Friday, August 29, 2008
I've been reading books by Orson Scott Card about as fast as I can find them. He is a new writer to me this year - though many readers I know read at least Ender's Game well before this year. I am delighted by the complexity of this many's mind and the depth of his concern about ethics in human history - about compassion and trying to find a right way when there is no clear one right way. He makes me think and feel and see being alive and active in the world from quirky and unfamiliar angles (kind of like my friend Peggy's poems do). My last two card reads are Past Watch, a deep an intriguing alternate history of earth centered around the fall out of the journey of Christopher Columbus and Magic Street in which magic, straight from Midsummer Night's Dream, visits a middle class African American neighborhood in Los Angelos.
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2 comments:
I enjoyed your reviews of Card's works. I have not read the last two you mentioned. Will have to look for them. Is Enders Game the series with the piggies and the insect queen creatures? I think I have read the whole series and you would think I would remember who wrote them and their names. LOL
I like Sci Fiction because of the human questions it can approach from different angles (and thanks for the compliment on my poems!) The exotic settings and characters I think can make us pay more attention in some ways.
Nice to have quiet day at home. I think waiting for storms would drive me crazy -- it would almost be a relief when they arrive.
Yes Peggy, you nailed the Ender series, and there are quite a number of them - at least six - maybe more. All excellent in my opinion. I also personally loved the Alvin Maker series about an alternate American history in which Patrick Henry lived, George Washington was killed by the British, and magic worked. I think science fiction appeals to me for much the same reasons it appeals to you. And Card seems to do it especially well. Magic Street is fun, but I think past Watch is a more important book.
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