Sci-Fi Author Orson Scott Card

[Theunicornhunter 2]

Boy, talk about a poison pen.

 

LA times

 

I've read some of his work that was pretty bad, IMO, so I'm not sure why he considers himself such an expert.

[Jack_Bauer 1]

Here's a nice rebuttal to this article:

http://www.writergroupie.com/columns/cardtrekcolumn.htm

 

This rebuttal is excellent.

 

I think this is the article (Card's article) that can polarize the Trek nation. This is not an assault on any one series, it is an assault on all of Trek.

[Angela 1]

Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.

 

I'll bite and agree, especially with firefly, which has been resurrected a la trek in motion picture format

 

However the rest was absolute hogwash, designed specifically to garner himself with publicity for what ever trashy novel he is about to make.

 

He is a fan boy of good sci fi writers (Heiline and Clark most noteably) but the poor fool is misguided if he thinks he has one Iota of sense when it comes to his own genre, he should go write pulp fiction and leave the sci fi to the big boys and girls, who have vision and verve when telling a story.

[Takara_Soong 4]

Before today, I had never heard of him. Sounds like an idiot IMO.

[deadmeatsecurityguy 0]

Orson Card is correct in some of his observations. There was no through line in the series. That sort of thing didn't exist in any TV program of the time TOS arrived on the scene. Except for soap operas there was no "real Life" for any of the shows. They went from show to show with no connection. TV at the time had never experienced the phenomena of the Trek fan base. No other show had the kind of fans Star Trek did.

 

Yes, the acting by and large sucked, out loud. Star Trek had more ham on the screen every week than the Food Network. Yes the SFX were in a word, cheesy. With the budget allowed them every week they worked wonders. They couldn't afford Chekov and Sulu the first season. It was one or the other until the second season.

 

But the show let you escape, your little piece of hell for an hour every week. The acting was good enough to engage us. The SFX were the best they could afford and were not cheesy by the standards of the time. Compared to sci-fi which had gone before, the Trek SFX were amazingly good at the time. They tackled many social issues of the day in ways no other show could do. Trek was ahead of its time. I lived long and prospered because of its fan base and the quality of the stories being told. Non Trek fans could and did enjoy a number of episodes.

 

While Mr. Cards opinions, in a few cases are correcthis premise the the whole Star Trek genre is tragically flawed, is not.

Edited May 6, 2005 by deadmeatsecurityguy

[Kor37 9]

It sounds to me like this guy may have written a Trek book at one time which was rejected. I've never heard of this guy. Is he supposed to be well-known? Funny how he mentions a great writer like Harlan Ellison but forgets to mention that Ellison wrote an episode of TOS.

[Theunicornhunter 2]

It sounds to me like this guy may have written a Trek book at one time which was rejected. I've never heard of this guy. Is he supposed to be well-known? Funny how he mentions a great writer like Harlan Ellison but forgets to mention that Ellison wrote an episode of TOS.

322915[/snapback]

 

Good point about Ellison,

 

Actually, Card is a fairly well known writer. His book Ender's Game is probably his most famous work and I just recently read it. If you like to read scifi then it is worth a read but I read one short story of his once that pretty much turned me off of his work.

 

I do however, think he made a mistake by insulting Trek fans - many of whom are genre fans - who does he think will read his work if not for genre fans.

 

Agreed on one point, in the 60's tv shows didn't have continuing storylines or recurring characters like they do today - every episode was sort of a complete story in itself.

[DrWho42 13]

Funny how he mentions a great writer like Harlan Ellison but forgets to mention that Ellison wrote an episode of TOS.

322915[/snapback]

I do recall Ellison stating...

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscuranist drivel; ̀́́́‘Star Trek’ can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!̀̀̀̀̀̀̀̀̀”.

[Jack_Bauer 1]

Funny how he mentions a great writer like Harlan Ellison but forgets to mention that Ellison wrote an episode of TOS.

322915[/snapback]

I do recall Ellison stating...

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscuranist drivel; Ìììì‘Star Trek’ can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!ÌÌÌÌÌÌÌÌÌ”.

322975[/snapback]

So in a sense, Ellison insulted his own work?

