http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/08/outcry-hamlet-novel-gay-paedophile

Seriously???

King Hamlet as a gay pedophile???

Not only does that make no sense at all from a character standpoint, but how...why even do that? Such seeming hatred for the LGBT community...

Is Orson Scott Card going to become the Wagner of the sci-fi canon?

Because I'm sure Asimov, Bradbury, those types will one day be as widely read and celebrated as HG Wells and Mary Shelley in the Canon...I thought Card would surely join that...but wow.

@Jamiet99uk:

Apparently Scott Card's a rather public anti-LGBT marriage and anti-LGBT writer, both in his work (like this one) and several comments online, apparently he's really stigmatized himself...

According to the oracle of Wikipedia, he's been outspoken in his opposition to homosexuality since the early 1990s. Hardly news.

Hence my "I'm an idiot" statement at the start?

I didn't know, I never really looked into Scott Card's personal views and life the way I try to do with most authors I read.

"Hymned by the publisher Subterranean Press as a "revelatory" retelling which shows "what's really going on" in Shakespeare's play, the story suggests Hamlet's father wasn't murdered by his brother Claudius, but Horatio, in revenge for being molested by him as a child."

^Completely fumbling the whole of the greatest play ever's plot away...AND the overtones there is just disgusting.

Dude, he's Mormon. What the fuck do you expect?

I'd never heard of this, and no wonder, as it sounds positively awful.

@Draug:

AGAIN, I DIDN'T KNOW he was a Mormon...I never looked into his personal life, I just read the book and that was it.

You didn't even read the forewards or the "Abou tthe Author" at the end? Shame on you, obi. Research what you read, man!

I was 10 when I read it!

And I never read the "About the Author," and still never read them, I always go online to look up authors, I never care for that half-page about the author, that's just designed to sell the author as well as the book, it's not like it'll say "Oh, yes, and the man's a terrible homophobe, but please, by his product anyway!"

Ah but his does mention his being Mormon. But you are forgiven being as you were so young. :-)

I hated Ender's Game when I read it, really despised it. Seriously, who the hell writes a vindication of fascism?

How incredibly unimportant all this is.

Obiwan, I'm not sure if you're implyin that this means you shouldn't have liked the book, but if so, I'm not sure I follow. There are lots of writers who had despicable views on something that produced really good works of literature. Not that EG is exactly a world classic, but it's pretty good -- right?

Also for Wikipedia, here's a quote from Orson Scott Card. "...[T]here is no link whatsoever between homosexuality and pedophilia in this book. Hamlet's father, in the book, is a pedophile, period. I don't show him being even slightly attracted to adults of either sex. It is the reviewer, not me, who has asserted this link, which I would not and did not make."

@Invictus:

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless."

--Oscar Wilde (who else?)

So yes, it's unimportant in the grand scheme of wars and recessions and such--but so are the Olympics, and so are the movies playing now, and so is, well, Diplomacy...

But passion for it makes the useless worthwhile, in a way...and anyway--

How unimportant and useless is a comment stating just how unimportant and useless such a useless thing is, anyway?

Posts like the one above are why a lot of people can't stand you.

@JECE:

"I hated Ender's Game when I read it, really despised it. Seriously, who the hell writes a vindication of fascism?"

When I read it, I actually liked it and continued to like it for a reason that, I have found, has cost my liking Heinlein and "Starship Troopers" in an enduring fashion--

I thought it gave a view of it fro both sides, that is, that it has elements and characters that show a militaristic and fascistic society such as theirs increasingly is to be, in their view, for the better, but there's usually a counterpoint character and statement to that...

There are characters that are certainly on board with the whole fascistic garbage, but the book, I thought, also gives voice to those who would (RIGHTLY) point out what utter garbage a lot of that is from a moral standpoint.

Hence the two siblings of Ender, Peter and Valentine, and their pseudonyms when they write, Demosthenes and Locke (wow, between this and "Lost" and other instances...John Locke really seems to be used quite a bit as a "name" in literature...no love for Rousseau or Stuart Mill?)

Of course they switch their personas, so the peaceable, democratic Valentine writes the Demosthenes nonsense and Peter writes Locke, but they do it with each other's influence, so it is allowing both sides a chance to speak, and from a character standpoint, it allows you to compare the polar personalities and viewpoints of Valentine and Peter, and of course Ender is somewhere in the middle (if I wanted to go into an essay on this, I could probably try for a Peter/Ender/Valentine, Id/Ego/Superego take on it, but I'll leave it there.)

That, coupled with the fact that it IS left up to debate how immoral or moral it is to not only commit genocide, but to treat children the way the Battle School people do, and it seems a lot more complex and intelligent than Heinlein's purely-militaristic take wherein a huge, military-run government can do no wrong morally (they even have a "Philosophy" class dealing with that, if I'm not mistaken, where anti-militaristic and democratic ideals are decried as being in error) and so on and so forth.

So, yeah--definitely touches on fascism, and certainly straddles the line, but I think it straddles it well enough and gives enough voice to both sides that it's not a straight endorsement of it, and it's more of an analysis of both extreme poles of political thought.

