The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card
I have just finished a sci-fi orgy – reading, in order, Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Ender’s Shadow. The series started in 1977 and the last of the ones that I read was published in 1999. Card is nothing if not prolific, the author of some 50 books in a number of series ranging from science fiction to women of the book of Genesis.
To the books: if was 14 again, I would have adored these novels. The plots are modestly engaging if uncomplicated, not particularly involved or challenging. The dialog is similar – it keeps you going, but is not really scintillating very often. However the science fiction is relatively cool, and the characters are able to do very interesting things – there are battles between siblings, there is politics, religion, war, philosophy and ethics. There is romance, but not much sex (more on that later). There are multiple worlds and faster-than-light travel and sentient computer programs. There are “games” kids play while relaxing that are actually liked to alien minds. There are interesting ideas for sure and intriguing uses of cultures (not many folks can combine Samoan culture with higher-order artificial intelligence and create an entire world where those with obsessive-compulsive disorders are revered for their genius.
Moreover, these novels won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in back to back years (a rarity if not the only instance of this happening) and Card has be lauded by many literary organizations, authors, and academic institutions.
So, what’s not to like?
I felt vaguely uncomfortable after reading the first novel, Ender’s Game and that discomfort continued through the rest of the novels.
First, the Ender series is based on the notion that the world is breeding children for intelligence while at the same time controlling the population (i.e., 2 children per couple). The 5, 6, 7, and 8 year-olds are plucked from their families and trained for combat. The earth, and all humanity is preparing for another encounter with the Formics (aka the Buggers) who were only narrowly (and admittedly, by sheer luck) defeated in their first foray into humanity’s hegemony. I found these toddlers spouting Clausewitz, studying tactics, formed into mock armies that fight each other at The Battle School at bit off-putting. You have to buy into the premise – that the entire human universe needs a commander capable of leading all of the human’s military might against the enemy and that commander is going to – after 70 years of searching – come from someone who is between 8 and 12 years old. When Star Trek did eugenics in “The Wrath of Khan”, it was kind of cool. Card doing it with babies who kill each other – pretend-wise in mock battles, in reality due to interpersonal conflicts and to survive alone in the future’s big city slums, is creepy. Sort of like that investment banking commercial with the talking baby in the high chair….kinda creepy.
Second, the major ethical issue of the series is xenocide – the complete and total destruction of an alien race. Xenocide is the result of the training of these young children to be military commanders and Card deals with both the acculturation of these young leaders that enables it, and the adults who place all their faith – and the fate of all humanity – on a bunch of kids they have brutally trained in uber-Darwinian fashion. Without giving too much away, Card’s biggest dilemma is not the actual fact of xenocide, but the fact that he has created a sympathetic character – a child yet – who is both responsible, but also a “victim”. Sound familiar – a boy traumatized (by both the upcoming conflict and the adults who are training him) and convinced that this alien race is going to destroy humanity. Thus, the total destruction of this race is justified. The parallels were/are disturbing – and they were really disturbing for Elaine Radford who asserts that Card is creating an apologia for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. See Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman at http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html. Radford is more than a bit extreme, but she has a very provocative perspective.
It would appear that Card is saying that IF your intentions were legitimate, then there is no moral dilemma. And here is where I was most disturbed by Card. In his series, two different children end up in position where they could kill another child (in one case, twice). With the first child (the double killer), the intentions were titularly self defense and safety and the results are two dead children. However, it is abundantly unclear that death was the only solution -- and the perpetrator was never told he had killed someone. In the second case, while clearly taking care of a real threat to his life, a child plots, plans, and executes a very involved plan that could, but does not end up in a killing. In Card’s world, the first child, the real killer of children is as clean as the second child who did not kill because his intentions were morally correct. I don’t buy it and neither does John Kessler, who has written a much more elegant discussion of what is fundamentally disturbing about Orson Scott Card’s morality here – see Creating the Innocent Killer at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
Third, my search for info on Orson Scott Card found the two articles above, but also found an enormous amount of bad press about the guy. Do an Internet search and you find any number of people who have bad things to say about Card, e.g.,
First, an accusation that he is a homophobe. Catch this quote “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison.” Now, to be fair, Card was raised as a Mormon and writes compassionately about the Catholic Church and neither of those institutions have been exactly soft on homosexual rights.
Second, he has accused Barack Obama of being an “elitist” and holding environmentalism as a religion because of comments Obama has made about the USA's disproportionate impact on the environment "We already know, from Obama's comments at a private meeting with big-pocket donors in San Francisco that he's an elitist who sneers at the common people who cling to religion and guns because they're bitter about job losses twenty years ago. But what this statement reveals is that Obama's real religion has nothing to do with Reverend Wright. Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism. Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us with a vital service; and it doesn't take any faith to believe in the findings of genuine scientists doing science properly. No, I'm speaking of the religion. It's not an organized religion (though the U.N. did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of human-caused global warming…”
Now that’s kinda off-the-wall – particularly the comments about the UN – what’s next, ranting about “black helicopters”?
Third, he is more than occasionally swept away by his religious beliefs. While writing about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (and making at least a cogent argument for why it should not be seen as anti-Semitic), he shouts out this one, "Hollywood touts itself as courageous -- just like the rest of the PC Left -- whenever they stomp on Christians. It's part of the elitist war on Christianity that's clearly going on. Other people's ethnic heritage "folk beliefs"can be celebrated in school -- but Christian customs and beliefs can hardly be mentioned.” Sorry, Orson Scott Card, but you will have to do a lot more that quote Pat Buchanan to get me to believe there is any effective concerted effort to prosecute a “war” on Christianity in the United States. If anything, coming from someone who is not Christian but lives in a very conservative, Christian county, the battle is to get most people to understand that not everyone is Christian.
So, wrapping all this up….it would appear that Mr. Card is an inventive writer, a man of deep religious beliefs, a author committed to advancing the state-of-the-art of writing, and more than occasionally a writer of deeply conservative and reactionary screeds. A complicated man.
So, it is a mixed bag for sure. However, I do not believe I will be buying any more of Mr. Card’s books.