As he wrote for Star Trek.

 

Edit: Granted, he wrote "The City On the Edge of Forever".

Edited May 6, 2005 by Jack_Bauer

[Takara_Soong 4]

Funny how he mentions a great writer like Harlan Ellison but forgets to mention that Ellison wrote an episode of TOS.

322915[/snapback]

I do recall Ellison stating...

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscuranist drivel; Star Trek’ can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!”.

322975[/snapback]

So in a sense, Ellison insulted his own work?

As he wrote for Star Trek.

 

Edit: Granted, he wrote "The City On the Edge of Forever".

322980[/snapback]

 

Must be why the writer of the rebuttal you posted referred to him as the "infamous Harlan Ellison".

[Sam The Smuggler 1]

Everyone's Entitled To Their Opinion, But I Still Think This Guy Is NUTS!!

 

Click For Spoiler

May 'Star Trek' and its ilk never prosper again

Orson Scott Card

 

 

So they've gone and killed ''Star Trek.'' And it's about time.

    They tried it before, remember. The network flushed William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy down into the great septic tank of broadcast waste, from which no traveler. . . . No, wait, let's get this right: from which rotting ideas and aging actors return with depressing regularity.

    It was the fans who saved ''Star Trek'' from oblivion. They just wouldn't let go.

    This was in the days before VCRs, and way before DVDs. You couldn't go out and buy the boxed set of all three seasons. When a show was canceled, the only way you could see it again was if some local station picked it up in syndication.

    A few stations did just that. And the hungry fans called their friends and they watched it faithfully. They memorized the episodes. I swear I've heard of people who quit their jobs and moved just so they could live in a city that had ''Star Trek'' running every day.

    And then the madness really got under way.

    They started making costumes and wearing pointy ears. They wrote messages in Klingon, they wrote their own stories about the characters, filling in what was left out - including, in one truly specialized subgenre, the ''Kirk-Spock'' stories in which their relationship was not as platonic and emotionless as the TV show depicted it.

    Mostly, though, they wrote and wrote and wrote letters. To the networks. To the production company. To the stars and minor characters and guest stars and grips of the series, inviting them to attend conventions and speak about the events on the series as if they had really happened, instead of being filmed on a tatty little set with cheesy special effects.

      So out of the ashes the series rose again. Here's the question: Why?

    The original ''Star Trek,'' created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science-fiction television show could be bad. Nimoy was the only charismatic actor in the cast and, ironically, he played the only character not allowed to register emotion.

    This was in the days before series characters were allowed to grow and change, before episodic television was allowed to have a through line. So it didn't matter which episode you might be watching, from which year - the characters were exactly the same.

    As science fiction, the series was trapped in the 1930s - a throwback to spaceship adventure stories with little regard for science or deeper ideas. It was sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

    Which was a shame, because science-fiction writing

 

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  was incredibly fertile at the time, with writers such as Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

    Little of this seeped into the original ''Star Trek.'' The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry's rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long?

    Here's what I think: Most people weren't reading all that brilliant science fiction. Most people weren't reading at all. So when they saw ''Star Trek,'' primitive as it was,   it was their first glimpse of science fiction. It was grade school for those who had let the whole science-fiction revolution pass them by.

    Now we finally have first-rate science-fiction film and television that are every bit as good as anything going on in print.

    Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science-fiction films of all time so far: ''Being John Malkovich'' and ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'' Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created ''Lost,'' the finest television science-fiction series of all time . . . so far.

    Through-line series such as Joss Whedon's ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's ''Smallville'' have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon's ''Firefly'' showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell   a compelling long-term story.

    Screen sci-fi has finally caught up with written science fiction. We're in college now. High school is over. There's just no need for ''Star Trek'' anymore.

   ---

   Orson Scott Card is an author of science fiction; his most recent book is Shadow of the Giant. He was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona and Utah, moving to North Carolina several years ago. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University.

 

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2721528

[Kor37 9]

We've gone through this subject just recently in here. This guy is a j.erk.

[Sam The Smuggler 1]

We've gone through this subject just recently in here. This guy is a j.erk.

323818[/snapback]

 

That's What I Get For Not Coming Here In Weeks B)