Can you guess who said these things?

[Timsup2nothin]

Based on his fiction and his blogging, I don't think he ever believed it. Of course you should not be expected to have to dredge up something you read on the internet a decade ago. But you should be expected to back up whatever claims you make. As far as I can see, you didn't have to post it at all.

I'm guessing that if the only people posting where the ones that "have to" the forum would be pretty dull.

 

[warpus]

You mean threats like populist western governments who are undoing western civilization from the inside?

Either way, western civilization has always been evolving. It is not going to be undone by a religion of all things. It'll change and be different, and that's fine.

Got it, I misread your post. Card's the moron, not you

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Got it, I misread your post. Card's the moron, not you

Thanks?

 

[Lexicus]

I'm guessing that if the only people posting where the ones that "have to" the forum would be pretty dull.

Having participated in forums for class where posting was a mandatory part of said class. Yes. Yes, it is pretty dull.

 

[warpus]

Serves me right to post before I have my coffee. My apologies

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Serves me right to post before I have my coffee. My apologies

S'okay, no worries. I just wonder if there is anything I can do so that when your first response is "Tim's a moron" your impulse is "hey, wait, that seems unlikely, I better read that again." I'd like to think I have an established history of being "not a moron," but perhaps I overestimate that.

 

[warpus]

Don't take that moron comment as anything serious, it was just meant to be funny. Plus I wrote it before I had enough caffeine in me to be sensible about it

 

[Ajidica]

Ordinarily, I don't bother responding to people who claim the Ender books "justify genocide," but it's worth noting that he seems to actually be condemning this attitude in another book:

Ender's Game (which I have always thought of as a great book) is set in a totalitarian state. That totalitarian state uses the same "necessary for our survival against an external existential threat" justification that every totalitarian state, ever, has used. Science fiction benefits from the fact that you can access genuine existential threats at the planetary scale that actually make the justification workable. It is only when you find out that Card believes that Islam is an existential threat equivalent to the bugs, and western civilization is in need of someone like Ender, that things get messy.

Basically what Tim said. If it was just "The Bugs are an intractable menace that cannot be reasoned with, only destroyed" I'd dismiss it as boilerplate sci-fi, but then we run into the fact Ender is never held responsible for any of his actions. In the section on Earth he brutally assaults someone and we never hear about it again apart from some dismissal it was all right because the person he attacked was a bit of a bully. We see it again during training where he straight up murders a kid and again, no repercussions, because the kid was being a bit of a bully. Card tries to hand wave it away as Ender wanting to make sure he "won't be attacked again/ won't give the bully the opportunity to be a bully again"; it isn't Ender's fault he murdered someone, and even if it was, he was doing it with the purest of morals. Throughout the whole book, from a personal level to a galactic level, Card makes it pretty clear he believes that any enemy must be killed -or damaged to the point of killing- because there cannot possibly be any understanding. This is a fairly abhorrent concept that Card allows Ender to get away with by always making it "not his fault", "he didn't know what he was doing", or "he did it with good intent".

It shouldn't be that hard to see how it fits into fascist (or heck, garden variety authoritarianism) propaganda. Pinochet chucked people out of helicopters because they, like the Bugs or Ender's bullies, were an intractable threat that cannot be allowed to exist. Throw in Card's weird interest in eugenics with Ender being bred to be smart and it becomes harder and harder to think Card was unaware of all the Unfortunate Implications he was filling his book with.

Heinlein can get away with military fetishization in Starship Troopers in part because Veerhoven satirized it so completely nobody can take it seriously any more, and also because the book isn't presented as a children's book. Ender's Game, as presented to kids, is basically violent wish fulfillment. Ender is able to strike back at bullies without consequences, and those bullies hate him because Ender is better than them. What better wish fulfillment for an awkward 12 year old? Certainly was that for me.

