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This website tries to encourage you to sample the writings of Orson Scott Card. Mr. Card is pretty well known to readers of science fiction, but, in my experience, anyway, not much known to others. The November 2013 film of his book Ender's Game may change that.
This website is embedded in my pages about collecting books as "investments", and I will try to address those possibilities in respect of Orson Scott Card's books... but the website also try to tempt you to sample his writing, for your pleasure.
I am merely a book collector. Any illustrations used with credits to a bookseller should not be taken as indicating an affiliation or endorsement... by me of them, or by them of material on these pages or of me. Sadly, by the way, I do not necessarily own the books in the illustrations. And, "Thank you", to various people for letting me study their Card books.
I start my pages about AA Milne's books with "Ask the next ten people you meet if they have heard of Winnie-The-Pooh, and I would be surprised if even one said 'No'".
I would have, in September 2013, of Orson Scott Card, to say that I'd be surprised if one in ten non- science- fiction- reading people had heard of Card or Ender's Game. I've actually been asking that question for a number of years. Most science fiction fans have heard of him, have liked his books for many years... but few "outsiders" have heard of him.
For a start, many of his books are not science fiction. Enchantment (1999)... the link, for now, will open Wikipedia's page in a new tab or window... is a "fairy tale"... rather like "Shrek" is "a fairy tale"! Sleeping beauty, and all that... but not the version your mother told you. Not slapstick, like Shrek, but also more interesting. Some wonderful time travel paradoxes explored, and "sliced and diced", too. Lots of humor, too, just not only setting out to be funny.
There's also his collection of short stories in The Folk of The Fringe... (that's another Wikipedia link). I gather that there are parallels between the story and the history of Card's Mormon faith... but, not knowing a lot about the Mormons, I wasn't struck by any "messages" being promulgated. To me they were just interesting stories of "frontier" living in a time after a world-wide breakdown of what the developed world takes for "normal".
What I would call his second greatest series, the Alvin Maker books, are set in about 1800, in a hypothetical Pennsylvania- like region... but not quite the Pennsylvania of our history books. There is magic and fantasy, and maybe you can detect in reading Seventh Son and the other books that Card also writes science fiction. But they are not "science fiction" books, as such.
However... I think it must be conceded that the books he is most likely to be remembered for, the Ender's series, are science fiction... and yet...
Ender's Game certainly is a science fiction story. But it is so much more than your basic "techno-gadget", "space adventures", "whizz-bang" Buck Rogers!
In particular, there is a lot of material about people's feelings, and about how people get on with one another. (Much of it seeps into the film, but there is even more of it in the book.) I'm told that the US Marine Corps encourages its officer candidates to read the book.
By the way... if you have seen and enjoyed the movie then you may be pleased to know that yes, a "sequel" has already been written. (Speaker for the Dead (1986) (Wikipedia link, again.)) At least the novel is written. And a sequel to that. (Xenocide (1991) (Wikipedia link, again.)) And Card later wrote even more books involving the same characters and "world". (Try to see Ender's Game in a movie theater. There is a lot which will be seriously under-served by a DVD on your home TV. The audio will be degraded as well as the visual.)
I hope the above gives you a taste of my enthusiasm for Orson Scott Card's writing? I've written some further pages on specific matters... At this time, prehaps the first two have the most content that you will have trouble finding elsewhere. This site is still quite "young". I will try to polish it up some more, as time permits.
All of the following links will open in a new window or tabs. Just close it to come back to this menu. (See my page on "power browsing" for help with invoking tricks like that for almost any site, and other useful ideas.)
Editor's email address for comments or questions.
Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. Mostly passes. There were two "unknown attributes" in Google+ button code, and two in the Flattr code. Sigh.
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