We Learn From History That We…How Does That Go Again?
Some people know Orson Scott Card as the Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of such science fiction masterpieces as Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. Others know him as the crazy homophobe who thinks we should lock up the queers so that they don’t destroy our nation’s reproductive security and sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. But did you know that he’s also got a fine career going as a sub-Victor-Davis-Hanson pseudohistorical bloviator? It’s true!
Above: Orson Scott Card accepts the first of an unprecedented three straight
Mustache Awards from the highly prestigious Harry M. Horwitz Foundation
For Entertaining Haircuts.
In a recent and incredibly tedious essay, Card the brilliant academic (who currently holds an honorary professorship at Mormon-run Southern Virginia University) rambles on for roughly 28,000 pages about how our current situation is just like WWII, and al-Q’aeda is just like Hitler, and, uh, I guess Harry Reid is our Chamberlain. After refining this theory, which he developed while purchasing lawn gnomes at Target with James Lileks, several light-years past the point of comatose tedium, he gets to the meat of the matter by listing a number of lessons we must learn from the Second World War if we are to prevail against the dire threat of Muslamotarianism.
1. When the press has decided to report only one side of the story, the public is ill served.
And, of course, that’s what’s happening now. That’s the reason that you only get the bad news from Iraq, and never the good news.
The people only know as much as they are told. Even when they say they don’t trust the news media, in fact they do.
Got that? Even when they don’t, they do. So there.
2. If you do not believe the threats of an insane enemy and destroy their war capacity early, when it can be cheaply done, you will pay for it in blood and horror.
Which, of course, is certainly a major concern today, because al-Q’aeda or Iraq or Iran or Syria or whatever other concatenation of sand-crazed beardos Card is talking about is certainly in possession of the economic, material and human resources necessary to wage war to the same degree or even worse than was Germany in 1939. Even as we speak, Syria’s mighty battleships and fleets of stealthy, deadly submarines are masters of the seas, Iraq’s vaunted tank commanders prowl the deserts unchallenged, Iran’s terrifying air force rules the sky, and al-Q’aeda’s armed forces, numbered at some 19 million men, exceeds even that of the fearsome Wermacht.
They will keep Europe from interfering with them, with medium range nuclear missiles and with large Muslim populations that are poised to revolt and terrorize in Europe.
Remember when England, with its large Muslim population, entered the Iraq War as our strongest ally? Those revolts just went on and on for weeks, didn’t they? But in the end, it was all for the good, because we were able to seize all those medium-range nuclear missiles they had in Iraq.
3. Only fools believe that an enemy cannot do what he threatens to do.
Really? So, like, if al-Q’aeda said they were going to blow up the moon using their magical ice cannons, we would be fools not to believe that, right? Or if, say, the Iraqi information minister said that his forces were going to completely drive out the American invaders and roast them alive in their tanks, we’d be stupid to doubt it, right?
If we invade a nuclear Iran, they will simply detonate nuclear weapons over their own soil to destroy our armies.
They just would, that’s all. They WOULD. SHUT UP.
4. Only fools allow their best allies to be neutralized before the war begins.
What Card means here is that if we withdraw from Iraq and don’t attack Iran, we will lose our best allies when all our Muslim allies (which he doesn’t name, possibly because we don’t have any) are overthrown by Islamists, our best buddy Israel gets “slaughtered in a new Holocaust”, and Europe will be taken over by jihadis who will force their governments into compliance.
Whereas me, if I was writing a sentence that started “only fools allow their best allies to be neutralized before the war begins,” I might end it with “by systematically lying to them about the casus belli, and then telling them all to go get fucked when they didn’t immediately bend over for our asinine, poorly-thought-out plan.” But hey, I never won a Hugo.
