The Stomach-Turner Diaries.
Der Stuermer had more subtly.
My guess- it's all really just a video game being played by bloggers! Who'd have thought?
So Orson Scott Card is working on the Left Behind novels for blogger set?
Nanobots for Jeezus-ah!
Ender would totally kick their asses...
Pussies.
Mehk.
The Bean series seemed to be a better promotion of that sort of international "aid" (read as aggression).
SP made me laugh out loud 'tho.
very funny Bubba!
these people... their real issue is that they just never grew up, huh? This novel just proves it (yet further).
Republican Talking Points-The Novel
Oh. Your. God.
I've never read any Card before. He really writes crap like that? I have to admit, I'm even more encouraged than ever that I can publish a novel too.
Don't be so hard on Orson Scott Card. I think something was lost in the translation.
Maybe the novel reads better in the original German.
"... I was not kidding when I said reading the excerpt gave me great pleasure."
Really? Because that dialogue sounds super-shitty.
I read the first two Alvin Maker books. Those were good. But being a Bush supporter eats the brain.
Card needs a better story line. Don't the Red Staters believe that New York City is already controlled by a radical leftist army? Much more fun and more devastating for the Card readership if his terrorists took over, say, Branson, MO, by disguising themselves as has-been country-western singers and Hee-Haw alumni. It wouldn't even be much of a stretch: Come on, Yakov Smirnoff has to be the leader of some sort of terrorist sleeper-cell—it's the only explanation.
I prefer my lunatic fantasies with pictures.
How do they get those 'internal quotes' to appear in their dialogue? What a glorious world!
"You look pissed off," said Malich.
"Yeah," said Cole. "The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy."
It's like a bad entry from a Bad Hemingway contest.
I've read many science fiction novels,including most of Card's.
His books always have unaccountably vicious and murderous lead characters.A twisted perspective,to be sure.
His bizarre politics don't surprise me.
Yet there was something about them, their alertness, the way they moved, that gave warning, the way a tiger gives warning simply by the fluidity of its movement and the alertness of its eyes.
From now on, I will give coked-up ballet dancers a wide berth.
oddly "malik" is an arab name (it means "king"), though "malich" is more like the hebrew version (which i would spell "melach")
How do they get those 'internal quotes' to appear in their dialogue? What a glorious world!
Insert:
Cole took his grime-covered hands off his M-16 to air-quote just as he'd air-guitared to the Nuge's Wango Tango in those golden days of his youth.
Much more fun and more devastating for the Card readership if his terrorists took over, say, Branson, MO, by disguising themselves as has-been country-western singers and Hee-Haw alumni.
Interestingly enough, Hee-Haw (a juxtaposition rarely written) alumni John Henry Faulk was a commie rat -- well, he was a supremely distinguished humorist and story teller from Texas who sued the shit out of Roy Cohn and those fuckers for getting dragged around HUAC -- and won the biggest libel suit in US History at the time.
So it's funny you should mention it R.
Why do you think they call them RED necks???
"...a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City..."
Gee, I sure hope the Progressive Restoration doesn't let the gays into musical theatre, or start an Abortion-4-Kidz emporium on Fifth Avenue. Kudos to Card for showing us that Norbizness has finally gone too far.
"Ender's Game" was a fantastic book Card wrote. It was an interesting idea and ultimately explored the idea of xenophobia in the sequel. His books got crappier and crappier after that, and so I stopped reading him. I had no idea he could descend to this level though...
Ho. Lee. Fuck. King. Shit. That Malich-Cole dialogue is so stagey I can almost see it being performed on community theater night at the local VFW hall.
Pretense of Moral Superiority Disclosure: I would never judge a book by its cover story,
I'm not so sure about that. Novels are like apples -- it only takes one bite to know the whole thing is rotten.
In the old days, people like Goldwater would have just said "good riddance" to New York and the rest of the East Coast. There's a famous Johnson TV commercial illustrating a quote of Goldwater's that shows a saw cutting off the Eastern US and letting it float away...