 

[Hygro]

Basically what Tim said. If it was just "The Bugs are an intractable menace that cannot be reasoned with, only destroyed" I'd dismiss it as boilerplate sci-fi, but then we run into the fact Ender is never held responsible for any of his actions. In the section on Earth he brutally assaults someone and we never hear about it again apart from some dismissal it was all right because the person he attacked was a bit of a bully. We see it again during training where he straight up murders a kid and again, no repercussions, because the kid was being a bit of a bully. Card tries to hand wave it away as Ender wanting to make sure he "won't be attacked again/ won't give the bully the opportunity to be a bully again"; it isn't Ender's fault he murdered someone, and even if it was, he was doing it with the purest of morals. Throughout the whole book, from a personal level to a galactic level, Card makes it pretty clear he believes that any enemy must be killed -or damaged to the point of killing- because there cannot possibly be any understanding. This is a fairly abhorrent concept that Card allows Ender to get away with by always making it "not his fault", "he didn't know what he was doing", or "he did it with good intent".

It shouldn't be that hard to see how it fits into fascist (or heck, garden variety authoritarianism) propaganda. Pinochet chucked people out of helicopters because they, like the Bugs or Ender's bullies, were an intractable threat that cannot be allowed to exist. Throw in Card's weird interest in eugenics with Ender being bred to be smart and it becomes harder and harder to think Card was unaware of all the Unfortunate Implications he was filling his book with.

Heinlein can get away with military fetishization in Starship Troopers in part because Veerhoven satirized it so completely nobody can take it seriously any more, and also because the book isn't presented as a children's book. Ender's Game, as presented to kids, is basically violent wish fulfillment. Ender is able to strike back at bullies without consequences, and those bullies hate him because Ender is better than them. What better wish fulfillment for an awkward 12 year old? Certainly was that for me.

Or maybe it was an examination of the logic of a society 100% determined to achieve a goal and what that could entail.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

"I read The Casual Vacancy and half a Robert Galbraith novel, and they weren't really that great. Never touching Rowling again!"

This is not the best argument. I am not even slightly interested in Harry Potter.

I will give an example of when I changed my mind about an author, though. There's an old Star Trek novel by John M. Ford called "How Much for Just the Planet"?. I tried to get through it. I forced myself to read it, and in the end I put it down and actually considered returning it to the bookstore. It was a really tough slog.

But a few years later I was introduced to operetta and suddenly realized why I hadn't enjoyed the Star Trek book. It's a Star Trek operetta written in prose form. So I put myself in the mindset I had back when I was working in musical theatre, imagined myself sitting in the audience and watching the events of the novel on a stage, complete with costumes, orchestra, props, and the usual kind of characters found in musicals... and loved it. In fact, there are some of us who wish that it were possible to actually perform that novel on stage, because it's really quite humorous.

Summarized for brevity.


Does it ever occur to you that possibly, among all these people that dislike you, not all of them dislike you because you are an atheist?

Does it ever occur to you that you are often completely wrong in interpreting what I say?

At no time did I say my college prof disliked me, and at no time did I say I disliked him. His attempts at proselytization were annoying, yes. Did I make a fuss about it at the time? No. I had a choice to make: Report him and open a can of worms that wouldn't have done me much good in the long run, given that this is a bible belt - even though proselytizing students was against the rules - or just do what I ended up doing. I told him (truthfully) that I had a full load of courses and had no time for extra reading. I also told him (truthfully) that a couple of young missionaries had left a copy of the Book of Mormon with my grandmother and it was in the house where I could read it. I never told him I had zero intentions of reading it. I let him believe what he wanted to, and once he found out that one of my courses was French (twice as much work as the rest of them), he let the matter drop. Mind you, if he'd been the sort to mark me down in retaliation, damn right I'd have reported him.

Later on that year I ran into him on the bus - an unusual thing, since he usually drove. He mentioned his car being in the repair shop, so we chatted on the cross-town bus. He mentioned that he was interested in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and wondered if I knew where he could buy a copy. I told him I had copies of several of Clarke's books dealing with that story, and I would be happy to lend them to him.

That was on a Saturday, and on Monday I brought him the books - 3 of them - and I remember a friend wondering why my books were on the front table. She was flabbergasted that not only had I not reported his attempt at proselytization, but now I'm lending him my books?! I told her that I didn't report him because it seemed that he was genuinely concerned, didn't push when I said no, and after all he had done me the favor of suggesting I write about science fiction for my term paper. To this day I don't know what, if anything, he got out of reading those Clarke books. He never said and I never asked. He returned them the following week and no more was said about either my lack of religion in my daily life or his inexplicable interest in Arthur C. Clarke's novels.