[Gavin adds: Also, you know, the Soviet Union will put itself back together and ally with Zombie Rommel and his 5th Army of Nazi Skeletons, and they will march to the sound of balalaikas and spooky marimbas to. . .uh, Israel, which will be slaughtered in a new-new bioterror Holocaust even worse than the other one (flesh-eating nanobots). …Except for the Palestinians, led by Zombie Gay Arafat, who will laugh and sneer amidst a cacophony of gunbursts and bhangra ringtones. Hey, you know, I never won a Hugo either. I think it requires a degree of imagination that I lack.]
Anyway, and you can thank me here for cutting dozens of pages of moist blow, Card goes on to conclude that right after — or even during — the invasion of Afghanistan, we should have also invaded Syria, which would have provoked Iraq into attacking us, which would have allowed us to attack Iraq without all the pussyfooting around, and then gone on to invade liberate Lebanon. All of this, argues the historically astute Orson, no doubt equipped with a long list of countries that have prevailed in a four-front war, would have made Israel “infinitely more secure”. Got that? The best way to make Israel more secure is to invade all of its neighbors.
Since, like Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1864, President Bush has no reason to believe that his successor will pursue the war to victory, he has no choice, for the good of America and the world, but to defeat Iran before he leaves office.
I was kinda hoping that this sentence would lead to him saying that for the good of America and the world, Bush would have to declare the 22nd Amendment null and void and declare himself Maximum Leader, but Card lets me down. Still, the Civil War analogy is at least a break from the mindless repetition of the WWII metaphors; so, let me display my liberal historical ignorance and say how it looks to me. Bush deciding to invade Iran for the good of America does not particularly strike me as analogous to Lincoln vowing to achieve victory in the Civil War. That would be more like if Lincoln had first decided to declare war against Canada instead of the South in order to end slavery, and then, having done so, deciding that he would then put an end to slavery by going after its source, and launching a full-scale invasion of Africa.
Card’s right: history does repeat itself. Every war, there’s some dumb jackass like him spouting off ignorant analogies that fall apart like…well, like a house of cards after a long fart.
And in conclusion, anyone who doesn’t agree is a traitor.
“2. If you do not believe the threats of an insane enemy and destroy their war capacity early, when it can be cheaply done, you will pay for it in blood and horror.”
Yeah. I’m not going to waste time explaining why he’s stupid.
“Since, like Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1864, President Bush has no reason to believe that his successor will pursue the war to victory, he has no choice, for the good of America and the world, but to defeat Iran before he leaves office.”
Uhh… the Civil War wasn’t over until 1865. Even when he gave Grant command of the army, there was no way to foresee the outcome of that decision.
Can we really, seriously, truly, please stop trying to use the Civil War analogies? It really just makes you look like Spongebob when you do.
I guess you haven’t read “Empire.” It’s really good.
Is that the one where the evil terrorist frog men blow up with White House with honking and a rocket? I’ll pass.
Ender’s Shadow was pretty good, though.
Liked the “crazy homophobe” link, where OSC decries changing for the modern world, or whatever. Yeah, like when your bullshit “prophets” decided to give up on polygamy in order to get Utah admitted into the union. Lying sack of shit. And the title of the blog or whatever it is: “Nauvoo, a place for Mormons.” Except they got run the fuck out of Nauvoo, Illinois, & many of them had to walk to Utah. I really despise Mormons. Why would that be?
Oh, & not to mention when the “prophet” decided in the late ’70s that maybe it was OK for black men to be bishops or whatever the fuck they call their local leaders. Racist, sexist liars, all of them!! Uuuggghhh!!
That mustache is so Village People wanna be…
Hey, he did predict bloggers would take over the world, back in Ender’s Game published in 1985. Now that Powerline seems to run the government, that was not such a bad prediction.
Let’s see how meeting alien life forms go toward proving Mormon Cosmology, which was the point of all those later Ender books. It took about a thousand pages to get to the souls being planted like godlets into new universes…
Wait, I’m confused. Does this massive invasion of half the middle east happen before or after we wrest control of the Moon from the gilded claws of Lunar Emperor Krang and his legion of atomic molemen?
