Orson Scott Card has been named to the UNC-TV board of trustees reports the Greensboro (North Carolina) News & Record. The board of trustees is an advisory group to the UNC Board of Governors which holds UNC-TV’s broadcast licenses and is responsible for the organization.
The controversial SF writer has lived in Greensboro since 1983. He responded to the News & Record’s request for comment: “Those who want my actual views will consult the originals and not the deliberately distorted reports.”
UNC-TV board Chairman Robb Teer said in a press release, “We are pleased to welcome Mr. Card to the UNC-TV board of trustees. We are grateful for his willingness to serve and look forward to working with him to continue providing the people of our state with enriching, life-changing television in these challenging times.”
Last year UNC-TV produced 340 hours of original programming, such as North Carolina Now, Legislative Week in Review, and North Carolina Weekend.
Right after the requisite exclusive clip and banter with moderator Chris Hardwick the first fan to ask a question, who butted in line to ask it, got right to the point. “There’s actually been a lot of controversy about the author of the book,” the young woman said. “How involved was he in making the film?” The response, from the film’s producer Roberto Orci, was direct.
When brought up during a Q&A session during Summit’s Comic-Con presentation for the film, Orci said, “The truth is you never want to court controversy, but we decided to use the attention on us to support Lionsgate’s statement of support of LGBT rights. So rather than shy away, we are happy to embrace it and use the spotlight to say we support LGBT rights.”
Ford told reporters that while he fundamentally disagrees with the author’s stance, the film stands separate from the issue.
“I think none of Mr. Card’s concerns regarding the issues of gay marriage are part of the thematics of this film,” Ford said. “He has written something that I think is of value to us all concerning moral responsibility. I think his views outside of those that we deal with in this film are not an issue for me to deal with and something I have really no opinion on.
“I am aware of his statements admitting that the question of gay marriage is a battle that he lost and he admits that he lost it. I think we all know that we’ve all won. That humanity has won. And I think that’s the end of the story.”
While the stars of Ender’s Game are promoting the movie at Comic-Con, saying all the right things as the studio tries to head off an anti-Card boycott, a new clip has been released — with Harrison Ford in character speaking over scenes of Mazer Rackham’s heroics in the last war.
When Ender’s Game takes its turn in San Diego Comic Con’s Hall H this Thursday, Harrison Ford will appear with producer Bob Orci, director Gavin Hood, and co-stars Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, and Abigail Breslin.
Orson Scott Card will be somewhere else.
Card’s brand now is as much identified with his anti-gay rhetoric as with his award-winning fiction, and in his capacity as a director of the National Organization for Marriage he is a leading opponent of same-sex marriage laws. He is a target of protestors, who succeeded in running Card off a Superman comic he’d been signed to do for DC. Now they are building support for a boycott of the movie based on Card’s novel due out in November.
Promoting Ender’s Game without Card would be like trying to promote the first Harry Potter movie without J.K. Rowling. But having Card appear in the main ballroom in front of 6,500 fans could prove a liability if he’s forced to tackle the issue head-on during the Q&A session.
However, the latest efforts to avert bad publicity for Ender’s Game display none of Hollywood’s usual flair for faking sincerity. Consider two statements released last week.
Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.
Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.
[We] obviously do not agree with the personal views of Orson Scott Card and those of the National Organization for Marriage. However, they are completely irrelevant to a discussion of Ender’s Game. The simple fact is that neither the underlying book nor the film itself reflect these views in any way, shape or form.
A benefit premiere, indeed any outreach to the LGBT community by Lionsgate, ought to be much appreciated. What’s clear is that whether or not they support his views, Lionsgate is standing by their man and their would-be blockbuster. They made the common, perhaps cynical, calculation that audiences wouldn’t connect Ender’s Game with Card’s very public homophobia—or wouldn’t care. Geeks OUT appreciates that most American families work for every dollar and care deeply about where that money goes and what it supports.
