Flawed Communities
The Work of Orson Scott Card
Melinda Melone
January 1, 1999
Heartfire, (Tor, 1998), 304 pp.
Ender's Game, (Tor, 1994), 324 pp.
Speaker for the Dead, (Tor, 1994), 382 pp.
All communities are built on stories, retellings of the founding events that bind them together. But most of us believe that other communities' stories are in some respect off the mark. Are all communities built on lies? This is one of the more intriguing questions raised by the work of Orson Scott Card, including his latest book, Heartfire.
Science fiction seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it genre, so it may be futile to try to encourage those who detest sci-fi to read Orson Scott Card. But Card's way of writing about the political and social issues of community-building transcends the genre. His fictional communities are peopled with memorable, complex characters. Whether admirable, despicable, or both, they're always human, even if they are giant bugs, idol-worshipping rats, or computer-based yet sentient artificial intelligences.
Oops, I lost some of you there, but wait! Come back! Card's characters are often people of faith, whose struggles, defeats, and victories are universal, regardless of their species or milieu. He's not afraid to give his characters real religious lives, not just psychological crutches which readers can see through even when the characters don't. And he returns again and again to the theme of communities: how to build them, how to judge them, even how to destroy them.
In Card's most famous series, which began with the record-breaking, multiple-award-winning, soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture Ender's Game, the theme of community building emerges late. It's almost a postscript to Ender's original story, yet it dominates the last three books of the four-book series. In particular, the second volume, ...
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