So plug yourself into the network and fight that war Orson. Imagine that “Moslem” right out of your hair.
So, total loonies can write Hugo-award winning novels and I can’t even seem to get a short story published.
Should I give in to despair yet?
You do know, Gavin, that you’ve just described the plot of Worst Case Scenario?
Well, at least you have to give him credit for coming out and declaring what most supporters of Israel won’t — that the US should basically invade every country in the Middle East to make Israel “infinitely more secure.”
“Ender’s Game” was good because it was basically a war novel, and Card was sticking to what he knows. I read “Speaker for the Dead” shortly thereafter, and frankly I thought it sucked.
He did set up an interesting planet for it to happen on, with an interestingly alien ecology, I’ll give him that. What irked me about “Speaker for the Dead” was that Card makes almost every single character in the novel an idiot, except for Ender Wiggins. In the first half of the story, the other characters make a complete hash of everything and get themselves into deep doodoo. The second half of the book is just Ender Wiggins fixing everything, easily. I guess this bothered me- if everyone else is totally stupid, and Ender Wiggins is totally right, then somehow this removes the drama, for me.
atheist, I’m with you. I vaguely recall reading both books several millennia ago, and while I enjoyed the first one, I had a teensy nagging dsquiet. Reading the second one developed that teensy nagging disquiet into a bloated raging disgust. I’ve not read one of his since.
I’ve found, in fact (completely apropos of nothing aside from the fact that I feel like rambling on about science fiction), that most of the writers I favour these days are women. Not by deliberate choice, but I just noticed the preponderance of female authors on my bookshelves.
Could be because when I was doing a lot of book-buying, there was a plague of “Giant Dragons of Zarg”-type mega-series. And I didn’t figure on living long enough to read anything with 17 volumes.
Either that or the male authors got tossed out: good on first read, but didn’t hold up.
Although that said, Terry Pratchett is one of my faves, along with C. J. Cherryh (who’s female, so I’ve got both main genders covered). What I like about them is their ability to satirise society and reflect our weaknesses (in Pratchett’s case), and to postulate really interesting and different ways of thinking/being (in Cherryh’s case).
Not sure why I mentioned it. But if any of you fancy a good read, I can point you at some fine books. Now, alas, I’m pointing myself off to bed.
Qetesh, try a little Jack Vance. Cugel’s saga is pretty droll.
Qetesh, try a little Jack Vance. Cugel’s Saga is pretty droll. Nicely amoral protagonist. Lots of weirdness, no Zargs.
How come Orson doesn’t mention the evil Meksican horde?
In the midst of a whole lot of other insanity, Card actually wrote this for public consumption a few months back regarding power outages in Iraq: The reason the new power systems can’t cope is because the newly prosperous Iraqi people are buying — and plugging in — vast quantities of electrical appliances they could never afford to buy before!
Such willfully blinkered dementia can only get worse, and now he hallucinates that a wise and courageous Bush should “defeat Iran” for the good of us all before he rides off into the sunset. Anyone this pathologically oblivious should start taking serious medication, or maybe stop, whatever.
Man, someone should go force Card to go read his first books again. The scary thing is that I spent a lot of years thinking the first few Ender’s novels were very clever anti-war meditations. I.e., Brainwashed children commit genocide thinking they’re actually just playing games and the architect of that genocide later realizes it was all due to simple miscommunication. Damn, I’m coming to actually think he missed the best points of his own novels.
— TP in UT
(Yes, I live in the land of Card)
“I guess you haven’t read “Empire.” It’s really good.”
Really good as in getting shagged by rabid racoons?
Gav, don’t feel bad. “Spooky marimbas” is perfect. (Highly recommended: “Poor Skeleton,” by XTC on Oranges and Lemons.)