(Then again, given that I've just found out how badly I've bungled the whole background of Card, for all I know the man's hopped up and down for the sort of Heil-Heinlein fascism of that later author's work, so for all I know, I could be giving him WAY more credit than is due.)

@Invictus:

1. Why? You come in, the first thing you have to say isn't t contribute to the actual conversation, but essentially say "This is stupid and unimportant and who cares," (in which case, why enter into such a thread, I generally stay out of threads I think are unimportant or don't appeal to ME) and it's true...

It's unimportant, sure, but if it's something interesting to talk about for some, who cares? Diplomacy the Game is unimportant, but you enjoy playing it...if you enjoy something, and others enjoy playing/talking about it with you (or even enjoy speaking against you) then, really, who cares if it's unimportant if you're having fun for a bit?

2. That's fine--I'd rather folks dislike me for what my honest views are and how I choose to express them than to pander to everyone.

@semck:

"Obiwan, I'm not sure if you're implyin that this means you shouldn't have liked the book, but if so, I'm not sure I follow. There are lots of writers who had despicable views on something that produced really good works of literature. Not that EG is exactly a world classic, but it's pretty good -- right?"

Well, I've already outed myself via Wilde once already, let's double down and do it again--

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

I don't entirely agree with Oscar on that one, but I think it holds here.

I'm not at all saying that I now shouldn't at all like EG as a work, especially as the homophobia of it's creator (unless someone has a really, REALLY unique reading of EG) doesn't really factor into the ideas or structure or characters or plot or really anything of the book.

It isn't as if this is, say, "Heart of Darkness" or "The Jew of Malta," where the question of racism or Anti-Semetism are right there and inescapably linking the author and text alike (for the record, I don't think HoD IS actually racist...I think it somehow manages to feel about 5x longer than it's short novella size actually is, and I think that there definitely is a question as to how Conrad exactly aligned, probably not racist or non-racist, he was probably somewhere in the middle, shades of grey and all, as HoD shows black people as being almost inhuman, but also shows how despicably savage the European white colonizers and imperialists are in their turn as well, but I digress.)



HOWEVER, I DO think that the Scott Card/Richard Wagner parallel may be appropriate here--

Wagner is indisputably one of the Top 10, probably Top 5 most celebrated composers in terms of his music alone today...BUT...well, he man was quite an Anti-Semitic shit, wasn't he, and you can't really discuss Wagner seriously without broaching that.

By that same token, Orson Scott Card's probably one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the last 50 years, and would bear mentioning alongside Asimov and Bradbury and other titans of the genre, especially as more and more of those works are gaining acceptance in the Canon...

BUT, his homophobic stance--not even homophobic, he seems to think and even writes that allowing same sex marriage will allow for the crumbling of all societal values as we know it and issue in an age of degeneration--may very well tarnish his reputation down the road the same way that Wagner's reputation is tarnished, and that, well, while the book ITSELF may not be at all homophobic, I have to admit, I'd have a hard time reading it again and not thinking "This man is a terrible homophobe, and I'm giving his works attention and credit right now, and by extension, HIM credit...and the EG Movie will be out next year--if I go see it and pay for a ticket, I'm indirectly funding a man who supports views and speaks for views I find abhorrent..."

I suppose it's the same with Chick-Fil-A right now:

Those sandwiches might be good, but in buying them, you're funding a company that has given large amounts of cash to ant-LGBT movements, speakers, PACs, campaigns, everything...so you're indirectly helping and even endorsing them to an extent by buying their product.

The product may not be at fault, but suppose the creator is to be faulted--

What then?

Do you benefit the creator by buying their products and indirectly help them...
Or not do so, even if the product itself isn't at fault and is, perhaps, quite good?

I love the book Ender's Game. It's probably my favorite standalone book (ignoring the other Ender stories), with maybe Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana as a close second.

Card has frequently incorporated Mormons and religious themes into his books. He wrote a historical fiction (non-scifi) book called Saints (1983) about a woman who becomes one of Joseph Smith's wives. Folk of the Fringe (1989) includes short stories about groups of Mormons in the post-apocalyptic United States. His Women of Genesis series (2000-) is about Biblical wives. In the Worthing Chronicle (1983), Jason is revered as a god by his colonists; elsewhere, the concept of people no longer protected from injury by God is discussed.

"[T]here is no link whatsoever between homosexuality and pedophilia in this book. Hamlet's father, in the book, is a pedophile, period. I don't show him being even slightly attracted to adults of either sex. It is the reviewer, not me, who has asserted this link, which I would not and did not make."