I particularly love novels in which the conversation never is undertaken, "So, 'Rube.' Bet there's a great story behind how you got THAT nickname, Reuben! I just brewed a whole pot of fresh coffee. Let's ask 'Cole' Coleman over to share in your telling it. Maybe he'll have something personal to add."
I mean, it's not like he couldn't have been Major "Pre-Op Trans" Malek or Captain "Walrus-Boner" Coleman.
...if his terrorists took over, say, Branson, MO, by disguising themselves as has-been country-western singers...
...Cole took his grime-covered hands off his M-16 to air-quote just as he'd air-guitared to the Nuge's Wango Tango...
...Major "Pre-Op Trans" Malek or Captain "Walrus-Boner" Coleman...
It's really too bad Card had no recourse to a story conference like this.
AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHA.
That's the worst dialogue I've ever heard not relating to an army of giant nuclear ants swarming over the north pole to invade the US.
It's a joke, right? It's stinko. Phony as a 3 dollar bill.
And anyone who hasn't been hiding out in a bunker for the last 20 years would find this "leftist" group takeover of NYC more than a little hilarious. What did they do - sprinkle people with black pepper from a giant pepper mill? I can't wait to read the part about the takeover - how he explains the NYC cops not just giving the "insurgents" a beatdown in the alley is going to be a hoot.
Lessee - Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine kids, abortion clinic bombers, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Wacko of Waco, anthrax sent to "liberal" media - it's pretty clear which side of the political divide in America is eager to use violence.
I'll give you a hint - they aren't dressed like third rate hollywood beatniks with copies of a little red book in their back pockets.
Mr. Card, I know writers often like seclusion, but you gotta get out a little bit more - bwaahahaha!
Oh, it gets worse....
Apparently "Empire" is related to a video game. Sort of an MMORPG, I think. See this Wired interview for more info:
http://www.wired.com/news/cultur.../0,72093-
0.html
(I also used it as the posting URL for this comment)
I used to really like OSC. I loved his Alvin Maker books (which are a retelling of the Joseph Smith story, set in 18th century fantasy North America where the USA never fully formed). I also liked the Ender's Game series, but there was a very disturbing afterword added to, I believe, "The Shadow of the Hegemon." My reading of that commentary is that he was *really* disturbed by 9/11, in a "pushed-over-the-edge" kind of way.
I think that reaction is common to a lot of right wingers. Their world view was radically altered by 9/11. For myself, I was disturbed and angered by 9/11, but more so because it was allowed to happen than because of the realization that people hate America.
NYC (really) has more police officers than the US Coast Guard has soldiers.
You do not have to be an actual threat for them to shoot you.
Basically, too much suspension of disbelief is required here.
also, "the Nuge"
circular filed, that is all.
A couple of corrections, Jay B, just because Faulk's my homeboy. (Main Austin library is named after him and he had a bit part in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.)
John Henry Faulk sued AWARE, an evil bunch who were vetting performers for a fee. You'd pay them to investigate your background and they'd tell potential employees you were clean. If you didn't, well, you obviously had something to hide. They hired Cohn to fight the case.
Faulk eventually won after five years, and it was the biggest libel award at the time ($3.5 million) but it was reduced to half a million on appeal which didn't even cover his costs. And I think AWARE had faded away by that point.
Hey, wow, I found an early-release copy! From page 506:
Malich audibly gasped at the figure coming up the hill toward his squad. "Gasp! It's Orson Scott Card and his Action Heroes!"
"At ease, men," said the famed author and action ace. "We are here to save you all!"
"And he's brought Reagan and Bush with him!" Cole gasped, also audibly. "Gasp!"
"Hello, boys," said Ronald Reagan, adjusting his cowboy hat. "General Orson Scott Card told us you might need our help, so we came a-riding."
"President Bush," said Cole with the greatest possible respect, "I was sorry to hear that your father was a wimp who couldn't beat Saddam, but we're glad you're all man, like Orson Scott Card."
"Heh," said Bush. "I am tough. Lookit mah muscles!"
"Enough talk, men!" said Admiral Orson Scott Card, greatest author ever and defender of the faith with guns (and secret lover of both Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but they don't mind sharing). "We've got important missions ahead! Everyone get into the working Time Machine that I invented and we'll go kill Hillary in her crib!"
A ragged cheer went up from the ragged troops. Truly, Republicans would never lose again.
In right wing fantasy future histories, the Blue Staters reveal their treachery by trying to secede from the Union, thus lunging the nation into a rancorous civil war.
As opposed to actual real history, where the traitors were the Red States. It's nice that they've got over their embarassment about being the historical backstabbers of the USA, but it's not so nice that they've got so far over it they're into denial and projection fantasies.
"without hearing anything about Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil Rights Movement, etc"
You mean after the war of Northern aggression, right?
What's the competition?
Well...maybe this...or this...I'm leaning a little more toward the first but that could change as I get further into the second.
Hey! Dr. Helen loves it!
"Empire" opens one's eyes to the real harm this "war of ideas" can do to our culture and to our country. It is an important book and should be read by anyone who cares about the deep divide in our country caused by the media, extremists, and those who care more about political agendas and self-righteousness than about the truth.
Like, you know, bloggers.
ortho-bob,
Yes, you're right of course. But I always took the blacklisting by AWARE to be a proxy hit job of the HUAC folks and helped sink both.
I read Fear on Trial over a decade ago, so I was a little light on the details, but having spent a good five years in Texas liberal circles at UT and the Observer, I remembered the Hee-Haw connection.
Not to mention that OSC stole a huge hunk of plot for A PLANET CALLED TREASON from the Cordwainer Smith story "A Planet Named Shayol." I assume he figures it was an homage.
I used to really like OSC until I got to THE WORTHING SAGA, which made me furious. I can't exactly explain why, it was the way people were manipulated "for their own good." Card has been getting flakier and flakier for years -- between Joe Smith and Gee Dubya, he seems to have a head full of (bad) ideas that are driving him insane.
Noticed that Dr Mrs Ole Perfesser Helen has put a rave review in Amazon and is plugging the same it's not about heroic alpha males with monosyllabic nicknames trashing liberals it's a timely warning against polarization and partisanship line. You ever wonder if perhaps they're the same person?
OSC was writing about bloggers taking over politics in 1976 in Enders Game.
Maybe if you are so far ahead of your time, but live to see your fiction become real, you automatically lose your mind.
You missed this treasure:
"Those sick, twisted, fools," Malich raged. "They've outlawed all heterosexual contact!"
"Don't they realize that they're flushing the whole future of their society down the tubes," mused Cole, "just for the pleasure of knowing the intimate touch of a man?"
Malich sighed, wistfully. "You know, Cole, at least we can be assured that they will disappear after one generation. But think of the harm that they can do before that!"
"True. But what really pisses me off is the thought of all those perverts enjoying forbidden pleasures, while we have to work to ensure the safety of our women and children, and safeguard the future of the entire human race."
Malich swatted Cole's posterior, reassuringly. "Cole, that's what being a real man is all about."
You missed this treasure:
"Those sick, twisted, fools," Malich raged. "They've outlawed all heterosexual contact!"
"Don't they realize that they're flushing the whole future of their society down the tubes," mused Cole, "just for the pleasure of knowing the intimate touch of a man?"
Malich sighed, wistfully. "You know, Cole, at least we can be assured that they will disappear after one generation. But think of the harm that they can do before that!"
"True. But what really pisses me off is the thought of all those perverts enjoying forbidden pleasures, while we have to work to ensure the safety of our women and children, and safeguard the future of the entire human race."
Malich swatted Cole's posterior, reassuringly. "Cole, that's what being a real man is all about."
That's not dialogue; he's plagiarized a comment thread from RedState.
Are you sure this "novel" wasn't stolen from a fifty-year-old Ed Wood, Jr. movie script?
"Plan 9 from Evil Liberals Who Wish to Destroy America for No Apparent Reason Other Than They Are Liberals"?
"Bride of the Democrat Monster Who Hates America and Wants the Terrorists to Win"?
"Clinton's Penis: The Anti-Christ Leader of America-Hating Leftist Ghouls Who Hang on Every Word Uttered by Ward Churchill"?