 

[Mouthwash]

Basically what Tim said. If it was just "The Bugs are an intractable menace that cannot be reasoned with, only destroyed" I'd dismiss it as boilerplate sci-fi, but then we run into the fact Ender is never held responsible for any of his actions. In the section on Earth he brutally assaults someone and we never hear about it again apart from some dismissal it was all right because the person he attacked was a bit of a bully. We see it again during training where he straight up murders a kid and again, no repercussions, because the kid was being a bit of a bully. Card tries to hand wave it away as Ender wanting to make sure he "won't be attacked again/ won't give the bully the opportunity to be a bully again"; it isn't Ender's fault he murdered someone, and even if it was, he was doing it with the purest of morals. Throughout the whole book, from a personal level to a galactic level, Card makes it pretty clear he believes that any enemy must be killed -or damaged to the point of killing- because there cannot possibly be any understanding. This is a fairly abhorrent concept that Card allows Ender to get away with

How is that an abhorrent concept? That's the justification for any war of self-defense. And considering what the final consequences are (Ender destroys an alien race, spends his life trying to undo his actions), I certainly don't think Card thinks that "any enemy must be killed."

Here are more events in the Ender universe that show how nonsensical your claim is:

Spoiler Spoilers for Ender in Exile and the Shadow Series :

Ender picked himself up calmly and rose to face him again.

"You know that I'm telling you the truth," said Ender. "That's why you're so angry."

"I'm angry because you say I'm the son of the killer of my father!"

"Achilles Flandres murdered everyone who showed him kindness. A nun who arranged for his crippled leg to be restored. The surgeon who fixed the leg. A girl who took him in when he was the least successful street bully in Rotterdam—he pretended to love her, but then he strangled her and threw her body in the Rhine. He blew up the house where your father was living, in the effort to kill him and his whole family. He kidnapped Petra and tried to seduce her but she despised him. It was Julian Delphiki that she loved. You are their child, born of their love and hope." Achilles rushed at him again—but deliberately made it a clumsy move, so that Ender would have plenty of time to block him, to strike at him. But again Ender made no move to step away. He took the blow, this time a deep punch in the stomach, and fell to the ground, gasping, retching.

And then rose up again. "I know you better than you know yourself," said Ender.

"You're the father of lies," said Achilles.

"Never call yourself by that vile name again. You're not Achilles. Your father is the hero who rid the world of
that monster."

Again Achilles struck at him—this time walking up slowly and bringing his fist hugely into Ender's nose, breaking it. Blood spurted from his nostrils and covered the front of his shirt almost instantly. Valentine cried out as Ender staggered and then fell to his knees.

"Fight me," hissed Achilles.

"Don't you get it?" said Ender. "I will never raise my hand against the son of my friends."

Achilles kicked him in the jaw so hard it flung him over backward. This was no staged fight like in the silly vids, where the hero and the villain delivered killing blows, yet their opponent got up to fight again. The damage to Ender's body was deep and real. It made him clumsy and unbalanced. An easy target. He's not going to kill me, thought Achilles. It came to him as such a relief that he laughed aloud. And then he thought: It's Mother's plan after all. Why did I ever imagine I should let him kill me? I'm the son of Achilles Flandres. His true son. I can kill the ones who need killing. I can end this pernicious life, once and for all, avenging my father and the hive queens and those two boys that Ender killed.

Achilles kicked Ender in the ribs as he lay on his back in the grass. The ribs broke so loudly that even Valentine could hear them; she screamed.

"Hush," said Ender. "This is how it goes."

Then Ender rolled over—wincing, then crying out softly with the pain. Yet he managed, somehow, to rise to his feet.

Whereupon he put his hands in his pockets.

"You can destroy the vids you're recording," said Ender. "No one will know that you murdered me. They won't believe Valentine. So you can claim self-defense. Everyone will believe it—you've made them hate me and fear me. Of course you had to kill me to save your own life."

Ender wanted to die? Now? At Achilles' hand? "What's your game?" Achilles asked.

"Your supposed mother raised you to take vengeance for her fantasy lover, your fraudulent father. Do it—do what she raised you to do, be who she planned you to be. But I will not raise my hand against the son of my friends, no matter how deluded you are."

"Then you're the fool," said Achilles. "Because I will do it. For my father's sake, and my mother's, for that poor boy Stilson, and Bonzo Madrid, and the formics, and the whole human race."

