get chosen someone with more ski11z than me has to photoshop that classic fat-guy-in-a-diaper pic so that he’s riding a bomb a la doctor strangelove)

We can kick the mole people’s ass…….bring it on!

“Finally: am I the last person on earth to know that Atlas Pam was the publisher of the New York Observer?”

No f-ing way. I could have sworn she was on a recent edition of ‘Trading Spouses’. There was this truly psychotic nut that talked and acted just like her. One of the kids in here ‘new’ family finally assualted her.

Gee I wonder what Margaret Atwood thinks about our collective future?

Scientifically speaking, of course.

From Chapter Five:

Yeah, Cole understood that. In fact, it seemed the most likely thing to happen. That, or an unexplained “suicide” in a park somewhere.

———————————-

“I bet they’re already ‘advising’ Americans that this is where our military ‘aggression’ inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world.”

Orson Scott Card books should be the next subject for the ongoing Photoshop challenge; e.g., Empire II: Scare Quote Unit.

Thank you, best laugh I’ve had in days. Ah, now I understand perfectly. And I’m really seriously watching out for giant planet-consuming guys come to eat us up.

(I particularly want to smack Glenn for that Ward Churchill=Ted Kennedy quote. What a dip.)

thanks for fixing my open tag. (what preview button is that?)

Quality SF writers who aren’t wingnuts:
Charlie Stross
Ken MacLeod
Ian Banks
Alastair Reynolds
Cory Doctorow
Bruce Sterling
Neal Stephenson
Richard K. Morgan

Those are the best of the best of current SF writers and they are all leftists of one kind or another (or at least, anti-fascist)

Whenm I was younger I read OSC’s Ender series and Alvin Maker series and probably various other novels authored by OSC. I stopped reading his novels after getting vaguely creeped out by the fact that all of his novels seem to center around young boys, and that almost every novel had at least one scene that would describe the boy’s body in what could be characterized as erotic detail. That, combined with his more recent “hate teh gays” attitude makes me kind of wonder about him.

“Once the Brain Eater has started chowing down on that tasty ol’ grey matter it’s time to cross the author off the “must-buyâ€? list as there seems to be no cure, sorry to say.”

AHA! I see a good SF plot-line here! Good writer starts getting weirder and weirder, and he’s not the first. Investigation by our hero/heroine/boy-scout troop reveals a viral/nano/intergalactic-bug infestation, attracted to good writers of a freedom-loving sort. This v/n/i-b thingie is the product of international fascists/theocrats/intergalactic bugs, attempting to take over the world by narrowing the minds of its denizens, making it easy to control their now-reduced minds.

Should be good for a cult film / Star Trek / Dr. Who episode, maybe with sequals (or sequins, in the musical version).

Ed

FWIW, a pretty compelling vision of a right wing coup is George R R Martin’s “Night of the Vampyres.” Dates from the 70’s (IIRC) but better than any of Card’s recent dreck.

I liked Card’s novelization of The Abyss. Then again, he didn’t write that one himself.

Other than that, can’t think of anything of his I’ve liked. I remember Ender’s Game as a short story, I think in one of those Jerry Pournelle “There Will Be War” anthologies.

The thing about fiction writers, they know the audience isn’t interested in real life. The reader is trying to ESCAPE real life, and live vicariously in a world where one man CAN make a difference. We all want to read about heroes, not about mass movements. When we read fiction, we are all romantics. So it’s no surprise to me that writers mostly tend to be romantics themselves.

I’ll second the David Brin nomination. Here’s a link to his blog.

I was reading an OSC book about 3 yrs ago, became bored out of my f#$king gourd, and put it down to pick up George RR Martin. Haven’t looked back since. I think the OSC book is still dog-eared around here … somewhere … I’ll look above my toilet.

Some outside force will make the conservatives go nuts and start killing fellow Americans.

Ahem. That would be Satan. He’s the only reason any of them ever do anything bad. It’s the perfect belief system: do good, and God smiles on you. Do evil, and blame the devil. Party of personal responsibility, my ass.

Is America in danger of becoming overrun by short-lived, but intensely self-aware superhuman mutants? Perhaps not immediately, but famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick thinks that we’re in enough danger that he’s authored a cautionary tale entitled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (aka Blade Runner) that’s set in more-or-less present times.

Islmfoascist: Dude! Neil Stephenson! Ursula LeGuin! Bruce Sterling! William F-ing Gibson, fercryinoutloud!

it sure as hell ain’t the blue states having “issues� romanticizing last century’s traitors.

Well, I live in a purple state, Nevada. This county, Clark, which includes Las Vegas (and 70% of the state’s population) is reliably blue. So what is our college team mascot at UNLV? The Runnin’ Rebel. He’s a cartooney figure of a Confederate general, sort of like Yosemite Sam only taller.

Only in the west. If the University of Georgia or North Carolina tried this, there would be riots and righteous condemnation, while the rednecks would prattle on about “heritage.”

The part that really bugs me about it (besides the fact that I’m a former Southerner and don’t exactly look at the Confederacy with anything resembling pride) is the total ahistoricity. Nevada wasn’t just a Union state. It was specifically carved out of Utah Territory for the express purpose of being a Union state! That’s what the “Battle Born” motto means.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a history major that this really, really bugs me. It doesn’t seem to bug anyone else. That our teams also completely suck, now that seems to bug people.

Hmmm… Bug People? Do I sense another imminent threat to America? Somebody call O.S. Card!

I thought Lovelock was a really good book.

//kind of disturbing to empathize with a protagonist that is a genetically altered cyborg monkey who is forced to have masturbatory fantasies about his human female owner, but hey.

