Note: I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because they promised me remuneration, and like any good novelist I am for sale. (lw)
People have been telling me I needed to read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game for years, but I resisted. Science Fiction generally doesn’t interest me a lot, and to be honest Card’s LDS faith put me off. But now the book is coming out as a film, and gay activists want everybody to boycott it because Card’s a pro-family Mormon. So suddenly he’s an ally, and I’m almost obligated to see the film. And if I’m going to do that I might as well read the book. Which I did.
I’m glad I did. It’s very strange, very intense, and heartbreaking.
Andrew (Ender) Wiggin is the result of genetic experimentation in a future where reproduction is regulated by law. His brother and sister were part of the same experiment, and they’re all brilliant, but the brother is a sociopath and the sister too empathetic for the purposes of the program.
The purpose is to create a super-general, a military genius who can lead the forces of Earth against the insectoid “Buggers,” who attacked and nearly destroyed us a generation previously. Knowing we can’t survive another such attack, the world government has created a space station Combat School and filled it with hotshot young students, all of them geniuses. But it’s actually all about Ender. The whole thing exists to hone little Ender (he’s only six when he’s recruited) into a master strategist and tactician, without mercy or hesitancy.
Ender’s compassionate side – which is part of what the government wants from him – agonizes over the choices he has to make, and the things he must do, not only to win the war games but to survive in an environment where several other kids, most of them older than he, envy him enough to kill him. His handlers are ashamed of what they put him through, but they do it anyway, in order to forge their perfect human weapon.
Some have complained that the kids in this book don’t talk like kids, and they’re right. I had to keep reminding myself that these were children and pre-teens. But Card himself responds that we’re talking about geniuses here. There’s nothing normal about the situation. And realism isn’t exactly the point.
I don’t think I’d have guessed a Mormon wrote this book if I hadn’t known beforehand, though there are a couple clues. I was surprised by a kum-bah-ya element in the final resolution. I don’t know enough about LDS theology to know whether they believe (as this story seems to suggest) that there’s no such thing as evil. Or (more likely) I’m reading it wrong.
Intense, compelling. Recommended.
Why should the theology of the author matter? I like reading your work, even if I think you misunderstand some basic facts about God. Do you enjoy the sagas, or the works of Chesterton? Neither were written by Lutherans.
I’ve resisted Card’s work on the basis of him being a Mormon as well. I think one’s theology does matter. I do read/view art by unbelievers and filter it through God’s Word, but I have a harder time with cults like Mormonism that pervert the True Faith so much. I’d also have a hard time with reading work by a Satanist and I think most people would understand that.
This was from a few months ago: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=44109
DC Comics ended up dropping Card’s story due to the backlash. It’s amazing how much power 3 percent of the country has. Tough times are a comin’.
The correspondence between Christian vs. Mormon, compared to Jew vs. Christian, is fairly close. The Mormons too differ with us on essential matters of the nature of God, and wish to be considered part of “our” faith tradition, but don’t consider us true believers. And we return the compliment.
I think the chief difference is that Jews, believing in salvation by works, don’t believe that someone can be eternally lost just because of a change of creed. Christians believe they can and are.
It is even closer than that. While we don’t believe wrong BELIEFS cause that much damage, actions can. Treating a communion wafer as being “body and blood, soul and divinity” is close to idolatry, which violates one of the Noahide laws and is forbidden to non-Jews too.
I personally don’t believe God will hold an honest mistake against a true worshipper, but that is Ori, not official Judaism.
I read it not as evil not existing, but as evil being internal rather than external. The aliens were not monsters, but we saw glimmers of monster in Ender and a whole lot of monster in those around him.
Because I knew Card was LDS, I read the justification of the monstrous actions as legal, not moral justification.
More likely I misread it than you did though.
Aside:
I think the LDS theology being more aggravating than pagan because it is so close. It’s like the uncanny valley in graphics, the closer someone gets to truth while still not being true, the more you experience the disharmony. Odin (or Satan, for that matter) is so clearly not God that I can brush aside things coming from him proposed as Truth. The Mormon god is just close enough to the God of the Bible that it jars me out of the story.
I didn’t see much clear Mormon elements in Enders’ Game, but being a Mormon myself they may not be as noticeable.
**The Mormons too differ with us on essential matters of the nature of God, and wish to be considered part of “our” faith tradition, but don’t consider us true believers. And we return the compliment.
I think the chief difference is that Jews, believing in salvation by works, don’t believe that someone can be eternally lost just because of a change of creed.**
From my Mormon perspective, this isn’t quite accurate. Characterizing creedal Christians as “not true believers” isn’t quite right because while they may have some beliefs about the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost that are false or at least incomplete, this doesn’t entail that their belief in God isn’t genuine. Do some or even many Christians truly believe? Certainly.
Similarly, while I doubt that Jews are wholly indifferent to beliefs, Mormons are a little more ‘Jewish’ in that we don’t think salvation is primarily a matter of metaphysical commitments.
I’m hoping the movie won’t just be teen angst,video games and explosions. At least it’s nice they now have the technology to do the battle room scenes.
Check out Card’s short story collection CRUEL MIRACLES for some more overtly religious themes– not always explicitly Mormon. His introductory essay alone, in which he argues that speculative fiction, and in particular SF, is the last American refuge of religious literature, is worth the price of the volume. Published in 1990– I’d be interested to know if his points are still valid today.
*I’m hoping the movie won’t just be teen angst,video games and explosions. *
Yes, I just saw ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ last night. It was loud and stupid. Hollywood’s reverse Midas touch is practically infallible.