I know that alot of OSC's books are at least in part based on his own life. I was wondering if anyone knew if enchantment fit this mold, and if so how? the intros to books really elluminate these things but the copy I have has no into.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
I just got out my copy, and lo and behold-no intro! I wonder if this is due to the publisher (Del Rey Books) for not including it, or the writer(OSC) for not writing it.
Posted by Princess Leah (Member # 6026) on :
Well, not many people know this...in his spare time OSC builds makeshift Molotov cocktails in his backyard and poisons the neighborhood dogs.
No, I jest. I have no idea...but I do have a powerful yen to read Enchantment again.
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
If OSC draws on his own experiences to inform his writing, it's only to the degree that everyone draws on their own experience with life to inform their writing.
Lost Boys was particularly autobiographical. OSC has discussed how the family in Ender's Game was based loosely on his own childish perceptions of his family at age 5, and how Lanik Mueller's struggle with radical regeneration mirrored his own experience with weight gain and poor body image. Beyond that, I can't think of any case where his work explicitly mirrored his life.
Certainly, it's not a theme so pervasive that I'd start trying to apply it to books that have no clear connection to it. Enchantment was based on an idea that came into OSC's nascent film production company ten years ago. As far as I know, he made no attempt to write anything autobiographical into it, except to the degree that any story written by a human about other humans is based on the writer's experience being a human Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
I don't write intros to most of my novels. I write acknowledgments, which come afterward, in which I say whatever I have to say that I think might be remotely interesting to anybody.
All my books are based on my experience of human nature and the universe, which includes everything I've read, seen, experienced, heard about, and imagined. That is true of EVERY author.
But based on my LIFE, as in actual events or relationships or characters? Only one, folks: Lost Boys (novel and short story). And only a bare handful with recognizable thematic relationships to my life: Fat Farm and Treason for body image issues, and ... and ...
trying to think ...
Oh, of course, the references to Charlie Ben's cerebral palsy implied in "The Fringe" and in Homecoming.
I don't think there are ANY other references to my life. "Prior Restraint" does have people from my writing class at U of U, taught by Francois Camoin, in it, but the "I" of that story is not really me in any realistic sense.
So looking for autobiography in my fiction is pretty much a waste of time. My life is quite boring, and if I had to depend on things that have actually happened to me in order to spice up my books, they would be poor novels indeed.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
Oh, yeah, Rat already named the other - the fact that Ender has an older brother and sister (though in a different order from the first three sibs in my family as I grew up). But of course everyone knows that I made Ender a third child in order to say something about Hitler - couldn't have anything to do with my own thirdhood <grin>.
Posted by Peter_The_Great (Member # 9212) on :
thank you for the reply, I didn't think there was anything autobiographical, but I thought I may as well ask. It is a wonderfull book, one of my favorites, now I have to find it so I can read it agian Posted by RunningBear (Member # 8477) on :
Hitler??
wha?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Somebody wrote an article a long time ago saying that Ender was really Hitler, and that OSC is an evil, evil man trying to teach everybody that Hitler was really a good guy.
Or something like that. I've never read it.
Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
You don't want to.
Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
But just to be clear, when OSC refers to Ender being Hitler, he is joking and making fun of the idiot who wrote that article Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
(for those who don't know, Puppy is an alter ego of A Rat Named Dog)
By the way, OSC, isn't it hilarious that without either of us having read the other's post, we gave exactly the same explanation?
It's almost like I grew up in your house, isn't it? Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
Scott: Whatever happened to the ENCHANTMENT movie my dad was trying to make with you?
Posted by Darakemba (Member # 9341) on :
An Enchantment movie!!! ::dies::
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Right, and we're supposed to believe that the enormous one eyed bearskin rug you have in your living room is just a coincidence.
Wake up people. Enchantment was autobiographical. So was Magic Street.
Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
Disney snuffed it? Unfair, wouldn't you say?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Wake up people. Enchantment was autobiographical. So was Magic Street.
OSC is really a pseudonym for Octavia Butler. Haven't you noticed that he hasn't come out with any new books since she died?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
And why do you think OSC pushes Wild Seed so much? Clearly he's a well nigh immortal shape shifter.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
I love that he calls his son "Rat". Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
Chale, Scott.. I need to read more of your books, amigo.
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