My life in books

Shadow of the Giant, Orson Scott Card

Well, let’s get the large elephant in the middle of the room out of the way first. Orson Scott Card’s politics are increasingly right-wing in a way that I find frightening. And his homophobia exceeds all the bounds of reason.

If I were just starting out as a science fiction reader, I probably would just stay away from his books, because there’s so much great stuff out there that no one can really find time to read it all – you have to pick and choose, and choosing to exclude the works of people who write hate literature is certainly one criterion for making decisions.

The problem is, that I did read Card’s original books in this universe – Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind – and I enjoyed them, long before Card started pouring his bile all over the Internet. And I was deeply intrigued when he began his Shadow series – curious about what happened on Earth while Ender journeyed outward to the stars, eager to hear the stories of all the other children who survived Battle School. I especially wanted to hear more about Bean.

So I’ve been reading the Shadow books, and ignoring the politics of the man who’s writing them. And I’ve been enjoying them – although none of them comes up to the level of Ender’s Game or Speaker for the Dead.

Shadow of the Giant takes the story of Julian Delphiki – Bean – and the other characters from the Ender universe who remained on Earth, particularly Petra Arkanian and Peter Wiggins, to a kind of conclusion. The massive political and military instability resulting from the sudden introduction of a group of highly trained military geniuses into a global situation strained by the long battle against the Hive has come to a head, Bean’s unusual medical and familial circumstances are reaching a crisis point, and time is running out. By the end of the book, Card brings both the personal and political storylines to, as I said, a kind of conclusion. There are still lots of unanswered questions and possible developments, and if Card decides to take the series to some of these places, I’ll probably keep reading, just because I like to finish things, especially if they involve characters that I love (and I do love Bean).

But I highly doubt that I’ll be reading anything else that Card writes. I just can't be bothered. There are simply too many other people who write science fiction well, who aren't also promoting hate.