Geeks Out urged readers to go to its new Skip Ender’s Game site and sign a pledge to spend no money on the movie:
Skip Ender’s Game is a call to action. Do NOT see this movie! Do not buy a ticket at the theater, do not purchase the DVD, do not watch it on-demand. Ignore all merchandise and toys. However much you may have admired his books, keep your money out of Orson Scott Card’s pockets.
The NY Times reports only around 2,000 people had signed up in the site’s first 6 days online. Geeks Out says hundreds more are signing each day. Even so, that is not a material part of the movie’s potential audience.
Despite the studio keeping him away from Comic Con, Orson Scott Card has been busy reasserting his identification with Ender’s Game. This month production began on a 6-hour audioplay Ender’s Game Alive to be published by Audible.com – which Card calls the definitive version of his story. More than 30 actors voice over 100 characters, with Kirby Heyborne as Ender Wiggin, Emily Rankin (Orson Scott Card’s daughter) as Bean, Alison Bews as Hot Soup and Jim Meskimen as Dink Meeker.
Providing four or five other voices in the spoken-word recording are Harlan Ellison and Janis Ian.
Ellison’s participation came up in John Rabe’s interview for the Pasadena NPR outlet. Ellison frankly disapproved Card’s views, though said he still found him personally likeable:
[Some of Card’s opinions are] wrong, ultimately destructive, anti-human and anti-peaceful. But he’s never done me any harm. And he’s a smart guy…. What Scott Card believes is what Scott Card believes, and what I believe is something entirely different.
At a public appearance over the weekend the writer angrily objected to the way his comments had been used, for in addition to posting the full 15-minute interview, the station cut a separate 2-minute excerpt of Ellison’s responses about Card and drove traffic to it with a headline “SF author Harlan Ellison on juvenile delinquents, gays and Orson Scott Card” as if he was part of the controversy. (“Juvenile delinquents” because of the signing party for two early Ellison novels reprinted by Kicks Books.)
Ellison feels he is able to relate to his friend Scott Card without agreeing with his views, an attitude not uncommon among sf writers of his generation whether on the left or right. But the shame-and-shun culture of the internet doesn’t accept that as an option, feeling it is more than a petty inconsistency.
Ender’s Game Alive promotional videos. (1) Harlan Ellison and Janis Ian end their recording session with a selfie.
(2) Author Orson Scott Card discusses the creation of the audioplay for Ender’s Game Alive.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver, John King Tarpinian and Andrew Porter for the story.]
What if J. Pierpont Morgan got Teddy Roosevelt pregnant? What if Commodore Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie were adventursome unicorns? Then Wall Street Journal readers could enjoy thematic fan fiction every bit as pedestrian as the fan-written works already receiving the Journal’s attention.
The success of Fifty Shades of Grey has been paralleled by endless articles about its fan-fic roots. These typically dwell on Kirk and Spock being amorous and Harry Potter’s remarkable lack of chastity, and end with the traditional question: why aren’t these writers being sued?
The Wall Street Journal only departs from the usual pattern because Orson Scott Card tells them he is about to do something completely unexpected:
After spending years fending off fan fiction, and occasionally sending out “cease and desist” letters through his lawyer to block potential copyright violations, science-fiction novelist Orson Scott Card has started courting fan writers. Mr. Card, author of the best-selling “Ender’s Game” series, is planning to host a contest for “Ender’s Game” fan fiction this fall. Fans will be able to submit their work to his Web site. The winning stories will be published as an anthology that will become part of the official “canon” of the “Ender’s Game” series.
“Every piece of fan fiction is an ad for my book,” Mr. Card says. “What kind of idiot would I be to want that to disappear?”
Update 06/20/2012: Fixed spelling of gray. Or was it grey…
I met him in San Diego a few years ago. He was being pushed along in a wheelchair, surrounded by people who were in glory to see him, and hear his voice. We were at Comic-Con, marooned among booths selling ray guns and comic books and maps of Martian worlds. Every third person who walked by wore a cape.