Add China Mielville to the list of good SF (if you include fantasy in that category) authors who aren’t right wing. Hal Duncan would probably qualify, though he is new, as would Jim Vandemeer.

It’s not an accusation if it’s true.

Sorry I’m late. If it’s not an accusation if it’s true, what exactly is it? Should we let everybody who’s actually guilty go? I mean, if it’s true, it’s not an accusation, right?

mikey

Technically, I think you want to read stuff by Iain M. Banks. He uses his middle initial when he writes his sf, and drops it for his non-sf fiction.

And I heartily second reading Ken MacLeod and Alastair Reynolds. Charles Stross has his bright spots, but his stuff is not consistently good.

And I have no idea about their politics. Which is as it should be.

Ah, yes, Margaret Atwood. I read “Oryx and Crake” over the summer. She’s a treasure.
As for novels about mass political movements, how about the Mars series from Kim Stanley Robinson?

You know, I did read Lovelock years ago. I enjoyed the hell out of it. Hell, I even enjoyed Folk of the Fringe, a collection of Mormon-proselytizing short stories. With Card, it’s a matter of style. I’ve not read anything of his in many years, but I used to be a fan. Not for his messages, hell no. I just find him incredibly readable; the stories roll right along, and his characters believable and sympathetic. I haven’t read all of his stuff, or even most; I’ve read some of it, including the Ender series. Too bad he’s a wingnut, but the guy can write. I’ll bash his faith and his politics all day, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s really quite skilled.

But what do I know? I also still like Duran Duran, so clearly I have atrocious taste.

There’s already been a cautionary tale named Empire, a graphic novel by Mark (Kingdom Come) Waid and Barry (drawer-guy) Kitson. It’s not timeless prose, but it has a freaky dystopian future, where the Superman-type failed to save the day. Definitely a better read than Ender’s Game.

I am just waiting for the Samuel Delany novel about an American civil war.

Dhalgren.

Dan someone: I’ll tell Charlie you think he’s inconsistent when I see him in the pub tonight. Ken will be there too so I’ll pass on your hearty secondings. Ian M. might drop by; he doesn’t always turn up to the meetings of the People’s Revolutionary Scottish Socialist Science Fiction Writers Vanguard Party meetings but he has been known to stick his nose in.

Second China Miéville. Hell of an author. “‘Tis the Season” is a must read. Hang on…

Ok, found it.

I second Richard Morgan and China Mieville. I’d also add Neal Asher to that list. Any recommendations on which Iain Banks book to start out with?

Huh. Did a Google search on Iaian Banks (the above link doesn’t work) and caught sight of this link: Orson Scott Card has always been an asshat.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/193926/689

Take me to the other side!

It’s not timeless prose, but it has a freaky dystopian future, where the Superman-type failed to save the day.

Oh god, this reminds me of a short story I read years ago that I would love to find. Can anyone help me out here?

It was called, I think, Ubermensch. In it, Superman’s alien-creche landed, not in the midwestern US, but in Germany. He grows up as Klaus Kint and comes of age in the 1930s. As his powers become obvious, he dons a brown and black uniform and becomes a Nazi superhero.

The story is told as a retrospective, an interview with him in Spandau prison, confined in a kyptonite-lined cell where is has been jailed for war crimes, like the Albert Speer interviews.

Anyone else ever hear of this? I have no idea who wrote it. I don’t even recall where I read it, if it was in a mag or an anthology.

I gotcher authentic face of the right, right here.

Ummm … why isn’t this guy in Gitmo? If the justification for going into Iraq when we were attacked by Al Qaeda was that terrorists are all roughly equivalent, why should this guy be treated differently than other terrorists? Why is he not languishing in Gitmo?

Bad Science Fiction = really bad science + laughably bad fiction.

People who dig bad science fiction are generally the types who couldn’t tell you the boiling point for water but like to opine that aliens are, like, you know, kidnapping people and stuff, and use wormholes to travel billions of light years in a matter of seconds, and stuff.

“Who am I missing?”

Well Philip K Dick went completely cuckoo bananas, but not in a Christian way.

In France, the areas not controlled by the government are called “O la la les happy”

Over one hundred comments and no one asked The Most Important Question?!?! Come on people.

How can the Mole Man be moving so fast that he prevents Invisible Girl from turning invisible?

Someone has to say it:

“Stan Lee” shuld be “Jack Kirby”.

Rob, you got the name right. It’s a story by the British writer Kim Newman, who also wrote “The McCarthy Witch Hunt”, in which HUAC investigators put Samantha Stevens on trial.

“Who am I missing?”

Bruce Sterling has a blog called “Beyond the Beyond” at wired.com

Oh god, this reminds me of a short story I read years ago that I would love to find. Can anyone help me out here?

You are looking for Ubermensch, by Kim Newman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch!

Yeah that’s why the South still calls it ‘The War of Northern Aggression�, Confederate flags are everywhere, and South Carolina doesn’t really care much for celebrating the Fourth of July.

It is not the War of Northern Aggression! It is The Late Unpleasantness Due to Northern Irreconcilability to the Concept of Southern Independence.

… although “Lee Surrendered, I Didn’t” fits much more neatly on a bumper sticker…

The truth about OS Card’s ENDER’S GAME and its apology for genocide.

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

I am just waiting for the Samuel Delany novel about an American civil war.

You’ve read Octavia Butler’s KINDRED, right?

renska: I would recommend any of the Culture books by Banks. The first one I read was The Player of Games, which was one of the earlier ones, but I don’t think they need to be read in any particular order. Check out the “Science Fiction section of the official Iain Banks website — I strongly suspect the books are shown there in order. The Culture books are the first three (Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons), Excession and Look to Windward (and Wikipedia says that Inversions is also a Culture book, though I don’t see it).

