That, of course, is the attempt by Chaosium to come up with an Ancient Egyptian meaning for Nyarlathotep, "ny har rut hotep". The post is about Ender's Game, if you've read it you know why.
I borrowed Ender's Game from a friend of my mother's. I'm not crazy about it, it has its flaws—not least of which is that it ends with the founding of a religion that entails baptism for the dead. Understand, I have no problem with religious content in science fiction, mine is full of the stuff, but I do not insult the reader's intelligence by giving obvious Catholicism a silly name (I do have alien religions that parallel it, but not only do they have one major, key difference, their presence is entirely justified by the necessities of the plot, see here for why).
But online, looking for critiques of Ender's Game, I noticed that most people did not, in fact, make criticisms of Ender's Game. Nope. Instead they merely made personal attacks on Card, chiefly on his view of gay marriage, which is the view you would expect him to hold, as a Mormon who does not treat his faith as an à la carte proposition. Either a majority or a substantial minority of the reviews generalized from Card and Mormonism to attacks on Christianity, despite the fact that not a single Christian body worthy of the name considers Mormons to be Christians. Might as well generalize from your opinion on Baha'ism to an attack on Islam, you intellectual titans.
Now, while it's entirely appropriate to bring in, e.g., Joss Whedon's Man!Feminism or Tim Minear's DaleGribble!Libertarianism in a criticism of Firefly, that's because those things actually show up in the show. Other than the aforementioned dead-people-baptizing, Card's Mormonism does not show up in Ender's Game (nope, not even Ender's mother having been raised Mormon—his father was raised Catholic, and that gets precisely as much treatment in the plot).
What was really irksome was, several of the criticisms were otherwise largely correct. I'm reminded of something Tycho said once, about how he really hates to see a good argument, well constructed, delivered in a manner that makes it impossible to take seriously. E.g., when you make some incisive criticisms of the book's plot, and then sidetrack for a Two Minutes' Hate to accuse Card of Unthink (my God I wish Orwell, verminous little puke that he was, hadn't invented such a useful vocabulary for those concepts—but that's another post).
I say largely correct because, of the two correct criticisms, only one was entirely correct. That being that Card really does present Ender, Graff, the people we're supposed to sympathize with, as being good a priori, and their questionable actions being excused very largely in light of this, rather than in light of their human failings. Even that criticism tended to go too far, though, as for instance in claiming that the thing Ender did in ignorance is not excused by that ignorance when, in fact, yes it is—knowledge is, in fact, a major determining factor in whether one is accountable for their actions or not.
The other criticism is even more close-but-no-stuffed-panda. Namely, the argument that Ender's Game is a geek revenge fantasy. Again, close, but no. It is a geek vindication fantasy, and despite the Latin root that's something else. Ender's revenge on the bullies is portrayed purely (too purely, if anything) as tragedy; it is Ender's ultra-specialness as the perfect kid who saves everything, understands everyone, and feels bad about things that aren't his fault that is the fantasy. It is, of course, the fantasy of every kid who got picked on in school; it also has a Gnostic element to it, of course, but Mormonism is a species of Hermeticism, so of course it does (the difference between Hermetic and Manichean Gnosticism is the Manichean dismisses those who lack gnosis, while the Hermeticist attempts to bring them to it—Mormon missionaries may be annoying but their hearts are in the right place).
All told, not a great book. Possibly not even a good book—I also had issues with the buggers' biochemistry being identical with terrestrial life, and some of the style (e.g., genius children, and I come from an extended family full of them, don't talk like adults). But most of the critics were miles wide of the mark, and that born of ideologically-motivated delusion, rather than mere failure of perception.
No comments:
Post a Comment