Cantabile Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Yes, he thinks that Global Warming is a giant hoax. If you Google "Orson Scott Card global warming" you'll find some pretty amusing shit that he's written about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migey Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Yes, he thinks that Global Warming is a giant hoax. If you Google "Orson Scott Card global warming" you'll find some pretty amusing shit that he's written about it.Although to be fair, global warming is a pretty misleading term and shouldn't be used, because it gives the average guy the impression that everywhere is getting warmer. Not true. I think the best term to use is Climate Change, since thats really what it is. Of course, its all affected by the world itself getting warmer, but we wont feel it as such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The faceless others Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I always try to give the author at least a second chance. I normally give the book a piece of crap label if the plot is too shallow, or the style of writing sucks. Although, I judge the book not the writer. One example of this is Warbreakers by Brandon Sanderson, I didn't like the book, but his other works like the Mistborn novels, which came out fine. If ever I really can't avoid the urge to drop the book, I'll just search the books summary in the internet to be done with it. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteHaven Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 To answer your question: Boredom.I am readingWolf Totem right now and I really really think that I can't finish it. The characters in this book are so flat and boring that I just can't like anyone of them. In fact I wish a gruesome death upon them.Basically the book is about how Chinese people are stupid, since they are destroying our environement. The only reason why I read on, is that I hope that some Chinese Nukes will kill everything and everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Shryke,What in "The Hyperion Cantos" leads down the same road as Radical Muslim killer Robots from Olympos? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Hyperion has a Muslim protagonist who is allowed to put forward a very decent defence of his faith, I didn't see any negative judgment on behalf of the author in there.Ilium (and presumably Olympus, though may Allah strike me down should I ever be forced to read it) both suck badly enough even without the anti-Muslim stuff though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Hyperion has a Muslim protagonist who is allowed to put forward a very decent defence of his faith, I didn't see any negative judgment on behalf of the author in there.IIRC, Endymion is pretty anti-christian, if anything. I read the entirety of OSC's Homecoming Saga when I was 11 (and all of Narnia when I was probably about 9) and picked up absolutely nothing. Including not remembering there being any gay characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantabile Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 There were gay characters in Narnia? I must be long overdue for a re-read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spastic Plastic Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 There were gay characters in Narnia? I must be long overdue for a re-read.Apart from CS Lewis, I didn't find any gays in Narnia either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 SP,Upon what do you base the conclusion CS Lewis was gay? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Shryke,What in "The Hyperion Cantos" leads down the same road as Radical Muslim killer Robots from Olympos?The entire planet of dirty violent blatant Arab stereotypes that at the call of Islam rise up and murder all the non-brown people in an orgy of religious violence, as is the want of such peoples.I mean, it just makes you raise an eyebrow without context, but after you learn other shit he's written, it's kinda like "OOOOH, I get it now". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Shryke,Qom-Riyade? I thought that was a rise in fundementalism where even those muslims who were not fundementalist enough were targeted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IheartTesla Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Ilium (and presumably Olympus, though may Allah strike me down should I ever be forced to read it) both suck badly enough even without the anti-Muslim stuff though.They were both pretty bad, although I think Olympos takes the cake. Apart from the post 9-11 evil Moooslim themes running though his books, those ones also cemented the fact that Simmons always writes relationships between younger females and much older males. Terror? check. Endymion? check. Ilium/Olympos? check, check and check. Boy, some male authors write really blatant wish-fulfilment prose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mack Kilimaro Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 There's a lot of talking about ideologies and religion in this thread. I guess that's fair. I have avoided the oeuvre of Ayn Rand because I'm given to understand it's at odds with all that I believe. But I can't think of a book I ever stopped reading because I felt like there was too much God or whatever.On the other hand, despite being agnostic, I also don't like books that I feel are reflexively anti-Christian in nature, which is something that dampened my enjoyment of a book like, say, The Mists of Avalon.Then there are books that other people seem to like and I just didn't. A leisure reading project of mine has been to knock off books on the Time 100, which I am about 3/4 complete. Two books by Philip Roth are on this list and I