Fandom Pulse sat down for an interview with one of the last living greats of science fiction, Orson Scott Card.
The Alvin Maker series is more explicitly tied to American spiritual and folk tradition than almost anything else in fantasy. Do you think today’s readership is equipped to receive that material, or has something been lost in how we read myth?
What’s been lost is a knowledge of our own history. I remember my wife’s and my amusement and shock when we got a fan letter early in the Alvin Maker sequence, in which a reader said how much she loved the way I was dealing with American history, but then added, “And I never knew that George Washington had been beheaded.” What? She thought that bit of alternate history was true? Hadn’t she studied American history in high school? How can an alternate fantasy history of America resonate properly with readers who don’t know real American history in the first place?
Your book Characters and Viewpoint remains required reading decades later. How has your own understanding of character changed since you wrote it?
I think the techniques laid out in Characters and Viewpoint remain true and useful. I’m sad to see some of the nonsense that has begun to pervade the teaching of writing in the universities. Present tense narrative is NOT part of the American tradition. Past tense is the way we tell the truth. Idiotic nonrules of grammar have perverted our language. Yes you CAN and sometimes MUST end sentences with words that are often used as prepositions. To merrily split infinitives is one of the treasured traditions in English; poor Latin couldn’t split their infinitives. But that’s no reason to deprive ourselves of such a useful device. I sometimes think that my seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was the last American teacher giving students a grounding in grammar and structure. I did love diagramming sentences.
Ender’s Game has become one of the defining works of 20th century science fiction. At what point did you realize the book had taken on a life entirely outside your control, and how do you not let that dominate your creativity?
Early in the life of the novel Ender’s Game, I was at an event in Utah Valley, when a librarian from a local Junior High School confided to me, “Ender’s Game is our ‘most-lost book.’” I thought: If young readers can’t bear to part with the book, it must be touching something deep in their souls.
I’m happy with the number of people who tell me that Ender’s Game was important in their youth. There are also people who feel that way about Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. If I knew what worked so well in those books, I’d do it every time. Instead, I do as I’ve always done: I tell a story I care about and believe in as clearly as I can, and then hope that readers will find value in it.
Prolific authors often say their best work gets buried under their most famous title. Do you have a book or series you wish more readers would find, something you feel hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves?
I don’t resent the popularity or success of Ender’s Game, I’m grateful that any of my books has won readers’ hearts. Yes, I think I’ve written better books; Yes, I’m proud of all my stories. And some few people have told me, over the years, that their favorite of my books is one of the less well-known ones.
Read the rest of it there.