Achilles began the beating in earnest then. Another blow to the belly. Another blow to the face. Two more kicks to the body as he lay unmoving on the ground. "Is this what you did to the Stilson boy?" he asked. "Kicking him again and again—that's what the report said."

"Son," said Ender. "Of my friends."

"Please," begged Valentine. Yet she made no move to stop him. Nor did she summon help.

"Now it's time for you to die," said Achilles.

A kick to the head would do it. And if it didn't, two kicks. The human brain could not stand being rattled around inside the skull like that. Either dead or so brain-damaged he might as well be. That was how the life of Ender the Xenocide would end.

He approached Wiggin's supine body. The eyes were looking up at him through the blood still pouring from his broken nose. But for some reason, despite the hot rage pounding in his own head, Achilles did not kick him. Stood there unmoving.

"The son of Achilles would do it," whispered Ender.

Why am I not killing him? Am I a coward after all? Am I so unworthy of my father? Ender is right—my father would have killed him because it was necessary, without any qualms, without this hesitation.

In that moment, he saw what all of Ender's words really meant. Mother had been deceived. She had been told the child was Achilles Flandres's. She had lied to him as he grew up, telling him that he was her son, but she was only a surrogate. He knew her well enough by now to recognize that her stories were shaped more by what she needed the truth to be than by what it actually was. Why hadn't he reached the obvious conclusion—that everything she said was a lie? Because she never let up, not for an instant. She shaped his world and did not allow any contrary evidence to come to light.

The way the teachers manipulated the children who fought the war for them.

Achilles knew it, had always known it. Ender Wiggin won a war that he didn't know he was fighting; he slaughtered a species that he thought was just a computer simulation. The way that I believed that Achilles Flandres was my father, that I bore his name and had a duty to fulfill his destiny or avenge his murder.

......

"Val, you know something? I thought for a minute there that he was really going to kill me."

"Oh, you poor thing. It must have been devastating to realize you had bet wrong on the outcome."

"I had thought that if it came to that moment, if I really knew that I was going to die, it would come as a relief. None of this would be my problem anymore. Someone else could clean up the mess."

"Yes, me, I'm so grateful that you were going to dump it all on me."

"But when he was coming back to finish me off—I knew he planned a kick or two in the head, and my head was already so foggy from concussion that I knew it would finish me—when he came walking up to me, I wasn't relieved at all. I wanted to get up. Would have if I could."

"And run away, if you had any brains."

"No, Val," said Ender sadly. "I wanted to get up and kill him first. I didn't want to die. It didn't matter what I thought I deserved, or how I thought it would bring me peace, or at least oblivion. None of that was in my head by then. It was just: Live. Live, whatever it takes. Even if you have to kill to do it."

"Wow," said Valentine. "You've just discovered the survival instinct. Everybody else has known about it for years."

"There are people who don't have that instinct, not the same way," said Ender, "and we give them medals for throwing themselves on grenades or running into a burning house to save a baby. Posthumously, mind you. But all sorts of honors."

"They have the instinct," said Valentine. "They just care about something else more."

"I don't," said Ender. "Care about anything more."

"You let him beat you until you couldn't fight him," said Valentine. "Only when you knew you couldn't hurt him did you let yourself feel that survival instinct. So don't give me any more of this crap about how you're still the same evil person who killed those other boys. You proved that you could win by deliberately losing. Done. Enough. Please don't pick a fight with anybody again unless you intend to win it. All right? Promise?"

"No promises," said Ender. "But I'll try not to get killed. I still have things to do."

Spoiler Spoiler for Xenocide :

The flames crackled. Grego picked up the boy and carried him, staggering out of the reach of the hottest flames, and then farther out, into the darkness, into a place where it was cool. All the men were driven this way, the flames herding them, the wind driving the flames. Most were like Grego, exhausted, frightened, in pain from the fire or helping someone else. But some, many perhaps, were still untouched except by the inner fire that Grego and Nimbo had ignited in the square. "Burn them all!" The voices here and there, smaller mobs like tiny eddies in a larger stream, but they now held brands and torches from the fires raging in the forest's heart. "For Quim and Christ! For Libo and Pipo! No trees! No trees!"

Grego staggered onward. "Set me down," said Nimbo.

And onward.

"I can walk."

But Grego's errand was too urgent. He couldn't stop for Nimbo, and he couldn't let the boy walk, couldn't wait for him and couldn't leave him behind. You don't leave your brother's son behind in a burning forest. So he carried him, and after awhile, exhausted, his legs and arms aching from the exertion, his shoulder a white sun of agony where he had been burned, he emerged from the forest into the grassy space before the old gate, where the path wound down from the wood to join the path from the xenobiology labs.

The mob had gathered here, many of them holding torches, but for some reason they were still a distance away from the two isolated trees that stood watch here: Human and Rooter. Grego pushed his way through the crowd, still holding Nimbo; his heart was racing, and he was filled with fear and anguish and yet a spark of hope, for he knew why the men with torches had stopped. And when he reached the edge of the mob, he saw that he was right. There were gathered around those last two fathertrees perhaps two hundred pequenino brothers and wives, small and beleaguered, but with an air of defiance about them. They would fight to the death on this spot, rather than let these last two trees be burned-- but burn they would, if the mob decided so, for there was no hope of pequeninos standing in the way of men determined to do murder.

......

"Stay inside the fence," said Miro. "Someone else is coming to protect the pequeninos now."

"Who? The police?" Several people laughed bitterly, since so many of them were police, or had seen policemen among the crowd.

"Here they are," said Miro.

A low hum could be heard, soft at first, barely audible in the roaring of the fire, but then louder and louder, until five fliers came into view, skimming the tops of the grass as they circled the mob, sometimes black in silhouette against the burning forest, sometimes shining with reflected fire when they were on the opposite side. At last they came to rest, all five of them sinking down onto the tall grass. Only then were the people able to distinguish one black shape from another, as six riders arose from each flying platform. What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at all, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes. They made no threatening gesture, just formed lines before each flier; but no gestures were needed. The sight of them was enough, stirring memories of ancient nightmares and horror stories.

"Deus nos perdoe!" cried several. God forgive us. They were expecting to die.

"Go home," said Miro. "Stay inside the fence."

"What are they?" Nimbo's childish voice spoke for them all.

The answers came as whispers. "Devils." "Destroying angels." "Death."

And then the truth, from Grego's lips, for he knew what they had to be, though it was unthinkable. "Buggers," he said. "Buggers, here on Lusitania."

They did not run from the place. They walked, watching carefully, shying away from the strange new creatures whose existence none of them had guessed at, whose powers they could only imagine, or remember from ancient videos they had studied once in school. The buggers, who had once come close to destroying all of humanity, until they were destroyed in turn by Ender the Xenocide. The book called the Hive Queen had said they were really beautiful and did not need to die. But now, seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes, it was not beauty but terror that they felt. And when they went home, it would be in the knowledge that these, and not just the dwarfish, backward piggies, waited for them just outside the fence. Had they been in prison before? Surely now they were trapped in one of the circles of hell.

At last only Miro, Grego, and Nimbo were left, of all the humans. Around them the piggies also watched in awe-- but not in terror, for they had no insect nightmares lurking in their limbic node the way the humans did. Besides, the buggers had come to them as saviors and protectors. What weighed on them most was not curiosity about these strangers, but rather grief at what they had lost.

"Human begged the hive queen to help them, but she said she couldn't kill humans," said Miro. "Then Jane saw the fire from the satellites in the sky, and told Andrew Wiggin. He spoke to the hive queen and told her what to do. That she wouldn't have to kill anybody."

"They aren't going to kill us?" asked Nimbo.

Grego realized that Nimbo had spent these last few minutes expecting to die. Then it occurred to him that so, too, had he-- that it was only now, with Miro's explanation, that he was sure that they hadn't come to punish him and Nimbo for what they set in motion tonight. Or rather, for what Grego had set in motion, ready for the single small nudge that Nimbo, in all innocence, had given.

Slowly Grego knelt and set the boy down. His arms barely responded to his will now, and the pain in his shoulder was unbearable. He began to cry. But it wasn't for the pain that he was weeping.

The buggers moved now, and moved quickly. Most stayed on the ground, jogging away to take up watch positions around the perimeter of the city. A few remounted the fliers, one to each machine, and took them back up into the air, flying over the burning forest, the flaming grass, spraying them with something that blanketed the fire and slowly put it out.

