Who Is Orson Scott Card?

Orson Scott Card.

Who is Orson Scott Card?

Orson Scott Card (from now on OSC) is a comtempory writer from the USA. He is a prolific writer of numerous genres but best known for his sci-fi novel “Enderґs game” and the sequel “Speaker for the Dead”, on which he won two of the most prestigious awards, the Nebula and the Hugo awards, in consecutive years.

OSC writing is dominated moral issues and the relationship between characters. A devoted Mormon, he believes that all fiction has a strong moral message. He believes that the message should be positive. Nevertheless, his choice of subject matter and the amount of violence in his books have led raised eyebrows in the Mormon church. Card's characters are usually put in a position of having to make difficult and interesting moral choices. Card believes that it is the character's interaction with other people which makes him interesting. Family is also an important theme in his work.

Background.

OSC was born in Richland, Washington, 1951 and was named after his grandfather, Orson Rega Card. OSC great-grandfather, Charles Ora Card, was the founder of the Mormon colony in Cardston, Canada. The mormon beliefs is something that is like a red line in the Scott-family, I will come back to this later.

OSC was an avid reader at young age, at 8 he red “The Prince and the Pauper”, which first attracted him to english history. OSC red plenty of history novels, about the civil war, french and indian wars and even “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell.

Alongside all of the history and sci-fi readings, he red scripture, the Book of Mormons and the Bible to name some examples.. He was also fascinated by histories of medicine and by books about the exploits of archaeologists. The inherited a love for performing, he loved to sing (and still does) and there were many singalongs in the Scott household.

At age 16, the family moved to Orem, Utah (they had moved around a whole lot). The got a scholarship and entered BYU as a archaeology major but found himself spending more and more time in the theatre department so he changed his major. It was as a theatre student he began to school himself as a writer. "It's the best training in the world for a writer, to have a live audience” he says.

Close to graduation, Card left for Brazil on a two-year mission for the LDS Church. Serving in the cities of the state of Sгo Paulo (Ribeirгo Preto, Araraquara, Araзatuba, Campinas, Itu, and Sгo Paulo itself), Card became fluent in Portuguese and fell in love with Brazilian culture. (This is apparent in “The Speaker for the Dead” where the setting is in an alien planet, which has recently been colonized by portugues missionarys)

He returned home to his family in Orem and quickly finished up the remaining work for his bachelor's degree in theatre. Meanwhile, he founded a theatre company and was the first to produce plays at "The Castle," an outdoor amphitheater that was built as a government project during the Depression.

The plays at the Castle were a success; unfortunately, an attempt to run a fall season at a remodeled barn in came nowhere near paying back the money Card borrowed to finance it, and after limping through another break-even summer season, Card closed the company. It was because of the expenses of the company, and the hopelessness of repaying the debt from his meager salary as a copy editor at BYU Press, that Card set his hand to writing science fiction. The result was "Ender's Game."

It took a couple of years before he saw any payment from Enderґs game, so in the meantime he took a jobb as a staff editor at “The Ensign”, the official magazine of the LDS Church.

During this period, he met his love, Kristine Allen. Their children, Emily Janice, Charles Benjamin, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa were all given at least one name in a writer that Scott and Kristine admired: Geoffrey Chaucer, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, Margaret Mitchell, and Louisa Mae Alcott. Unfortunaly, Charles Benjamin died of cerebral disease at age 17 and Erin Louisa died at birth.

The family lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Bibliography.

Pre-Ender's Game works

· Capitol (1978)

· Hot Sleep (1978)

· A Planet Called Treason (1978)

· Songmaster (1979)

· Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories