So I\u2019m a \u201clittle late with the blogpost today, Blogboy,\u201d according to some anonymous commenter on yesterday\u2019s post. One would think that savoring the lyrics to \u201cCannibal Eyes\u201d would take a true arts connoisseur a week or two, but since no true arts connoisseurs read this blog, I\u2019m not surprised that many of you lack the appreciation for lyrical perfection. Especially where I internally rhyme \u201cbug me\u201d with \u201cugly,\u201d or where I refer to eyes that salivate.<\/p>\n
Over the past couple of weeks, I\u2019ve been savoring some great stuff, too \u2013 I\u2019m rereading the Ender\u2019s Game<\/span> series, which remain Orson Scott Card\u2019s best books by far. (Ten years ago, I\u2019d have said that distinction belongs to the Tales of Alvin Maker <\/span>series, but back then he\u2019d only written the first three books, and now the storyline has run out of steam. I\u2019m not all that anxious for the next installment. )<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t read Ender\u2019s Game<\/span>, read it. Right now<\/span>. Seriously. Throw your laptop to the floor and go read it. It\u2019s certainly the best science fiction novel I\u2019ve ever read, and maybe one of the very best books of any genre. I will say nothing of the book\u2019s plot as I don\u2019t want to even hint at any spoilers, only to say it\u2019s a perfectly realized story, beautifully told. And it\u2019s butt-kicking exciting. It\u2019ll make a great movie, too, if they can find child actors who can carry the load.<\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t remember is that the three sequels \u2013 Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide<\/span>, and Children of the Mind<\/span> \u2013 are great, too. It\u2019s hard to say if they\u2019re as good as Ender\u2019s Game, because, as Card himself has noted on many, many occasions, they\u2019re not exactly true sequels. The tone of the later books is radically different; they\u2019re not \u201caction packed,\u201d and Ender, who is a preteen in the first book, is middle-aged in all the other ones. They take place 3,000 years after Ender\u2019s Game, and they deal with thorny philosophical issues rather than interstellar war.<\/p>\n I like them, though. A lot.<\/p>\n A mutual friend of mine and Card\u2019s had loaned me a copy of Xenocide<\/span> several months before the book was actually published, so this is the first time I\u2019m reading my own hardbound version which Card signed himself, in which he added the date – July of \u201991 \u2013 and the question \u201cDid you wash your hands?\u201d That will make sense if you read the story, but it didn\u2019t make sense to my daughter Cleta, who asked me why Orson Scott Card was demanding that his books only be handled by people with good hygiene.<\/p>\n What\u2019s interesting this time around is rediscovering just how Mormon these books are, even though they take place in a Catholic colony. Card, as you may or may not know, is a practicing Mormon himself, and he served an LDS mission to Brazil. So almost all of his characters in this story speak Portuguese and have Portuguese names, which tends to be somewhat confusing for pathetic monoglots like myself.<\/p>\n What isn\u2019t confusing, at least to me, is the LDS concept of intelligence, which is eternal and preexistent. Card incorporates the doctrine into the idea of \u201cauias\u201d and \u201cphilotes,\u201d which exist Outside and are called Inside to inhabit physical bodies through mortality. He also slips up once and has Ender as a converted Catholic quoting Jesus as saying \u201cI, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men,\u201d which is a passage from the Doctrine and Covenants, not the New Testament. When he asks his wife where that passage comes from, she responds by saying \u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not a scriptorian.\u201d<\/p>\n Or this blog post, conjured up out of the ether, albeit too late for the anonymous guy who calls me Blogboy.<\/p>\n