"Jonah Goldberg: Pay No Mind to the Steaming Loaf in My BVDs; I Swear I Will SAVE America from Nancy Pelosi and Her Feminazi Leftist Homo Abortionist Vampires"?
Heh. These titles just write themselves.
Oh lord God help us--I just love how it's the American _left_ that is going to launch a violent coup and attempt to install a militaristic dictatorship in this country.
And, I'm glad to be confirmed in my decision to stop reading Card like fifteen years ago, when the wheels came off his "Ender" series so spectacularly in the novel _Xenocide_. I thought at the time that he was just out of steam as a writer, and it's good to see that I was right to spend my reading time elsewhere.
I read Songmaster years ago, the only OSC novel I've read. I can't believe his 'prose' had become so wooden. But then I clicked the link... The horror. The horror.
I think I read somewhere, probably in Thomas Disch's The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, that the Ender series is a riff on the Ring of the Niebelungen.
Card has felt a chill on campus because he's a raging homophobe.
OSC:
That dialog is some solid homoerotic stuff. It would rock if they were nicknamed "Rub" and "C-hole."
a big BRAVO to all the commenters on this post. lol many a time!
and roy, keep 'em coming. you set them up, they knock them out. it's a like burns and allen used to do.
Card hasn't had anything left since the first "Ender" book. After that, it was all reliving glory and wanking on the publisher's dime.
Hey, if we evil liberal rebels decide to start a civil war, I nominate David Ehrenstein to be our evil genius leader.
That would be cool!
And can we all get super-cool mullets like Patrick Swayze had in "Red Dawn" and call ourselves "The Wolverines"?
To arms, my brother and sister lefties!
You know, the best part comes right after that excerpt you quoted, where "Cole" ends their pediconference with this tidy bit of dialogue:
"'It's weird,' said Cole. 'I always feel like when I get to Virginia, I'm back in the United States. Like DC is a separate country. And not just DC. Maryland along with it. Like the Potomac is the boundary line between the country I love and a foreign country where they hate me because of this uniform.'"
Yes. When he gets back to Virginia. Which, considering that he just crossed the TR Roosevelt Bridge, would put him right outside Arlington, five miles from my apartment and one of the bluest suburbs of the whole blue Northern Virginia area.
Something tells me Card didn't actually talk to anyone from DC, or do any real research, when writing this one.
Orson Scott Creationist?
Got your Orson Scott Card Right Here!
Courtesy of an earlier commentor.
Had to lift this comment from the commentators at Bradrocket:
"OSC is fairly prominent as a sci-fi writer, which is to say not at all. His first work was genius and he’s spent the rest of his career trying to convince us it was a fluke."
Snerk. New keyboard, please.
Five chapters isn't enough to judge the book? You don't have to eat the entire egg to know it's rotten. I'm just sayin'.
Jesus, I could write better dialog than that. Maybe I could have a future writing wingnut fiction.
the best part of this story is that Orson Scott Card claims to be a "liberal Democrat".
After I found out that Card was a Mormon, I now look back at my youthful enjoyment of his Ender's Game as pretty uninformed. I recently looked at it again 25 years later and found that it was a Christian-Right Death Fantasy of children standing up and killing the Islamists. Card is despicable.
Over the years the (onetime) Pulliam family newspapers in Indianapolis would occasionally mistakenly hire a restaurant critic who didn't understand his job description did not include being critical. They'd usually last a month or so.
One such turned up about the same time cultural bumpkin Lou Jenn (of Jenn-Air fame) tried for the third time to prove someone could operate a fine-dining establishment without knowing duck liver from goose shit. The reviewer reported being led through the foyer, past an ice sculpture, and having the maitre-d' announce, "Done with a chainsaw!"
I've been usin' that phrase for twenty years. I hereby permit Mr. Card to retire it.
Got your Orson Scott Card Right Here!
Courtesy of an earlier commentor.
Mooser | Homepage | 11.29.06 - 2:42 pm | #
Thanks for that. A good read.
I would never judge a book by its cover story. . .with, oh, maybe one exception. [F]ive chapters is not enough for summary judgement. . .but throw in an author's whiney afterward and I say string that motherfucker up.