Damn, looking at that page makes me want to go back and reread them all. Shmancy new covers… mmm…

Isaac Asimov never succumed to Brain Suck, but he was always pretty apolitical. His sci fi writing kinda dropped off at the end, but his science fact was always spot on.

Heh. That was also the first one I’ve read. My favorites of the culture books were The Player of Games and Look to Windward.

Noones mentioned Jack McDevitt, who’s awesome in my opinion.

I’m glad someone else (Pocket Rocket) remarked on the odd, Congressman Foley-ish homoeroticsm of Card’s books (the naked fight-to-the-death between under-age boys in Ender’s Game comes to mind, while a similarly perplexed Card fan once read me a passage from another Card novel in which some young men comment on their naked underage brother’s anatomy) though whether this makes his current homophobia more or less explicable is a good question.

I loved Ender’s Game when I read it, so Card’s current incarnation as a bats**t wingnut is especially dispiriting.

Let’s try to close that damn link. OK?

William Gibson has a blog.

He doesn’t have a blog, but everyone needs to read Random Acts of Unspeakable Violence, by Jack Womack.  It’s an amazing piece of dark, near-future sf showing the fairly believable collapse of American society and government entirely from the perspective of a young girl’s diary entries.  It’s the first (chronologically, not in order of their writing/publication) in the author’s Ambient quintet.  More info here.  I started reading these books after reading a glowing recommendation on Gibson’s blog, which brings us back to the beginning of my comment.

Struth. From a Gary Ruppert drive-by dog-poo delivery comment, to nominations of SF authors, in only 100 comments. I kinda wish that Gary would come back and put more detail on his Intifada-in-Paris fantasy, so that we could have the satisfaction of exposing it to unfriendly facts, but that is not the Way of the Gary.

I went off Iain Banks after Complicity. But because whisky is a subject close to my heart — and even closer to my stomach — I gave him a second chance and read Raw Spirits, his attempt at gonzo journalism on the whisky trail . That wasn’t a good idea; it turned out to be self-indulgent shite in which Banksie comes across as one of the vapid, unself-aware yuppie characters, obsessed with cars and other boy-toys, that he used to skewer so mercilessly.

Charles Stross has his bright spots, but his stuff is not consistently good.
Not so much a consistency problem, but he’s trying different styles and subject-areas, which can’t all be guaranteed to appeal to the same reader. The Atrocity Archives reminded me of the the last job I had.

OK, I’ve done my part in turning a political blog into S,N-Con.

He doesn’t have a blog, but everyone needs to read Random Acts of Unspeakable Violence, by Jack Womack.

Wow, way to mangle basic sentence structure, Dayv.  This book doesn’t have a blog!  No, wait, I mean some guy named everyone!

I’m just sad to see the FF #! cover; I had a poor but serviceable copy as a kid, and I trusted it to my idiot cousin Donald, who threw it away. At least I still have an atomic power grip on my Spidey #6!

china mieville is not just a non-righty–he’s a full blown late model marxist, i think. there’s an article he wrote somewhere…

perdido street station is pretty fucking brilliant. he can be magisterial, if i may.

alistair reynolds is not just a great sci-fi writer (think vernor vinge at his best) but is also a huge fan of world’s best rock band The Fall. he has fallcon in all his novels and stories. he thus combines my geeky love of epic sci-fi with my geeky love of post-punk art rock weird mancunian ranting.

To David Weman: What, Stan Lee didn’t write the FF? He’d kick your — if he saw that. True, he did it together with artist Kirby, but it was a Lee production fer sure…
Excelsior!

“Let’s have a war…”

When the civil war starts, first thing we kill all those morons who voted for Nader in 2000….

“I hope that both the people and the press will make some conscious efforts to moderate the tone…”

Man, if that isn’t punch-in-the-mouth-worthy hypocrisy, I don’t know what is…

Most people don’t get off the couch to VOTE in America so who realistically expects them to pick up a rifle and risk their lives for a political goal?

Gary said:

“And in France, there’s 700 areas not controlled by their government.”

I’ve been to one of those places, I think. It’s called “the American cemetery at Normandy”. It’s controlled by the US government.

I hadn’t realized, when walking amongst the graves, that anybody would ever use its existence in part of an argument that there was a civil war going on. It is quite possibly the stupidest argument I’ve ever read on the Internet. And I’ve read a lot of garbage, so that’s saying something.

While we’re piling on Card here, I’d like to say a few words about Songmaster, the only novel I’ve read so vile I wanted to physically destroy it while only halfway through. Anyone who wants a sense of the hiessential loathesomeness of Card’s artistic vision should drop by a library and flip through it sometime. Don’t buy a copy, even used, because you won’t want to keep it in your house. It’s got his creepy paedophilia thing in spades, of course: the main character is a beautiful nubile young singing boy with whom the harsh (but fair and honourable!) fascist dictator of the universe falls madly in love. There’s the usual rape, too, as I recall. The real kicker, though, is that Card tries, really really tries, to write an actual gay character as sympathetically as he can. The result is a pitiable pathetic wretch who needs to be dominated and can’t manage his own life on even the most basic of adult levels, a sort of fictionalised Jeff Goldstein. Card is the most ridiculously cartoonish bigot I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.

Card is not a good writer. He is constantly trampling all over art for the sake of showcasing his own violent ubermensch fantasies and sexual pathology. His characters are caricatures who exist solely for ideological purposes, and his dialogue is atrociously polemical. Worst of all, after the original novella all his Ender stuff was dull as a BYU frat party. He’s not fit to tongue Charlie Stross’s malebox.