1. Regardless, that is about as stupid a take on the story as you could possibly take...HORATIO killing the King? Congrats--you have just managed to not only introduce a plot point that flies in the face of about a DOZEN facts of the actual book (for one, Claudius confessing to God and the audience that he DID kill the King) but undermine half of the emotional and thematic weight that is put behind the characters...Hamlet is no longer taking a just revenge and yet struggling with it due to his moral precepts and his own psyche, and he's no longer clever enough to get his proof Claudius is the killer via The Mousetrap play, he's just a raving madman who sees ghosts that apparently lie to him and kills the wrong person...er, kills the wrong person TWICE (after all, he does stab Polonius in error.) ;) Suddenly, Claudius is blameless, and all his motivations for why he would have wanted to kill the king--including the possibility that he did it partially because he loved Gertrude--is gone. Gertrude is suddenly completely pointless. So are Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. And, of course, Horatio doing not only makes NO sense, but it takes what was essentially the audience's link into Hamlet's mind, the one he speaks several of his most intimate and famous thoughts to, the one person he counts as a friend, and turns him into the murderer, AND turns Hamlet's father, who was supposed to have been so beloved and great that we should feel on Hamlet's side and want to see him avenge his foul and most unnatural murder, into a molesting pedophile. WELL DONE! You have successfully corrupted and missed the point of nearly every single last character and plot point of the play for the purpose of some absurd fan-fiction!

2. I obviously haven't read it--and I have no intention of ever doing so, obviously--but I will say that given what apparently is Scott Card's stance on homosexuality and how he seems to be viscerally against it...it's one of those situations where, for all I know, he could be truthful and didn't mean or intend to make the King a "gay" pedophile, but his anti-gay stance does allow for that creeping interpretation to come in and be up for debate.

3. "I don't show him even slightly being attracted to adults of either sex."

...Gertrude...?

And if he's molesting Horatio and attracted to him as a child...ummm...

Hamlet's Father being attracted to Horatio as a child is no better...actually, that's far, far, FAR WORSE--that's why such a disgusting action is considered DESPICABLE and AGAINST THE LAW.

And the character not only has no basis for this sort of fan-fiction twist, again, it works completely the opposite way, as, well, he was married to Gertrude! You could argue "he wasn't actually attracted to her," but there's no textual evidence for that, and that certainly doesn't seem to be what is intended or implied in the original play...hell, he even appears again to Hamlet (or else he psychologically manifests to Hamlet, if we're to go the Freudian route) in Act III just after he's killed Polonius and is berating his mother and tells him to stop it and leave her be...maybe that wasn't out of love for his old wife, but that's AT LEAST more of a suggestion that he was attracted to Gertrude than ANY non-existent plot point that suggests that he wouldn't be.



And I'll leave it there before it becomes an essay, as frankly, I could go on and on about this (and no one would care, but I suspect everyone believes I could do such a damned silly thing, such is my nerd-knowledge of Shakespeare and especially THAT play.)

But one last thing, lest someone say the following:

"It's an adaptation, Obi, or a fictional take on the story, you just want to seal 'Hamlet' off forever and not allow new interpretations and versions to come out."

Not at all--I LOVE "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."

THAT was smart.
THAT was brilliantly done.
THAT was done without blatantly contradicting the basic plot points of the play.
THAT was done for the BENEFIT of the work as well, giving added depth and new-found recognition to R&G, and a sort of recognition you COULD see actually working in the context of the play, that these characters ARE so off to the side and such pawns in this larger scheme that Stoppard's take is not only allowable, it makes sense given the historical and textual context of both works, and marries his new ideas and the ideas and plot of the old one perfectly.

THIS...this is a fan-fiction that ignores...pretty much everything, and is nonsensical and BAD.

"But Obi, you haven't even read--"

Just from his own explanation I've already listed about a dozen glaring problems with this idea and why it in no way works.

The real question is, have you read the garbage "Empire" series?

No...

I read the first one, wasn't impressed, didn't realize there were more.

obiwanobiwan: I think you are giving him too much credit. It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't remember Valentine being very convincing, only spiritual. (I'm not religious.) So I don't know where you find the two sides.

But I wasn't talking about that. What annoyed the hell out of me was the creation of these superhumans that were inherently superior to the rest of the human race. If these superhumans can exist, then fascism is allowed to make sense. It should make you shudder. And of course it's complete baloney that two or three siblings could take over the world through their superiority like that. (At least they also had willpower, if I remember correctly.)

I don't recall it being superhumans so much as child limits, two per household, i recall, unless you get permission for another because your genetics are just so damn awesome.

That's bordering on the edge of eugenics without totally crossing it (as if i recall, they don't have selective breeding, everyone has the 2 child limit, so everyone can still have kids) sort of how the book's society borders on fascistic without totally crossing it.

But it's been years since I've read it, so i dunno...

@JECE - The only "superhuman" in the series was Bean as he was the escaped product of a genetics lab that was shut down. Ender, Val, and Peter were just kids with exceptionally brilliant parents to begin with. I believe it is even mentioned that they could have asked for and probably gotten permission to have Ender but he would have been takne from them to serve (which is what happened anyhow) as that was the only way additional children beyond two were allowed.

Yes, I love the book, although I love Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind better.

obiwanobiwan: You may want to read the book again. I'm talking about neither eugenics, genetics nor family planning. I'm saying that the author choose to make these three kids naturally far superior to everyone else in the world to the point where they were meant to rule the world. To think this is possible is a very fascist thought.

Draugnar: I don't remember Bean, but see above.