“Shit has its own integrity,” as the Wise Hack once observed to Gore Vidal. But where exactly should one look for the integrity---or even the interest---in Card’s latest excretion? I’m grateful to whatever Barbara Woodhouse figure from Orson’s past paper-trained our bowel-challenged scrivener, but do we really need to have the results smeared all over cyberspace---again? Card long ago earned his teensy shrine in Lit’ry Wing of the Temple of Crap, and any further droppings would constitute what Crunchy Ron’s co-religionists call “works of supererogation,” i.e., a pantload too far.
As a “fabulator,” Card doesn’t even begin to exist. His future-schlock fantasies are examples of what Yeats meant by “the will doing the work of the imagination.” Even though, genre-wise, Empire looks like just another gamer-ready bit o’ agitprop for the Splinter Cell/Ghost Recon groundlings, it still crawled from the same extrapalatory tidepool as Card’s other fiction and it still suffers from delusions of adequacy; thus its ill-advised incarnation between covers of a book that may seduce more naïve readers into mistaking it for a “novel.”
But even a dystopian political thriller has some small obligation to keep its audience amused if not enlightened. As Michael Wood once noted, “Apart from a few lucky exceptions, science fiction is not set in the future at all. Its future is a metaphor for a radically altered present, and it is the altering that matters, the speculative rearrangement of familiar elements.”
Empire is not a “lucky exception” to Sturgeon’s Law (90% of all sci-fi is garbage). Card’s “speculative rearrangement of familiar elements”---in this case the standard rightist apocalyptic scenarios about those invading towelhead hordes---won’t exactly earn him comparisons with Ursula K. LeGuinn, or even Heinlein at his gassiest (though he’s got the latter’s crypto-fascism down pat). He doesn’t write characters so much as ideas posturing as characters, animatronic Squawking Points that parrot slightly recycled press releases from the Rovean Ministry of Propaganda.
And then there’s the dialogue. Occasionally there’s some snappy patter that faintly---very faintly--echoes 30’s movie wisecrackery. (Think of Rosalind Russell as DeeNee Breen mouthing off to Gary Cooper as Cole and the first part of Chapter Two plays better.) But Card’s 24-karat tin ear is never in any danger of reproducing the ways actual human beings actually talk to one another.
What his schtick figures do instead is comment on the significance of the crisis they’re in---comment, explain, harangue, whatever, lest we Miss The Point. Alas, as Ms. Stein reminds us, “Remarks are not literature,” and in this case they’r
Er, as I was saying....they’re in---comment, explain, harangue, whatever, lest we Miss The Point. Alas, as Ms. Stein reminds us, “Remarks are not literature,” and in this case they’re not even good entertainment.
I found only two such Remarks I could agree with:
(1.) We are tribal animals. We cannot long stand against the tribe. How true. Too bad that aphorism manqué comes from a faux contrarian whose echt tribal superstitions include fear of the Pink Menace plus a touching faith in The Dear Leader: “the President”---you don’t mean?...---“had changed things. . .[when he] transformed the military from the cripple it had been” thanks to “new doctrines that had the enemies of the United States on the run” and had “led to directly to the fall of two Muslim governments and the taming of many more.” With the Al Q resurgency in Afghanistan and the civil war in Iraq that even our military experts now tell us is unwinnable, only an authentic tribal animal could produce sentences as mindlessly reverential as that.
(2.) Chocolate chips or snickerdoodles? Why, both, of course.
"And if we did," said Cole, "who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them."
I think, if I were on Jeopardy, playing against Orson Scott Card, I would choose the category "Anything that's happened on the face of the Earth since 1945". It's really sad so many Americans still get their ideas about foreign policy from watching WWII movies.
>we have to work to ensure the safety of
>our women and children, and safeguard
>the future of the entire human race.
They submitted the 14 Words to re-write. Excellent!
Orson Scott Card was murdered and replaced by his evil twin.
> They submitted the 14 Words to re-write.
> Excellent!