I hated Ender’s Game. It’s a hideous Mary Sue exercise which could only be loved by people who still believe that one day they’re going to grow up to save the world (without having to work too hard at it).

OSC is a terrible writer and pretty much a terrible person, as far as I can tell.

My experience with SF people (writers & fans) is that most of them are actually reality-based, which these days makes them all commie traitors because they hate Bush, even if some of them would describe themselves as conservatives. They also tend to have some knowledge & understanding of history, which tends (again in my experience) to a more realistic understanding of current events, especially international policy and the real magnitude of foreign threats. That’s only my impression though, I might be projecting.

Heinlein (even late Heinlein) was 50x the writer OSC is (even his most bloated & plotless novels are still kind of fun to read), and his political & personal views as expressed in his novels were enormously less objectionable.

Anyway, if you want good SF writing that takes leftish politics into account, Ken MacLeod is your man.

A lot – I wouldn’t say most, but a lot – of SF has a blind spot when it comes to questions of distribution of power and wealth, the underclass, and the perpetual tendency of the rich to divert all new wealth created by technology to themselves. Or, you know, what leftist politics is all about. I get why, I mean, I like shiny toys myself, but it’s not especially realistic.

Then again neither is most genre fiction, so what are you going to do.

Anyway, if you want good SF writing that takes leftish politics into account, Ken MacLeod is your man.

Richard Morgan is easier to read, and still full of the sensawonder. Avoid Market Forces, though.

You also need to read Thigmoo at least once.

Missed a couple of good non-crazy scifi scibblers IMO
John Varley – always good
Eric Flint – some very good, some not so
Greg Benford – always good
Greg Bear – Love his stuff and I think he aint crazy.
Walter John Williams – good – except for Angel Station.
Harry Turtledove – consitently good

er… that would be consistently

how long before Gary gets deported?

and Ah! Mole People!

While we’re giving props to SF writers fighting the good fight, I’m surprised no one mentioned Octavia Butler, whose recent passing ended a stellar career far too early. For a much more terrifyingly realistic vision of civil strife in near-future America, check out The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents.

And Marge Piercy — not a mainstream SF writer, but Woman on the Edge of Time ranks right up there with the works of Ursula LeGuin and Margaret Atwood.

The Brain Eater theory makes frightening sense; I agree that Dennis Miller is a sliming example of it. Christopher Hitchens, too — though his grip on his marbles was probably always a bit shaky. And, uh-oh — do I see something buggy working its way into the shiny pate of James Carville?

I welcome a civil war (so called) here in Unamerica, think of all the morons we could march off to the front lines.

It would be a hefty dose of chlorine in the gene pool.

‘DAMM YOU KIDS, GET OUTTA MY POOL!’

If you include the fantasy genre then don’t forget Terry Prachett

Oh and there’s Kim Stanley Robinson. I wouldn’t want to put a precise label on his politics but you can’t read the Orange County series, the Mars series, and now the series about global warming without realizing that, um, he isn’t exactly a wingnut.

Terry Pratchett, yes. And did anyone mention Alasdair Gray? If I missed it up-thread, my apologies, but I thought Lanark was quite amazing.

And aloysius, I’m glad to hear your detailed venting about the putrescence that is Orson Scott Card. I was subjected to an all-day writing workshop with him when I was in grad school, and after lo these many years, my teeth are still clenched.

“Orson” is OSC’s given first name. It’s not a D&D name, it’s a mormon name (an early mormon leader was Orson Pratt, for example). He mostly went by “Scott” while growing up in Orem, Utah, and (per a close friend who was a close neighbor) was always quite full of himself early on.

The Alvin Maker stuff has lots and lots and LOTS of mormonism in it, and some of his other work lifts story lines straight out of Mormon scripture (pretty tiresome and unoriginal on the whole).

I note that no one’s mentioned SF/fantasy writer Sherri Tepper (leading me to think that the demographic here must be overwhelminingly male). Her _The Family Tree_ is nothing short of brilliant, with the best surprise twist I have ever, ever come across (and I’ve got a degree in English).

Card, at Beliefnet, wrote a critique of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. You can read it here:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/167/story_16700_1.html

I kept thinking, as a Mormon, he should be wary of making fun of someone’s metaphysical construct, considering he follows a supposed living prophet who is God’s voice on earth.

Sherri Tepper, yes! The Family Tree is loads of fun, but for my money the best political comment in all her books is in The Fresco, in which a number of male anti-abortion activists are forced to bear the offspring of shipwrecked aliens.

I also note that Orson complains he doesn’t get invited to the cool cultural events because of his politics. What a maroon. He actually doesn’t get invited because he writes science fiction. Just look at the New York Times, which ignores all science fiction writers except Ursula LeGuin, and that’s only because even the dumbest mainstream critics have had to back down in the face of practically unanimous academic praise for her.

I can’t say I know Lois McMaster Bujold’s politics, but I feel confident in saying she isn’t a wingnut. And she’s the bomb.

As long as we’re waving our sf geek flags, can I give a shout out to Spider Robinson? I’ll meet ya’ll at Callahan’s.

Smiling Mortician, you’ve actually dealt with that man in person?

…What was it like? What on Earth did he have to say about writing? And, most importantly, did he make you workshoppers all wrestle naked in the showers until someone was killed while he masturbated quietly off in the corner?

Her _The Family Tree_ is nothing short of brilliant, with the best surprise twist I have ever, ever come across (and I’ve got a degree in English).

Well, maybe, but have you read Lehane’s “Shutter Island”? ‘Cause as far as I’m concerned, that’s the whiplash twist of all time….

mikey

Hey, aloysius, sounds like you were there. Although the stuff he did in the corner wasn’t quiet enough. Not by a long shot. Mostly he talked about his “craft,” which as far as I could see was nonexistent (although at least he had the decency not to call it “art”) and then I heard him bitching to the head of the MFA program about how the university should be popping for his meals in addition to his entirely unearned stipend, airfare and hotel . . . ah hell. I don’t wanna talk about it. I consider myself still in recovery.