Let me point out, as I tediously always do, that one of the essential wingnut “tells” is the uber-pretentiosity of the language. Here we have the very popular “you will pay for it in blood and horror” AND the sturdy perennial “only fools ____”.
You all say he’s written some good stuff, so I have to believe it. But jeez/Louise. Mr. Pierce, can I get partial credit for reading (at most) a third of that Mormon thing?
I grew up on Asimov, Heinlein, and short stories. Then Gibson and Stephenson–and only their greatest hits at that–and that’s it. I’ll just sit here quietly.
Card’s a great example of what happens when a so-so writer writes a mediocre book with a couple of great ideas (see also: Brown, Dan) and rides the ensuing wave of popularity for the rest of his life. Enough people adored Ender’s Game so much that they were willing to studiously ignore Card’s rampant homophobia, or excuse it on the grounds that Card has a couple of gay friends (although he’d really like for them to get back in the fucking closet).
A friend of mine wrote a post about Empire on his blog in which he complained about Card being misinterpreted, a complaint which Card often makes himself; my response to him was, if a writer with Card’s experience can’t get his point across clearly, even in a dreadful piece of agitprop like Empire, what does that say about him as a writer?
Card’s a great example of what happens when a so-so writer writes a mediocre book with a couple of great ideas (see also: Brown, Dan)
Huh? Dan Brown had an idea of his own?
In a word: missionaries.
There’s a lot of untapped potential LDS converts there – no need to poison the well.
Egad. That could actually be partially true. Sorry about that!
You know, I’m so very, very tired.
All during the Vietnam war, ‘learned’ men* wrote tomes on how to apply the lessons of WWII to ‘fighting the insurgents’ and ‘winning’. Their ideas were deeply stupid. Then that horror finally stopped and it seemed that most people learned that one can’t apply lessons of a conventional war to a guerilla war and that fighting an invader isn’t anything like interfering in a civil war.
Our fearless leaders never got those lessons. And so we’re repeating our bloody historyen. Sadly, it now seems we are also getting a repeat of the ‘learned men’ writing tomes on applying the lessons of WWII to our interference in the civil war in Iraq.
Sigh.
*Yeah, it was men back in the 60’s and early 70’s.
You’re right, Doodle, but with this administration they make it several orders of magnitude worse by believing that ANY problem has a military solution. They cannot conceive of a situation that bombs, artillery and armored infantry can’t solve.
Of course, those of us who live in THIS universe recognize the inherent limitations in military power. You can wreck things with it. You can dismantle the extant power structure. You can kill, and you can punish. When you have completed these things that the military actually DOES, you are left at zero. Now most people would recognize that at that point the military has served it’s purpose, and you put them back in their box and use your other assets – economic, political, diplomatic, etc. But with bush/cheney/rumsfeld, when you’re done bombing ’em, you – um, yeah, bomb them again!!
mikey
…and wonder why they don’t just give up. Like Japan did!
Card is scifi’s Dennis Miller. He used to be entertaining, but something broke him.
“Card is scifi’s Dennis Miller. He used to be entertaining, but something broke him.”
Card’s been a shitty writer since he first put pen to paper. That Ender’s Game came out as well as it did was a real fluke; Songmaster was already offensively stupid, morally-twisted garbage back in 1980. He’s a one-trick pony: he always, always wants to put his characters through deep and profound moral crises, and he always, always loads the dice in his world-building so that the only “moral” solution in the end is the one that just happens to conform to his blatant religious prejudices. He never goes beyond his own dogma, although he sometimes does a clever job hiding that.
Basically, he’s always been more of a propagandist than a novelist.
This posting, I think, says it all: Orson Scott Card Has Always Been An Asshat.
You deserve congratulations, Leonard. Just looking at this monstrous stupidity (his, not yours) makes me want to end myself, and you manage to render it readable with your protective insulation of wit and snark. Well done, sir.
Thanks, Mikey.
Although I’d maintain that military ‘solutions’ leave us at less than zero. But that’s just me!