Oh good lord. I was just trying to come up with stilted manly-man dialogue to match OSC's normal style. Not having had a whole lot of traffic with nazis and white supremacists, I was entirely unaware of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fou.../
Fourteen_Words
I find it frightening, especially after that link to the article comparing Ender to Hitler, that by attempting to channel OSC, I wind up writing neo-nazi propaganda.
Isn't it "fustest with the mostest"?
Maybe Orson Scott Card and Dennis Miller could get a house together, and swap stories about the old days when they didn't suck, and bitch about their increasingly tiny royalty checks, and so forth. Sort of a Fascist Odd Couple.
Orson Scott Card thinks Serenity is a great science fiction film, so he can't be all that crazy.
On the other hand, he is pretty hardcore in his anti-sexuality, which is crazy. If I had to wait until marriage to have sex I'd have Popeye arms by the time I was 40.
Perhaps this might put things into some perspective regarding Card's feelings about seceding from the Union:
If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists - which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does - then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.
I'm real glad this discussion about "Empire" happened. Reading the various blog comments, I was able to follow some links to reviews of Card's novels I hadn't seen before. I've never read Ender's Game, that one novel everyone seems to want to forgive Card his bigotry for. So I had no idea it was about creating sympathy for someone who commits genocide.
Card is a Mormon. He recently, at Beliefnet, wrote a critique of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. You can read it here:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/
1...ry_16700_1.html
I kept thinking, as a Mormon, he should be wary of making fun of someone's metaphysical construct, considering he follows a supposed living prophet who is God's voice on earth.
And anyone who hasn't been hiding out in a bunker for the last 20 years would find this "leftist" group takeover of NYC more than a little hilarious.
That's not regular New York, that's 'winger New York--sort of like the Bizarro World version of Metropolis.
It's occurred to me, rather depressingly, that if armed conflict ever really broke out in Manhattan, I'd probably be among the best-qualified soldiers. And that's no boast; it's like being one of the tallest pygmies.
Man, I've heard of the banality of evil, but that prose demonstrates the evil of banality.
Isn't it "fustest with the mostest"?
I stand corrected! Keep fact-checking my ass! It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it.
I had no idea [Ender's Game] was about creating sympathy for someone who commits genocide.
Bruce Garrett
Honestly, I am the last person who wants to defend a tool like OSC, but this is really an unfair description of Ender's Game. Really.
The "evil of banality"?
You must be new around here.
Lileks, anyone?
I'm in the camp that finds it hard to believe that Card has fallen so far.
The writing is bad enough. The first five chapters of Empire read like some kid's crappy first novel - cardboard characters mouthing clichés while participating in a series of ridiculously unlikely events which make no sense whatsoever.
This is doubly sad because Card's first novel was not anywhere near that bad. That attack piece on Ender's Game is the worst kind of academic claptrap. Can't we just enjoy a good space opera anymore?
And Empire wouldn't even be that bad in a (much) lesser Ludlum sorta way if the review from Publisher's Weekly didn't give away the plot development where violent evil liberals took over the blue states. I find it genuinely scary that people who are not certifiable paranoid schitzophrenics can imagine such ridiculous nonsense, and there are apparently a lot of them, including a genuinely creative writer who used to be able to think interesting, nuanced thoughts.
Yesterday Roy pointed out that the debate here is generally whether the patsy of the day is stupid or crazy. Most of them, it seems, are just stupid. Or maybe they were just stupid and then they caught 9/11 disease and became crazy. Card, on the other hand, has turned stupid. His regression in both writing and thinking skills is astonishing.
I don't think 9/11 disease explains that kind of fall. A brain tumor is more likely.
If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists - which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does - then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.
Where? He seems to assume rather cavalierly that he and his cohort would be welcome somewhere else. Mind you, if they find a place, I'll help them pack.
"then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage."
Well, good luck on that. Perhaps you can find such a place out in space somewhere. Ceti Alpha V, perhaps. Be sure and take Immortal Robot Lawyer and that pasty asshole that had Thanksgiving dinner at the Holiday Inn with you.
I'm pretty sure this was plagiarized from an issue of Zowie Comics' Prof. Reynalds Shrieking Commandos.
