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Orson Scott Card

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is a prolific and best-selling author of numerous genres.

Orson Scott Card lecturing

Overview

Card's launch in the publishing industry was with science fiction (Hot Sleep and Capitol) and later fantasy (Songmaster). He remains best known for the seminal Ender's Game, which has been among the most popular sci-fi novels ever since its publication in 1985. Both Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were awarded both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the first author to win both of sci-fi's top prizes in consecutive years.

He has since branched out into contemporary fiction, such as Lost Boys, Treasure Box and Enchantment. Other works demonstrating his versatility include the novelization of the James Cameron film The Abyss, the alternate histories The Tales of Alvin Maker and Pastwatch, and Robota, a collaboration with Star Wars artist Doug Chiang.

His writing is dominated by detailed characterization and moral issues. As Card says, "We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction."

Some of his novels, for example Stone Tables, about the life of the Biblical prophet Moses, his Women of Genesis trilogy, and Saints, about Latter-day Saint pioneers, have explicit religious themes. In his other writings, the influence of his Mormon beliefs is less obvious; Card's Homecoming and Alvin Maker sagas are partly retellings of the Book of Mormon and the life of LDS founder Joseph Smith, Jr.

Card was born in Richland, Washington, raised in Utah, and now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He and his wife Kristine are the parents of five children: Geoffrey (a published author in his own right), Emily, Charlie Ben, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa, named for the authors Chaucer, Brontë and Dickinson, Dickens, Mitchell and Alcott.

Quotations

"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration." (from the introduction to the story collection Future on Fire, where he discusses writers he considers to be hacks.)

"If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how "important" it is?" (Ibid.)

Selected bibliography

Pre-Ender's Game works

• Listen, Mom and Dad (non-fiction) (1978)
• Capitol (1978)
• Hot Sleep (1978)
• A Planet Called Treason (1978)
• Songmaster (1979)
• Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories (1980)
• Ainge (non-fiction) (1982)
• Saintspeak (non-fiction) (1982)
• Hart's Hope (1983)
• The Worthing Chronicle (revised edition of Hot Sleep and Capitol) (1983)
• Saints (1983)

The Ender Saga

• Ender's Game (1985)
• Speaker for the Dead (1986)
• Xenocide (1991)
• Children of the Mind (1996)
• First Meetings (collection of short stories)

The Shadow Series

• Ender's Shadow ("parallel" novel to Ender's Game) (1999)
• Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)
• Shadow Puppets (2002)
• Shadow of the Giant (forthcoming)

The Tales of Alvin Maker

• Seventh Son (1987)
• Red Prophet (1988)
• Prentice Alvin (1989)
• Alvin Journeyman (1995)
• Heartfire (1998)
• The Crystal City (2003)
• Master Alvin (forthcoming)

The Homecoming Saga

• The Memory of Earth (1992)
• The Call of Earth (1992)
• The Ships of Earth (1994)
• Earthfall (1995)
• Earthborn (1995)

The "Women of Genesis" Trilogy

• Sarah (2000)
• Rebekah (2001)
• Rachel and Leah (forthcoming)

Other post-Ender's Game works

• Cardography (1987)
• Wyrms (1987)
• Treason (revised edition of A Planet Called Treason) (1988)
• The Folk Of The Fringe (1989)
• The Abyss (1989) (with James Cameron)
• Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990)
• Eye For Eye / Tunesmith (Tor double novel) (1990) (Eye For Eye is by Card, Tunesmith is by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.)
• The Worthing Saga (1990)
• Lost Boys (1992)
• A Storyteller in Zion (non-fiction) (1993)
• Lovelock (1994) (with Kathryn H. Kidd)
• Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)
• Treasure Box (1996)
• Stone Tables (1997)
• Homebody (1998)
• Enchantment (1999)
• Magic Mirror (1999)

Books on writing

• Character and Viewpoint
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

See Also

• Science fiction
• Science fiction authors
• Science fiction novels
• Science fiction short stories

External Links

• The official Orson Scott Card website
• Biography at the Orson Scott Card website
• Detailed bibliography at the Orson Scott Card website

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