In happier news, I shall put both The Family Tree and Shutter Island on my Saturnalia List. Nothing like a great plot twist while you’re soaking up some sun and booze on a beach outside the U.S. of A. during the holidays (and BTW, what the hell’s wrong with “holiday”? It does mean “holy day,” does it not? What whiners!)

jerry said,

They lost! Bwa-ha-ha!!!

Well, duh. They’re French.
.

Orson Scott Card is a very well known sci-fi writer, (which as has been pointed out really means he’s not very well known at all) but in no way can he be considered a democrat. I’ve read nearly all his work as a sci-fi fan. He is and has always been an observant Mormon, his most recent work has become more reactionary. He writes a small amount of non-fiction political writing that is pretty right wing, mostly for the Mormon audience. LDS friends have dug up these up and posted them to sci-fi list serves I’ve been on in the past, some are notably intolerant of homosexuals and supportive of the religious right. Many of my LDS acquaintances find these essays to be far to the right of their own beliefs.

His earlier and best fiction has themes that are really about toleration of others, they explore themes of falsely perceived otherness. He has become more of a hack over the years, and seems to have hardened his views to the right. Although he lost two of his children in the past 5 years and I’m inclined to cut him a little slack because I know that loss can wreck you for a while. That said this book could still be a good one, I haven’t read it, even if it didn’t meet with my own political views if it’s good I might still enjoy it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to think its prescient.

The fact that he has written something set in the present day about a civil war really should not be interpreted as meaning much by the punditry class. Fiction writers are constantly writing, this …well fiction stuff. They like to throw up the big “what ifs” and see what happens. This is not a sign of things to come folks, it’s sign of what writers are thinking about, therefore it’s a piece of culture, not a prediction.

Also,
I think it’s interesting here that Card’s closeted homosexual themes are mentioned by people who think Heinlen is fantastic. Heinlen is great but if you read enough of his books you will recognize themes of men having consensual sex with their adult female offspring in more than one of them. Even a character traveling back in time to have sex with his mother. (These women are often red heads and twins which is of no value one way or the other. But if you read enough books of his you start to predict the hero is going to bone any twins or redheads that get introduced as characters and you are pretty much always right)

Writers often write about their fantasies, so if OSC has some closeted homo feelings (which I’m inclined to believe he does) then Heinlen has some not so closeted incest fantasies for what it’s worth. I’m pretty sure which one of those makes me feel creepier.

Closing tag.

so I guess nobody else here has read any Jack Womack?

Huh, that didn’t work.  Let’s try this…

What the heck?

Multiple open tags.  Neat trick, dudes.

John Varley – always good
I have to disagree with you there, in a remarkably civil way. He’s another point in support of the Brain Eater theory. Last time I checked, he was sliding down the slippery slope towards Heinlein / libertarian economics territory.

Now, Pratchett. Is this the right place to start accusing the cultural Right of waging a War on Hogfather?

Hey, enough OSC-bashing. The Alvin Maker series is good historical fantasy on 19th C America; Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide are good sequels to Ender’s Game; and Ender’s Shadow is a smart retelling of EG from a secondary character’s POV. Sure, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is truly awful and he’s gotten far too into the wargaming stuff in the rest of the Shadows series, but he’s as serious as Dan Simmons and Kim Stanley Robinson and Sherri Tepper and William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. So while he’s much better than Heinlein or Haldeman on related themes, he still is no Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy, or Maureen McHugh. But who is?

SF bashers, feel free to bash my course. But as recent commenters have pointed out, dissing all SF as right-wing, for little boys, or worthless makes little sense.

Now dissing all Instapundit posts, that’s another story.

The only OSC book I read was Ender’s Game, and after I read this essay it was hard to enjoy it anymore. Most of Card’s non-fic writings in columns and such I find aggravating and moronically simplistic.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit to having two copies of Ender’s Game within reach, not to mention the rest of my OSC collection, but I never thought to use it as a pentagon strategy guide.

FP, Kessel’s essay is very well-argued and his upstate/western NY allusions make me just a bit homesick and nostalgic. It makes me rethink my assumption that Card was siding with Haldeman’s Forever War critique of Heinlein’s endorsement of genocide (or xenocide) in Starship Troopers. Yet I think too much hinges on the reader actually feeling sympathy for Ender and simply identifying with him as the innocent victim of abuse whose own violence is justified by the existential threat he (and humanity) faces. And it may even miscast Card’s intentions, I thought the whole point of all the sympathy-building moves for the majority of the novel was to make the revelations of Ender’s killings all the more dramatic at the end and force the reader to reevaluate all that went before. Whether that was Card’s aim or not, I think other readers are as likely to take this from the novel as what Kessel’s argument claims they will.

But certainly the logic Kessel lays out as Card’s is exactly the logic of many right-wing readings of Card and of post-9/11 America (abused victim whose own violence is regenerative and righteous). It’s the same mistake as reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as a manual for how to bring back slavery to America. But no one ever accused Bush of being a good reader.

A short list of Sci Fi / Fantasy writers that helped shape my progressive world view:
Kurt Vonnegut
Samuel Delany (Nova is a particularly apt representation of an impending global war over scarce resourses)
Phillip K Dick
Arthur C Clark
Roger Zelazny
Ursala K LeGuin (Lathe of Heaven)
Ian M Banks
Larry Niven
JRR Tolkien
Jonathan Lethem (read his response in Rolling Stone to 9/11)
and HG Wells (read his A Short History of the World)

Jeez, how did we get this far without mentioning Vonnegut?