Aloysius,
Thanks for that link. That hit the spot with this tired activist!
Card is scifi’s Dennis Miller. He used to be entertaining, but something broke him.
What I was told is that Dennis Miller was entertaining when he had good writers working for him. Then he had an epiphany about how he was the *real* talent, and parted ways with the good writers, at which point Miller’s career headed straight into the dumpster. Fortunately for him, NineElevenChangedEverything opened a marketing niche for a certified Smart Guy Librul who was willing to renounce his sinful ways and act as the teevee face of the new white middle-class suburban paranoia. Now his material sucks 17 kinds of ass, but that’s okay with his new “friends” and paymasters, because sucking ass is a state with which they are very very comfortable.
Orson Scott Cardboard wrote a couple of well-put-together variations on the particular adolescent alienation/torture/sexual fantasy theme previously owned by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Anne McCaffery’s Dragonrider books. There’s always a market for publishable versions of “Everybody hates me because I’m SPECIAL, which is why they do nothing but torture me, but that’s okay, because one of these days my crysalid G*E*N*I*U*S will burst upon a bedazzled universe, and then I’ll torture them (but only for their own good, and to prove how special & unique I really am)… “ and the sf/fantasy niche was in particular need of a manly, midwestern, deeply heterosexual writer to service all the pimply male adolescents who didn’t want to catch “girl cooties”. OSC’s been mining that vein with great success for the past 25 years; after all that time, even the most dedicated performer must either prospect for new material, start recycling his own tailings, or dig so vigorously at his old seam as to become, well, mechanical…
But I don’t think it’s fair to say that OSC’s leaden recent work is, at its core, substantially different than the stuff he got awards for. He’s more like Bill Maher — he didn’t change, but his audience did. And just as Maher has moved from “vaguely right-wing libertarian” to “labelled left-wing progressive” without much changing his own act, OSC has moved from “sci-fi writer” to “techno-historical spokesman for neocons and other adolescent fantasists” without moving from his original warm, damp niche.
I really think he DID get a lot worse. I was an avid OSC fan as a teenager, and while I’ll concede that, looking back, I would probably cringe at a lot of what I ate up at the time, he wasn’t an incompetent writer. I’m pretty sure. Whereas Empire (the first five chapters of which I read online) literally reads like it was written by a ten-year-old hopped up on videogames. I really think he must have some sort of undiagnosed mental degenerative thing.
Just in case anybody wanders back here to shake out the sofa cushions for lost change, may I recommend Sergei Lukyanenko’s NIGHT WATCH (the novel, in translation). Qetesh, Sam Vimes would totally recognize Lukyanenko’s Agents of Light (who run the NW) and Darkness (who supervise the Day Shift), even though he would NOT approve of the general Russian-ness of Lukyanenko’s parallel multiverse.
One of my local acquaintances is starting a book club because so many of us “used to love sf” but now we’re middle-aged & busy & just can’t keep up with drinking from the current sci-fi firehose. Any suggestions as to worthy authors or particular works would be much appreciated.
I really think he must have some sort of undiagnosed mental degenerative thing.
Another possibility is that he’s not being edited as well as he once was. Successful “authors” who bring the big contracts get treated a lot more gently by their agents and buyers than scrappy new writers trying to find a foothold. Especially in a publishing market where “important” is measured by the pound, the quantifiable value of an Established Name too often takes the lead out of the blue pencils. And, of course, OSC’s handlers can tell themselves that the target audience for EMPIRE adores every single overwrought adjective and improbable D&D plot-line.
Another possibility is that he’s not being edited as well as he once was. Successful “authors” who bring the big contracts get treated a lot more gently by their agents and buyers than scrappy new writers trying to find a foothold.
Which is why I don’t read Stephen King (or Clive Cussler, any more) — I couldn’t stand trying to read something and seeing the same damn adjectives used three or four times in one chapter… Or trying to read something that had sentence fragments that started with the word ‘but’.
Also, what I remember of reading Ender’s Game was that it was good, but it would have worked much better as a novella or short story — there was a big chunk of the middle I’d have cut out because it told, rather than showed. Gaaaaah.
Anne Laurie, just in case you wander back here to this dark echoing space: thanks for the tip. The only Russian novel I’ve read is The Master And Margarita, which was written in the 40s I think but is still damn fine.
As for recommendations, I think you can’t got past some C. J. Cherryh. She’s created some interesting permutations on social structures (human and not), and can write space opera that’s fun and also makes you think. She also has a gift for exploring the human experience, and I’d recommend different books depending on what other sorts of stuff you like. Downbelow Station is excellent and won a Hugo (I think), although fairly heavy. The Cyteen trilogy has some great ideas but takes a few reads through to get the hang of. The ones I re-read most often are the Foreigner series (six books in all): one of the things I love about them is that they show up the difficulties of translation of language and culture, and how fraught is the interface between cultures. I think all foreign relations students and aspiring politicians should be forced to read it.
You might also like to have a go at some Sherri S. Tepper. If you read a lot of hers in one go you’ll get the feeling she’s got a couple of bees in her bonnet (about women and religion respectively), but she’s creative and crafts a good yarn. My favourite of hers is The Gate To Women’s Country, which I think is one of her less well known.
Anne Laurie, you’re description of the theme of OSC and Dragonrider books sounds oh so familiar. Not being a big sci-fi fan, I’m having trouble placing it…oh, wait, I know who it is. Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer! Do you think Santa can sue for plagiarism?
One of my local acquaintances is starting a book club because so many of us “used to love sf” but now we’re middle-aged & busy & just can’t keep up with drinking from the current sci-fi firehose. Any suggestions as to worthy authors or particular works would be much appreciated.
Dear Anne:
I highly recommend Octavia E. Butler’s “Xenogenesis Series”, which is composed of “Dawn”, “Adulthood Rites”, and “Imago”, and is also gathered together in one volume as “Lillith’s Brood”. That series Rocked My Socks. It was sad when Butler died recently, as she was just coming off of a sort of decade-long dry spell, during which she wrote only one book, and was starting to really write again. Fate can be cruel.
Also, thanx for the tip on NIGHT WATCH, sounds interesting. Maybe I’ll check it out!
“Not being a big sci-fi fan, I’m having trouble placing it…oh, wait, I know who it is. Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer! Do you think Santa can sue for plagiarism?”
No, no, silly Ignobility — it’s Gene Autrey who would have legal standing to sue! (Yes, I know he’s dead. And I’m old.)
Qetesh, thanks for the recommendations… I actually wandered away from sf shortly after DOWNBELOW STATION, which I loved, and need to look for her more recent work. And also Sherri Tepper, because I have enjoyed her mysteries (which she published as B.J. Oliphant and… damn this Alzheimers… A.J. Orde, I believe).
Atheist, I have been in awe of Octavia Butler’s talents since PATTERNMASTER, and also greatly mourned her death. One of my proudest feats was getting Butler invited to a genuine academic conference, at which I was too chicken to introduce myself to her. But I heard later that she’d quite enjoyed the experience, so I can still make myself happy claiming the credit.
Anne:
You got her invited to an academic conference? Wow, that’s great! May I ask what it was?
I was laid up with a bad back for 2 months, someone gives me 6 books by osc and I did somewhat enjoy enders game, but I would rather have a root canal then read anything more by this guy.After 6 I should win an award
No, Ender’s Game was not good. Ender’s Game was junk, like
most of what is published in this ghastly post-“Star Wars”,
post-Anne-McCaffrey-and-her-dragons-crap era. I can’t say
that it’s all been junk for the past 30 years. Unsurprisingly,
I tuned out. (Oh, when I think of LotR III getting an *Oscar*,
I can hardly breathe.)