News & Reviews - Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game placed ninth on the Best SF Novel Before 1990 list
August 1998
Every decade or so, Locus, the trade magazine of science fiction and fantasy
professionals, includes a "best all-time sf novel" and "best all-time fantasy
novel" category in its annual poll. This year, for the first time, novels published
in the '80s were eligible, and perhaps you won't be surprised that Ender's
Game placed ninth on the Best SF Novel Before 1990 list and the genre-bending Alvin Maker Series placed twenty-sixth on the Best Fantasy Novel
Before 1990 list.
This made Card the only author to place new entries on both lists.
Not only that, but using the same data, and combining votes for multiple
works, Locus came up with All-Time Best Novelist lists -- one for sf, one for
fantasy, and one combined. On the sf list, Card placed eighth. The only living
authors ahead of him were Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula K. LeGuin. On the
fantasy list, he barely made the cut at #30, but on the combined sf & fantasy
list he still made the top ten, with another living author, Gene Wolfe, moving
ahead of him.
Card comments: "It's awfully early in my career to start pinning my hopes on
any work of mine becoming a classic, but I'm proud to be included in the same
list with writers I admire so much. And I'm amazed and delighted that my
American frontier fantasy novels were noticed in a field that traditionally
belongs to Tolkienesque fantasy. Of course, ten years from now, when they
run this poll again, I may not be on it at all ... but it's sure nice to be noticed
this time."
Check out the August 1998 issue of Locus, available from Locus Press at PO
Box 13305, Oakland CA 94661; phone 510-339-9198; fax 510-339-8144; email
Locus@Locusmag.com. It also shows Ender's Game -- a fourteen-year-old
book! -- as #9 on Amazon.Com's sf paperback bestseller list!
http://www.hatrack.com/news-reviews/news/1998-08-19.shtml