We should all bow our heads in shame.

Neal Stephenson? Neal “neo-con, intellectual-hater, liberals-are-all-pansies” Stephenson? Hell, the man’s got game where writing is concerned, but have you actually read Cobweb?

Robert Sneddon said,
November 29, 2006 at 18:31

Nope. The worst thing about this tragedy as far as he’s concerned is that some Europeans who exist only in his xenophobic imagination might feel satisfaction over the assassination of the President.

In the tradition of Jon Swift:

I have not actually read this book, but…

Is it possible that Card’s intent was to portray the National Security Advisor as a complete asshole, more concerned with perception than reality?

I’m just sayin’, that does seem like something Condi Rice would say.

china mieville is not just a non-righty–he’s a full blown late model marxist, i think. there’s an article he wrote somewhere…

He wrote a great series about Katrina at Leninology.blogspot.com.

Cobweb’s the one where the hero ends up hijacking an aircraft over the US, assisted by an Afghan-trained jihadi fighter? Boy, that twist hasn’t exactly stood the test of time, has it?

Constructivist:

Liked the syllabus, as it is well chosen for exploring the serious social and ethical thinking within the genre.

But your unexcused absence policy makes me suspect you are a closet authoritarian after all… is this class scheduled for 7:30 am, or for Thursday evenings?

As for the question of what to make of the end of the Ender series, it seems to exist as a narrative framework for describing how the Mormon cosmology might actually work, what with the constant budding off of new universes for uplifted married couples to rule together.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit to having two copies of Ender’s Game within reach, not to mention the rest of my OSC collection, but I never thought to use it as a pentagon strategy guide.

Oh, I dunno.

The way it’s going at present, it’s quite plausible the Pentagon will be recruiting children in a few years time…

Thanks to whoever linked to my post on OSC’s latest novel.

I remain a staunch defender of almost all of Card’s novels. Some are poorly constructed, and some are miserably didactic, but over all Card is one of the most insightful and compassionate science fiction novelists around — and one of the very few male science fiction writers who puts a focus on family and community and not — as someone above argued — the supermen alone. Any number of his books are really major achievements — but all have social politics that are questionable at best and repulsive at worst. His fiction features only one prominent homosexual character, who is converted by the power of love. Other acts of homosexuality appear in the form of child sex-abuse, which occurs in heterosexual versions as well (as in the truly wonderful short story “Eumenides In The Fourth Floor Lavatory”) — and this seemy underbelly to his writing is what fascinates me the most. Much of it is almost certainly unintentional — that is driven by bias and hysteria — but in other moments there’s so much gushing homoeroticism (as in Ender’s soapy-wet battle with Bonzo in another lavatory) that Card reveals a great deal of his own psychology, and the psychology of violence.

But enough on Card — the “Empire” book (I wrote several posts on it) is clearly the work of a complete wackjob. Taken along with his increasingly hysterical political columns (in which the homosexual movement is explicitly equated with Nazism) it’s clearly not simply a work of imagination about the possibility of civil war. It’s not Harry Turtledove, whose historical imagination is vivid and well-informed. It’s meant to be a cautionary tale and it’s meant to expose rifts in the American electorate that any intelligent person knows are largely created by false distinctions invented by the media. It’s also meant (like Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”) to be a paean to the military and the need for military leaders to govern. Although I haven’t read it all, it’s clear that from what I have read, and what Card has written in other novels, that he trusts brilliant generals more than conniving politicians, and even his least well-behaved soldiers (like Colonel Graf in Ender) are violating laws and rules purely for the benefit of mankind.

It is worth saying though that Card’s politics don’t spoil his work. Knut Hamsun’s Nazism doesn’t make him a less important novelist either. Distinctions are worth making.

PS: as for him being a Democrat — he’s an outspoken Democrat, if not a “prominent” one. He is also a deluded one. He reveres Truman and Roosevelt as “centrists” but Clinton and Kerry are derided as “radicals” — which is a tremendous historical inversion. Roosevelt and Truman (and Wilson!) were intensely progressive in outlook and enormously divisive. Any of them would have killed for Clinton’s approval numbers.

Brain Eater a.k.a. sycophant sycophanticus
Hangs around SF conventions, is well connected with publishing houses, … oh, I can’t be bothered just now.

There’s also Vernor Vinge, though his politics are pretty unreadable (The Marooned in Realtime seq

[…] A big thanks to Roy for pointing me to this page, which contains several lengthy excerpts from Orson Scott Card’s Empire. The book, for those of you who didn’t read yesterday’s post, is about a civil war that breaks out between red and blue states when “a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States.” The main plot revolves around “Card’s heroic red-state protagonists, Maj. Reuben ‘Rube’ Malek and Capt. Bartholomew ‘Cole’ Coleman” who “draw on their Special Ops training to take down the extremist leftists and restore peace to the nation.” […]

@The Constructivist: Funny you should mention Dan Simmons, who succumbed to the Brain Eater sometime last April, though nobody’s written a truly worthy reply to him until recently. (Me, I just wonder if Simmons’ cruciform ever itches, and how he likes working for the Pax.)

@Dagonz: Yeah, I dunno how sf could say the author of The Diamond Age wasn’t at least a little wingnutty. (Not to mention that throwaway line in Cryptonomicon about how Randy Waterhouse’s crunchy-granola friends objected to him saying he was right and his ex-wife was wrong, but they’d have objected just as strenuously if he’d said it the other way around, because their objection was to the idea that there are such things as “right” and “wrong” viewpoints.)

