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Author Topic: Commercialization of Enderverse and outsourcing the writing
destroy
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I am sorry in advance for the negative things I'm going to write, but I feel very bad after reading half of the First Formic War.

I've been reading any and all OSC books that I could find for a long time, many of them several times. I discovered him first through Alvin the Maker books and later started buying his other works. He soon became one of my favourite writers of all time.

Recently I bought Earth Unaware, which was nothing special, but OK and now halway through Earth Afire, I am terribly disappointed and I feel cheated. It is glaringly obvious that this book was not written by OSC, it has nothing of him in it. The style feels more like The Grand Tour than Enderverse (although Ben Bova's books are much better than Formic wars). Characters are shallow and mostly unlikable. Story is inconsistent with itself and with other Enderverse books. But most of all, the story is implausible, I just can't believe that the human characters and Formics are reacting the way they are in the circumstances that are described.

Therefore I feel very cheated. But I do not find problems in spending 30 $ for 3 books, my problem is that I figured out that my long time hero, OSC, does not exist anymore. He sells rights to bad writers to write his books and then he signs them with his name. Than I read on this forum that he is trying to "reconcile" EG, which is a very good book, with these terrible, terrible books. Why not the other way round? And the most terrible thing of all is that most of the people loved First Formic War books... Living in such world is a really sad thing.

It is hard to me to accept that Orson Scott Card sold out, I thought that I knew him from his books.

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scifibum
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I understand your disappointment but you should have known that if another author was listed, it wouldn't feel the same.

I have not yet purchased or read any of the books he co-authored with Johnston. I think Lovelock was the only collaboration of OSC's that I've read.

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millernumber1
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I don't think it's completely fair to say OSC has sold out. He was extremely involved with Johnston in writing the books - he didn't do the actual typing, but he and Johnston developed the entire plotline and characters together, and he read and made comments on the books as they were being written.
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Szymon
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quote:
Originally posted by destroy:
Characters are shallow and mostly unlikable. Story is inconsistent with itself and with other Enderverse books. But most of all, the story is implausible, I just can't believe that the human characters and Formics are reacting the way they are in the circumstances that are described.

I don't agree. If we forget EG existed, the story is reasonably plausible, characters are as "Orsony" as ever. I imagine that while working on the books they co-created dossiers for each character and OSC had a lot to say in that matter.

I don't think these creations are comparable (ie EG vs both prequel trilogies). EG itself is a complete book. These books are intended, I believe, to be much lighter, comic-like.

That said, I totally agree these prequels don't have the complexity of EG, Speaker, Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

quote:

Than I read on this forum that he is trying to "reconcile" EG, which is a very good book, with these terrible, terrible books.

I agree. As I mentioned in another post. It is utterly impossible to reconcile either. You can only look at the prequels as non-canon, otherwise you get too frustrated.
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