hated them both. I read the entirety of one of them, and hated it the more I read it. The second one I hated from the start, gave up after 20 pages as I encountered a chapter titled "Whacking Off" and never looked back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 They were both pretty bad, although I think Olympos takes the cake. Apart from the post 9-11 evil Moooslim themes running though his books, those ones also cemented the fact that Simmons always writes relationships between younger females and much older males. Terror? check. Endymion? check. Ilium/Olympos? check, check and check. Boy, some male authors write really blatant wish-fulfilment prose.And Hyperion had the Detective/Keats, and he was centuries older than her...In The Terror at least, I think the reader was supposed to find whats-her-name being so young at least initially offputting, though he does normalize it later, so i'm not sure what to think. I'm generally not sure what to think of Simmons, really. I'd probably like it if I could sort of neatly tie up his writing and his politics in a bow of ideological distaste, like with Card, where even his best, most genuinely skillful work is (maybe most of all) a fairly obvious mouthpiece of his ideology that reduces the whole work to offensiveness. (That is, I admire, in a way, Enders Game, but I don't enjoy it.) But with Simmons, I just can't. Illium/Olympos was pretty bad, and that helps, but I can't say the same for Hyperion or The Terror, no matter how much it feels like I should - I still think both are genuinely good, complex books, that don't 'shove down your throat' any simplistic ideological message, and my enjoyment of them not a product of my secret hatred for all muslims and admiration of older men shagging adolescent girls. :dunno: Maybe I should re-read them critically, but I've read both fairly recently - its not like i'm going on fuzzy nostalgia here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 You know, when I read Ender's Game for the first time (not knowing anything about it in advance, I thought it had something to do with ducks the vagaries of the swedish language) I came off with te impression that Card was essentially writing a tract *against* the values expressed: That he did not sympathize with an educational system that esentially broke down a person mentallyand physically in order to turn him into an unwitting instrument of genocide.I got really surprised when I found out later that, yes, we were supposed to think that Ender's violent escaltions were OK, and not a symptom of someone losing his shit when put under inhuman pressure. But then again, I thought Starship Troopers was satirical as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuroishi Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Yeah. This. I used to like Ender's game til I heard Card talk about it. Then realized that he ACTUALLY thinks we should do all that stuff.Yeah, my first big shock regarding Card (I wasn't aware of his views on homosexuality then) was the apparent gap between what I had thought was the message from Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead and his support to the Iraq War.It's really taken OSC's own words to persuade me that those books weren't anti-war at their core.My second big shock was that he was homophobic after what I had believed the message from Songmaster to be...I read the entirety of OSC's Homecoming Saga when I was 11 (and all of Narnia when I was probably about 9) and picked up absolutely nothing. Including not remembering there being any gay characters. That's because, IIRC, the only gay character understands, in the second book I think, that in order to be part of Nature he has to become heterosexual, take a wife and sire children... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Maybe I should re-read them critically, but I've read both fairly recently - its not like i'm going on fuzzy nostalgia here. Hyperion aside, Simmons does not do well on rereads (I say this with great regret, as he was once one of my favourite authors evar and I love to reread). Haven't read The Terror, but can't think of any other examples from his earlier books with the old man/young girl relationship in - possibly this has only become a feature recently, make of that what you will. <_< He does like to re-use his themes though, and even his own jokes - I've never quite forgiven him for the self-referential bit of toss in Hard Case where the protagonist basically admitted that he'd nicked his super cunning scheme from a different Dan Simmons book... :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grack21 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Oh my god, I forgot all about Songmaster.....*head explodes* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 You know, when I read Ender's Game for the first time (not knowing anything about it in advance, I thought it had something to do with ducks the vagaries of the swedish language) I came off with te impression that Card was essentially writing a tract *against* the values expressed: That he did not sympathize with an educational system that esentially broke down a person mentallyand physically in order to turn him into an unwitting instrument of genocide.I got really surprised when I found out later that, yes, we were supposed to think that Ender's violent escaltions were OK, and not a symptom of someone losing his shit when put under inhuman pressure. But then again, I thought Starship Troopers was satirical as well.Wait, Ender's Game is supposed to ENDORSE the violence Ender does? WTF?Goddamn....Also, stick with the Starship Troopers movie. That one IS meant to be satirical. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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