......

Bishop Peregrino stood on the low foundation wall that had been laid only that morning. The people of Lusitania, all of them, were gathered, sitting in the grass. He used a small amplifier, so that no one could miss his words. But he probably would not have needed it- -all were silent, even the little children, who seemed to catch the somber mood.

Behind the Bishop was the forest, blackened but not utterly lifeless-- a few of the trees were greening again. Before him lay the blanket-covered bodies, each beside its grave. The nearest of them was the corpse of Quim-- Father Estevao. The other bodies were the humans who had died two nights before, under the trees and in the fire.

"These graves will be the floor of the chapel, so that whenever we enter it we tread upon the bodies of the dead. The bodies of those who died as they helped to bring murder and desolation to our brothers the pequeninos. Above all the body of Father Estevao, who died trying to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to a forest of heretics. He dies a martyr. These others died with murder in their hearts and blood on their hands."

"I speak plainly, so that this Speaker for the Dead won't have to add any words after me. I speak plainly, the way Moses spoke to the children of Israel after they worshiped the golden calf and rejected their covenant with God. Of all of us, there are only a handful who have no share of the guilt for this crime. Father Estevao, who died pure, and yet whose name was on the blasphemous lips of those who killed. The Speaker for the Dead, and those who traveled with him to bring home the body of this
martyred priest. And Valentine, the Speaker's sister, who warned the Mayor and me of what would happen. Valentine knew history, she knew humanity, but the Mayor and I thought that we knew you, and that you were stronger than history. Alas for us all that you are as fallen as any other men, and so am I. The sin is on every one of us who could have tried to stop this, and did not! On the wives who did not try to keep their husbands home. On the men who watched but said nothing. And on all who held the torches in their hands and killed a tribe of fellow Christians for a crime done by their distant cousins half a continent away.

"The law is doing its small part of justice. Gerao Gregorio Ribeira von Hesse is in prison, but that is for another crime-- the crime of having violated his trust and told secrets that were not his to tell. He is not in prison for the massacre of the pequeninos, because he has no greater share of guilt for that than the rest of you who followed him. Do you understand me? The guilt is on us all, and all of us must repent together, and do our penance together, and pray that Christ will forgive us all together for the terrible thing we did with his name on our lips!

"I am standing on the foundation of this new chapel, which will be named for Father Estevao, Apostle to the Pequeninos. The blocks of the foundation were torn from the walls of our cathedral-- there are gaping holes there now, where the wind can blow and the rain can fall in upon us as we worship. And so the cathedral will remain, wounded and broken, until this chapel is finished."

"And how will we finish it? You will go home, all of you, to your houses, and you will break open the wall of your own house, and take the blocks that fall, and bring them here. And you will also leave your walls shattered until this chapel is completed Then we will tear holes in the walls of every factory, every building in our colony, until there is no structure that does not show the wound of our sin. And all those wounds will remain until the walls are high enough to put on the roof, which will be beamed and rafted with the scorched trees that fell in the forest, trying to defend their people from our murdering hands."

"And then we will come, all of us, to this chapel, and enter it on our knees, one by one, until every one of us has crawled over the graves of our dead, and under the bodies of those ancient brothers who lived as trees in the third life our merciful God had given them until we ended it. There we will all pray for forgiveness. We will pray for our venerated Father Estevao to intercede for us. We will pray for Christ to include our terrible sin in his atonement, so we will not have to spend eternity in hell. We will pray for God to purify us."

"Only then will we repair our damaged walls, and heal our houses. That is our penance, my children. Let us pray that it is enough."

Throw in Card's weird interest in eugenics with Ender being bred to be smart and it becomes harder and harder to think Card was unaware of all the Unfortunate Implications he was filling his book with.

Card has explicitly rejected the idea of eugenics (saying that it was a completely unrealistic aspect of the book), so I don't see any reason to read into this.

Heinlein can get away with military fetishization in Starship Troopers in part because Veerhoven satirized it so completely nobody can take it seriously any more, and also because the book isn't presented as a children's book. Ender's Game, as presented to kids, is basically violent wish fulfillment. Ender is able to strike back at bullies without consequences, and those bullies hate him because Ender is better than them. What better wish fulfillment for an awkward 12 year old? Certainly was that for me.