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Thomas Disch’s “On Wings of Song”, which to quote one of the Amazon reviews is about a future America (mid 21st century), a politically divided nation of secular excess on either coast, divided by a conservative theocracy in the middle.

And it was written in 1979, so on the prediction front it is as good as foreseeing satellites was in the 1950s.

His later stuff – the Priest, The Businessman etc is pretty compelling, but gets a bit too dark even for my tastes.

“Perfesser! Look out! It’s–it’s your words!”
“Egad! Oh, noes!!1!”
[yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! yap! *clomp!*]
“OW! Cripes, my ass!”

And so it goes…

Oh, and @greenfuzz: this is just me speculating, but it seems to me, based on some of his recent books, that he’s a not-very-well-closeted gay man who’s been driven further into the closet by a belief that his children were taken from him as punishment for the “sin” that’s wired into him.

Bah, lousy interface… As I was saying, Vinge’s _Marooned in Realtime_ sequence is driven by technological/strategic considerations, notably the bobbles….

As far as dissing Card on sexuality — bluntly, nudity isn’t *always* about sexuality! Hell, *sex* isn’t always about sexuality! And of course, (sarcasm) thoughout history, everybody under eighteen has been numb *and* invisible from the waist down, unless some evil adult interfered… (/sarcasm). I bet some of you folks have real fun with Butler’s _Lilith’s Brood_ series, much less Delaney.

Yeah, Card’s gone downhill over time, but he’s covered some serious ground in the meanwhile, and I’d say _Pastwatch_ was a high point in the middle of the slope. That’s no particular reason to believe in his politics, of course… fiction writing simply isn’t any grounds for granting someone moral/political credit. And frankly, a lot of people (not just authors) get kinda screwy in their old age.

A scifi thread this long and as far as I can see no one’s mentioned James Blish’s Cities in Flight novels.
The first one–They Shall Have Stars–does the effects of the McCarthy era better than any other scifi novel I’ve read.
BTW, before we consign Heinlein to burn in right wing hell for all eternity, just remember his early story “If This Goes On…”. I’ve yet to encounter a more convincing story about religious dictatorship in the US.

Dan Someone: And I heartily second reading Ken MacLeod and Alastair Reynolds. Charles Stross has his bright spots, but his stuff is not consistently good.

And I have no idea about their politics.

How in the name of sanity can you read a Ken MacLeod novel and have no idea about the author’s politics?

Reading these comments beats the hell out of working, let me tell you. I think I have a reading list for the next 10 years at least!

If I may chime in with a worthwhile find – Nalo Hopkinson. SF/fantasy, Jamaican-Canadian (Torontonian even!), her work is entrancing. Here’s one page on her:
http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/
and here’s her blog:
http://nalohopkinson.blogspot.com/
I hope at least one person finds her as enjoyable as I do!

I know that Walter Mosely has written some SF, but I haven’t read it yet. I’ve enjoyed his other works, so I’m interested in checking them out when I get time.

Third, fourth, or whateverth Miéville. Everything I’ve read of his I’ve found brilliant. Can’t wait for his forthcoming in Feb.

And I should probably eventually get around to reading his republished International Relations disertation. Oh, but for time to read…

And I noticed that Kessel was raised as a critic, but not as an author?!? For shame! I mean, he’s the very image of the opposite of prolific, but still! I mean come on! Good News from Outer Space. I need say no more.

Oops! Imagine that one of the “I mean”‘s in my prior post is a “Like”. It won’t make me sound any less ditzy, but the prose will flow better.

[…] “Und so weiter” to use what I suppose is the appropriate phrase under the circumstances. All the book needs is a blurb from Glenn flat out racist Reynolds. “Is Europe going to revive the Waffen-SS to stiffen up its drooping manliness in the face of invasion by cannibalistic aliens? Not immediately, perhaps, but famed science fiction writer John Ringo thinks that we’re in enough danger that he’s co-authored a cautionary tale that’s set in more-or-less present times.” […]

Hearing about Card’s book reminded me of this old comic:
http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics21.html

Was America home to ancient civilization of Holy Land exiles led by men named Lemuel and Nephi? Maybe not, but famed science fiction writer Orson Scott Card has authored the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant in upstate New York, which tells the story of the Book of Mormon in a special-effects laden extravaganza.

Now that’s funny. He’s not only crazy he’s feckin’ stoopid.

BTW: Is Orson Scott Card any relation to Andy Card? It would explain a whole hell of a lot.

If you are looking for non-nutty Sci-Fi writers I would suggest Robert J. Sawyer. His books are interesting and non-political in general, but from his perspective as a Canadian he is able to offer a few piercing comments about our national delusions.
Of course, there is always Terry Pratchett, who is quite possibly the equal of Douglas Adams when it comes to biting satire. His work is fantasy I guess, but still excellent.

Orson Scott Card is, politically, a loon. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to pan his work just because he’s a loon. He’s written some books I enjoy a great deal — not just Ender’s Game. Speaker for the Dead, also good, and there were a few after that which were, while not genius, still very enjoyable. And the stories about Alvin Maker were wonderful.

The fact that he wrote well and wrote engaging fiction doesn’t make him an authority on anything… except, of course, for his own books. But I think it’s a shame if his ridiculous political views turn people off of his books, because there are some that are definitely worth reading.

Did anyone else hear:

“Tune in next week, same bat-shit channel, same ape-shit time!!!!”

Ender’s game is a wack rip-off of Philip K. Dick’s “Time Out Of Joint,” ya heard

I am just waiting for the Samuel Delany novel about an American civil war.

Dhalgren.

nolo beat me to it.

I was always surprised by OSC pederasty. He certainly does like naked little boys, that is apparent in his work.