The 101st Keyboarders face their greatest threat when a cabal of liberal commu-islamofascist intellectuals storm their own capital in NYC. The intrepid Keyboarders are forced to send in their elite commando squadron led by Sgt. J. "Jelly Roll" Goldberg in a dearing effort to free the ungrateful liberal scum from their fellow liberals traitors.
In the end, they succeed, naturally, but not without costs. There's a particularly touching scene where Private "Nubs" Lileks succumbs to third degree burns when a leftist terrorist throws scalding latte in his face after snubbing him at a party.
Good stuff, a classic in the culture war comic book genre.
Shame on OSC for not giving credit where it's due.
If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists - which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does - then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.
I don't think he's talking about moving anywhere - he's saying "society" not "country." I suspect that the quote is as indicative of his civil war fantasies as is his new novel.
And there's gonna be a video game? One that encourages a bunch of bozos to invade the cities and kill liberals? That's a healthy sign.
And finally, their internalization of the red state/blue state worldview is increasingly silly as the political map more and more resembles that of 1859. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the blue state/gray state divide?
If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists - which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does - then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.
Which is exactly what polygamists like Warren Jeffs have been doing in southern Utah/northern Arizona. So, how's that working out for them?
Um ... the basic premise of this book is not new. "Col." House wrote a book like this almost a century ago (although it was first published anonymously and people thought the author was Teddy Roosevelt). Except in House's book, it was the left-wingers who took over the government who were the good guys ... and they won in the end bringing peace and prosperity to all as the hero (literally) sailed off into the sunset.
Anyway, what's with all this revisionist history from the "Harry Truman was the last good Democrat" crowd? While Harry Truman was certainly know Henry Wallace style liberal-progressive, he was a rabidly partisan Democrat who achieved national fame by investigating the conduct of a war ... he also integrated the military and his foreign policy team came up with the containment strategy that won the Cold War.
The people who claim they are "Harry Truman Democrats", OTOH, would have derided Harry Truman's investigations as polical posturing, would have labeled him a rabidly partisan "Defeato-crat", would be the first complaining about Truman's actions "undermining the morale of the military" and would posit that the idea of containing the Soviets was tantamount to capitulation and that the only "serious" foreign policy would be to wage war on the Soviets.
I agree with Card, et. al. ... the Dem. party needs to be more like the party of Truman. But that hardly means would should be a bunch of mealy mouthed, "bipartisan" centrists who believe in moderation at home and a "serious" (read "you can't be serious? can you?") foreign policy abroad but rather it means ... well, who's the most Trumanesque figure in the party today? Could it be? Coult it be? Could it be Howard Dean?
roy, thanks a lot for the headline/lead sentence/whatever you call it on this post.
"come, let us treason together" is lol. i forgot to mention it before, but better late than never.
Honestly, I never minded the later Ender books - I assume most people hate them because they're not the 'space operas' that Ender's Game lead them to be (and no, the description of it as a novel about forgiving genocide is unforgivably short-sighted and unfair).
Also, the Bean books never struck me as particularly right-wing (except for the 'religions aren't religions unless they let people quit without repercussion' theme). If anything, the revelation of the IF's goals reminds me quite a bit of then end of Watchmen.
Enders Game, and the sequel Speaker For The Dead were really good. Speaker For The Dead verged on the brilliant.
It's been a bitter slide since then, and that's a dreadful shame.
Well,
"How do you fight a STATE with GOD on its side?
How about this for balance? Drop over to our website for "After Twilight" a film that takes a 'cautionary look' at a world in the not too distant future ruled by a theocracy.
http://www.aftertwilightfilm.com
The short has won numerous awards, and we're in pre-production on the feature film. Check it out. It's MUCH more believable than the first five chapters of OSC rubbish.
http://www.nuclassicfilms.com
The article's point was not about Card's encouragement of genocide. The authors point is that he has reason to suspect Card did not write the book himself
And that is a whole lot worse.
It's been awhile since I read Card's work. Has his dialog always been so stilted and one-dimensional? That was worse then Ben Bova!
Commenting by HaloScan
