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Orson Scott Card on vision, villainy & virtue

Orson Scott Card has never limited himself to one genre: he's won Hugo and Nebula awards for his young adult cross-over Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead; he's brought character and morality to the forefront of traditional ghost stories in Lost Boys, Treasure Box and Homebody; he's shared his secrets with aspiring writers in instructional guides Character and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (also a Hugo award-winner); and he's collaborated on a Mormon musical, "Barefoot to Zion," and an upcoming Warner Brother's production of Ender's Game. What they all have in common is an ongoing emphasis on ethics.

Card's ethical vision stems, in part, from his Mormon upbringing. Growing up in California, Arizona and Utah, Card received degrees from Brigham Young University (1975) and the University of Utah (1981). Despite his ongoing loyalty to the church, however, Card says not all of his brethren are accepting of his life's work.

"There are Mormons who love my work and absolutely get what I'm doing. There are Mormons who think I'm the devil," Card says in a September, 1999 interview with Writer's Write, Inc. "Oddly enough, the latter category is equally divided between leftwing Mormons who think I'm the devil because I'm so rigidly orthodox, and rightwing Mormons who think I'm the devil because I'm so obviously heretical."

Throughout novels such as his most recent Shadow Puppets, Card offers up complicated characters on both the good and evil sides of the spectrum. While Card says he doesn't find evil fascinating per se, he does believe that outside factors contribute to an individual's character -- good or bad -- and he consistently acknowledges those factors through the villains in his fiction.

"To paraphrase Tolstoy: Good people are endlessly fascinating, but wicked people are all weak, cowardly, or evil in the same old ways," he says in Writer's Write, Inc. "But good people are the ones who struggle to balance their own needs with the needs of loved ones and the communities to which they have given allegiance. The result of this attitude of mine is that, with rare exceptions, I don't create "pure" villains."

Card notably takes issue with the stereotype that all writers are cynics, saying in Writer's Write, Inc., "...there is no activity more dependent on a sense of allegiance to a community than the act of writing fiction. In truth, I am iconoclastic and skeptical (not cynical) -- but skepticism, if it's honest, also doubts its own doubts; too many would-be skeptics in fact embrace their questions as if they were answers...I remain perpetually ready to adapt to genuine evidence when it presents itself."

Card's sophisticated commentary on violence in Ender's Game, paired with his commitment to his faith, has caused much speculation -- and some controversy -- as to where he fits on the political spectrum. In a 2000 interview with Salon ("My favorite author, my worst interview," Donna Minkowitz), he makes perfectly clear his disdain for both American political parties, and even acknowledges a limitation of the Mormon faith.

"Most of the program of both the left and the right is so unbelievably stupid it's hard to wish to identify myself with either," Card says. "But on economic matters, I'm a committed communitarian...I believe government has a strong role to protect us from capitalism. I'm ashamed of our society for how it treats the poor. One of the deep problems in Mormon society is that really for the last 75 years Mormons have embraced capitalism to a shocking degree."

For the present, though, Card finds his faith works -- even for a committed skeptic.

"...the Mormon community is the one to which I have the most allegiance and whose purposes I am most committed to advancing."

Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He and his wife, Kristine, have five children: Geoffrey, Emily, Charles, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa, named for Chaucer, Bronte and Dickinson, Dickens, Mitchell, and Alcott, respectively.

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