Now, like all Republicans I have ever met, OSC has refused to face the obvious and deal with his inner demons and instead has embraced right-wing extremism in a vain attempt to supress his homoerotic fantasies. And his creativity has suffered mightily for having separated critical parts of his own psyche from his primary mind.

So we get this kind of reverse fantasy where he assigns his own right-wing blood-lust to the pacifist inheritors of Ghandian and Kingian non-violence.

I can’t remember the last time we had a liberal group that advocated violence, not since the Weathermen of the ’70s, but we have lots of examples of right-wing terrorists. The latest being that guy in TN that wanted to blow up Congress with a chemical weapon suitcase bomb. Sounds like terrorism doesn’t it? But this guy was not charged with as a terrorist, nor is this triumph of police work mentioned in the Conservative Controlled Media (CNN, etc.) because this guy is a white conservative christian!

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/11/other-kind-of-terror_30.html

Right-wing extremists like 95% of the pundits on TV and on the radio all believe that liberals must also have fantasies about killing their neighbors, as they do, so we crap like this book from Card where it’s liberals that are the bad guys despite Reality proving that it’s white christians that are the most violent terrorists in this country today.

Ken MacLeod has a blog; it shouldn’t surprise any of his readers that he talks more about Marx than about SF.

I’m going to plug a friend of mine, Jo Walton (who also has a ), specifically for her most recent novel, Farthing, an alternate-history novel about fascism in Britain that undermines all the coziness of the English country-house mystery. (Her other published stuff is mostly fantasy, for those who care about that distinction.)

Kathleen said,
November 30, 2006 at 5:09
I can’t say I know Lois McMaster Bujold’s politics, but I feel confident in saying she isn’t a wingnut. And she’s the bomb.

Kathleen, many thanks for mentioning my fav SF author. Bujold write the best dialog in scifi, for my money.

The Fantastic Four was a brilliant touch.

oh man, someone should definitely do a propagation track of that “ZUS” meme. Because, as you know, Broadway in Baltimore would also be considered a “ZUS”. Oh no! The Salvadorans are taking over! (actually a good thing, they got some good food.)

The Brain Eater operated on conservative Christian SF writers in earlier wars as well.

C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, is much less well known than the Narnia books. By the third book, deservedly.

Allegory began to take over Perelandra, but by Hideous Strength, the baddies are Big Government caricatures, Ransom becomes an archetypal Marty Sue, and the plot descends into Lovecraftian gibbering horror, involving modern art as well as perverted science. An anti-feminist fate awaits the female protagonist Jane.

*snifs* Beautiful… *dabs at a tear…*

Seriously, TOP and Card are two of a kind – anything goes, freedom is wonderful, America is the land of liberty, and all of us are created equal – as long as my privilege isn’t threatened.

I remember quite a while back, when OSC released an audio-tape recording of his humorous evangelical “Secular Humanist Revival Meeting,” which takes takes on the Christian Right, particularly creationists for attempting to give “Creation Scienceâ€? equal time with evolution in the public school curriculum. I laughed so hard listening to it the first time that my sides still ached the next day.

I may not approach the subject of religion or spiritual thought from anything nearing the direction Card does, but I still thought that what he said was important and very well presented. Perhaps all of his views aren’t representative of anyone but himself, but he has come up with at least one politically oriented (or perhaps a better phrase would be “policy oriented”) screed which I, who consider myself a progressive liberal really enjoyed and agreed with fully. In fact I still share it with my friends (I live in Kansas, so the topic still ranks high on my list of important issues).

I can say that on at least the topic of the value and purpose of public education (one of the pillar issues of the progressive movement), OSC represents the view from the left admirably.

I can’t speak to anything else he’s said since I’ve only read a few of his fiction books and nothing else he has written. However, I imagine that if I sat on the far right and were a Christian fundamentalist, I would consider Card to be on “the other side.”

[…] If you ever took Glenn Reynolds seriously, read this from Sadly, No! and cure thyself. […]

“Quality SF writers who aren’t wingnuts:

snip

Neal Stephenson
Richard K. Morgan”

With all due respect, Stephenson expressed some rather odd ideas in THE DIAMOND AGE about the distribution of civil responsibility wrt population density in one of his books [1] and Morgan dedicated MARKET FORCES to the works of people like Chomsky and Moore (but not, oddly, Steve Jackson [2], despite the strong similarity to CAR WARS). At the risk of appearing to be some kind of wild-eyed centrist, it would not surprise me if on close examination, Stephenson was perhaps just a tad to the city-hating right and Morgan was not slightly inclined towards the anti-globalist left.

1: Roughly “If there was a catastrophic plane crash in a major American city, those self-centered urbanites wouldn’t put their lattes/stolen TVs down to help the victims, unlike we stalwart flat-staters.”

2: Or to Alan Dean Foster or Harlan Ellison, who got there before SJ.

“The story is told as a retrospective, an interview with him in Spandau prison, confined in a kyptonite-lined cell where is has been jailed for war crimes, like the Albert Speer interviews.

Anyone else ever hear of this? I have no idea who wrote it. I don’t even recall where I read it, if it was in a mag or an anthology.”

“Ubermensch!” by Kim Newman:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?72687

[…] Sadly, No!—chimes in on Glenn Reynolds take of the book and Ezra wonders how anyone could score chicks reading Card. […]

@know1nozme: The OSC who did the Secular Humanist Revival no longer exists.

TC said, — 18:03

Ironically enough, they consistently ignore a REAL master of both science fiction and hard science, Isaac Asimov, who once said “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.�

True enough. As long as it is peaceful. Violence, however, is the first resort of the competent when some incompetent idiot goes violent. Trying to ‘reason’ is the sign of incompetence at that point.

Very nice site!