Orson Scott Card on Instapundit

I was going through the various podcasts I'm subscribed to when an episode from the Instapundit archive caught my eye. The guest was Orson Scott Card, the author of numerous science fiction novels including Ender's Game.

I adore Sci-Fi*, but please understand: I like happy stories. Oh, they don't have to be so happy that there is no conflict or anything, but I want my main characters to be the good guys, my conflicts to be surrmountable and my endings to be more comedy than tragedy. It's just the way I am.

When I started reading Ender's Game, I knew instantly that it was not one of "my" kind of stories. And yet, I could not put it down. The emotional atmosphere of the novel made it a tough read, the kind that usually takes me forever to get throught. But not this time. The story was compelling, absorbing...I found myself drawn from one excruciating event to the next. I felt so much for the characters, I was forced to tear my eyes away from the pages to remember that it was just a book. But I found I needed to know what happened next, no matter how difficult the read was. I stayed up until 4 in the morning to finish it and was unable to stop thinking about it, was unable to even shake off the feelings from my reading for days.

I've never felt that way about a book, before or since. I've avoided reading the sequels partly because I'm sure they won't measure up and partly because, if they do, I will feel that emotional intensity again.

Whoa.

Second post in a row where I started to write about one thing and wound up rather sidetracked.

The real reason that I wanted to write this post was to talk about what he said during the podcast. Because it is incredibly relevent to current events and offers incredible insight. Guess I'll leave it for a sequel.


*And if you like science fiction or fantasy you HAVE to try out Escape Pod, a weekly science fiction podcast that takes good stories and presents them in audio format. It's free, but the authors get paid (through donations) so the quality stays high.