What, you read it and then punched a kid in school so you could be like Ender? No wonder you seem so butt-hurt.

This is not the best argument. I am not even slightly interested in Harry Potter.

Not... interested? Even if you hate the concept, you aren't even a bit curious about what's in the most well-known fantasy novels of our time?

 

[CurtSibling]

Reading the arguments raging about this mediocre writer, it makes me glad I stick to quality SF authors like Blish and Niven.

 

[Mouthwash]

You know, when I made this thread I didn't realize how much I'd have to defend Card's writing instead of his politics.

 

[CurtSibling]

You know, when I made this thread I didn't realize how much I'd have to defend Card's writing instead of his politics.

Any thread about writers always ends up a can of worms. You've done rather well so far.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not... interested? Even if you hate the concept, you aren't even a bit curious about what's in the most well-known fantasy novels of our time?

I'm happy to second the notion of not being remotely interested in Harry Potter. Same with the teletubbies.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not... interested? Even if you hate the concept, you aren't even a bit curious about what's in the most well-known fantasy novels of our time?

Nope. Even if I was, the incessant media blitz and ads for tie-in merchandise for the first movie killed any interest I might have had. Let Rowling try to impress me with her writing, not ads for Harry Potter towels and toilet paper.

When I first read fantasy stories, it was stuff like Grimms' Fairy Tales. I was an impressionable child, and some of these stories scared the hell out of me. I decided I'd rather not read stuff like that, and opted for dog stories (I wasn't always into cats). That progressed to mystery and adventure stories - the type that librarians and teachers looked askance at because girls weren't supposed to like that stuff. Then along came Star Trek and I started reading all the science fiction I could find. There were a few fantasy books along the way - Andre Norton wrote in both genres, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series defies any attempt to put it definitively in one category or other.

In 1985 a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight - the first Dragonlance novel. I'd gotten into Fighting Fantasy and D&D a few years earlier, so a novel based on an RPG sounded interesting. By the third time I'd read that book I had to admit I was hooked on it. Fast-forward 30+ years, and I've got a whole bookshelf full of nothing but Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Athas novels. My NaNoWriMo projects involve novelizing various Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

So there's no room for Harry Potter in my life. I'm just not interested, like I'm not interested in Tolkien. I did try to get into Tolkien, but found the writing style boring.

You're free to like Harry Potter, and free to consider it wonderful writing, if that's your view. This is one situation when we will have to agree to disagree, because you are unlikely to be successful in changing my mind.

 

[Mouthwash]

Nope. Even if I was, the incessant media blitz and ads for tie-in merchandise for the first movie killed any interest I might have had. Let Rowling try to impress me with her writing, not ads for Harry Potter towels and toilet paper.

I think most of the commercialization came after the Deathly Hallows. Besides, why should that affect your opinion of the books? if you want to be impressed by writing, how about you just read what's written?

In 1985 a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight - the first Dragonlance novel. I'd gotten into Fighting Fantasy and D&D a few years earlier, so a novel based on an RPG sounded interesting. By the third time I'd read that book I had to admit I was hooked on it. Fast-forward 30+ years, and I've got a whole bookshelf full of nothing but Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Athas novels. My NaNoWriMo projects involve novelizing various Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

Wait, you read Forgotten Realms? You said you didn't know what Menzoberranzan was!

You're free to like Harry Potter, and free to consider it wonderful writing, if that's your view. This is one situation when we will have to agree to disagree, because you are unlikely to be successful in changing my mind.

You mean I'm unlikely to be successful in getting you to read a single word of a book you've never read. You're a very open-minded person, you know that? (If it helps, I also think that Rowling is incredibly arrogant and in love with her own success, but that doesn't change my opinion of the books.)

Finally... if you absolutely refuse to ever read Harry Potter, you might at least try Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction that can be read on its own and has more appeal to sci-fi fans.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Or... you can accept that some people just are not interested in Harry Potter and all its attendant snufflewuffs and pugglewugs.

 

[Mouthwash]

Or... you can accept that some people just are not interested in Harry Potter and all its attendant snufflewuffs and pugglewugs.

I'll accept it when she reads any of it and still isn't interested.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Why? If nothing she knows about it so far has enticed her, ler her get on with the things that actually interest her.