“All this,” I said, pointing around us, “is your fault.” I had to shout to be heard. His hearing wasn’t good.
He laughed — it was one hell of a laugh — and nodded and said, “You know, some of it probably is.”
(At the same link are quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin, Daniel Wilson, Jonathan Maberry, Mort Castle, Gordon Van Gelder, Robin Hobb, Elizabeth Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Morrell, Greg Bear, R. A. Salvatore, Lev Grossman.)
But he always remained, in the hearts of many, America’s greatest science fiction writer, eventually being honored by a special Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime achievement. In truth, though, Bradbury’s fantasy, horror and science fiction did more than merely entertain. In all his work, he explored loneliness and the troubled human heart and our deep-seated fear of otherness. In that regard, he became what he always wanted to be — a great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic. Live forever, Mr. Bradbury.
Five years later, a young woman who lived across the street had to wear eyepatches for several days, making her effectively blind. I went over to her house to help her pass the time. I brought that hardcover of I Sing the Body Electric. I read to her.
That was when I realized that Bradbury’s stories were not meant to be read silently. Your lips have to move, your voice has to produce those words, the cadences of his language have to rise out of your own throat.
What counted in the Whitman quote Bradbury used for his title was not the word “electric.” Not even “body.” It was “sing.”
The girl I was reading to married me. Talk about a book changing your life! (She assures me that it was me, not Bradbury, she fell in love with.)
In the 1940s, when a young Ray Bradbury began a series of stories that would eventually become The Martian Chronicles, man had yet to even send a satellite into space. Since then, six U.S.-launched landers have touched down on Mars, with a seventh, Curiosity, due to land in 60 days.
The first images sent back by Viking 1 in 1976 confirmed what scientists already knew — nothing like the advanced Martian societies of Bradbury’s imagination existed on the planet. Still, scientists are hopeful that we’ll find signs of past life; more importantly, many of them were inspired to explore Mars in the first place thanks to works like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.
One of those people was Ashley Stroupe. She first read his work as a 10-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Today she holds a job with the charmingly prosaic title of “Mars Rover Driver.”
Andrew Porter
Interesting that the various media websites that include photos show him after he became famous, such as at the White House or at mainstream author events. But of course there are no photos of him at the many SF conventions that he attended, because back then he was just some dumb sci-fi geek/nerd.
Note: I published Bradbury’s 1986 Atlanta World SF Convention Guest of Honor speech, in the December 1986 issue of my Science Fiction Chronicle; I taped his speech and had it transcribed. AFAIK, this was the only place it appeared in print.
Jeff Stahler
Editorial cartoonist Bradbury Transits Mars – click on link, and if necessary, search June 7, 2012.
World Book Night annually celebrates reading and books and next April 23 thousands of people in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland will go through their communities giving out free World Book Night paperbacks.
The 30 books chosen for this giveaway include well-known works of sf and fantasy – Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Stephen King’s The Stand.
World Book Night began last year in the U.K. and will be expanded to additional countries in years to come.
The date, April 23, coincides with UNESCO’s World Book Day, selected due to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, as well as Shakespeare’s birth and death.
The three highest-ranking works by women were Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #20, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, #22, and Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, #33.
Ray Bradbury had four books make the list, the most popular being Fahrenheit 451, #7. The leading Heinlein novel among his three on the list was Stranger in a Strange Land at #17.
And oh, yes, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, #93, ran ahead of Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, #97. I’ll have to ask if Jo Walton is willing to go two falls out of three…
Orson Scott Card suffered a mild stroke on January 1, and Hatrack River, the official Orson Scott Card website, says he’s already trying to resume work:
He is now back home, retraining his brain so that the fingers of his left hand strike the keys he’s aiming for. He will not be responding to most emails because his typing time must be devoted to finishing his fiction. But he is grateful for your good wishes and he promises not to die with any series unfinished.
For the foreseeable future, OSC will not make any public appearances or undertake any travel. Since his speech is unimpaired, he will still conduct radio and recorded interviews.
