Science fiction, Ender's Game, and the nature of art

An excellent article:

Before he became a voice of the American right, Orson Scott Card wrote a really good book.

I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding Orson Scott Card when he gave the 2003 commencement speech at Harvey Mudd. At the time, I hadn't even read Ender's Game. But I did read it, eventually, and loved it -- it rivals Dune as my favorite science fiction book of all time. (Sorry Foundation, but I think you'll be stuck with third billing.) It even made my 15 most influential books list. (Dune is absent.)

I am a firm believer that all good science fiction illuminates something about us as human beings. Often, it tricks us into thinking about psychology, or philosophy, or justice. It dazzles with an exotic setting or technology, or even different rules of physics, to get us to suspend our disbelief. And with that belief suspended, with our defenses lowered, we can more honestly look at ourselves, our societies, and our past than in any other art form.

Disarmed, we learn, even as we are treated to a fantastic story.

So it is with Ender's Game. How else could we view children as potential murderers? When I read A Long Way Gone: Memories of a Child Soldier, I brought along all my mental baggage and assumptions about Africa, foreign conflict, resource wars, and recent world history. And as well-written and powerful as it was, I wasn't fully able to immerse myself into the world of war-torn Sierra Leone, as seen through the eyes of a child. It was still a bit alien to me, because it was real.

But in Ender's Game, it seems more plausible, almost natural that the selection process and jealousy inspired by Ender's rise would lead to murderous impulses. And it seems equally natural that Ender, a fundamentally good boy, would kill, twice, to protect himself. It also seems plausible that adults would manipulate the circumstances to force this test of his mettle -- because we knew, as children, how adults manipulated us all the time, and not always for our own benefit.

So it's tragic, but it's true: I can better empathize with this boy in a science fiction novel than a real boy in the real world telling me about the real horrors of war.

Ender's Game treats children as equal to adults. The children are bright; sometimes, they are brighter than the adults. They learn, adapt, and strategize. They engage in war games, and, as we find out, real warfare. They feel emotions that are sometimes as sophisticated as those of an adult.

The sci-fi elements also help break down that wall between child and adult. In zero-g, standard measures of strength and size matter less, and a child can be the equal of an adult in combat. Those of us who read the book remember vividly the scene where Ender shouts triumphantly at Graff in the zero-g room. "I beat you! I beat you!"

But Graff held the wand that unfroze Ender. It was impossible to beat the adults.

And that is how they remain children. Unlike a lot of lesser children's literature, it doesn't make kids adults, or make the adults kids. The children of Ender's Game are capable and brilliant. But they are still subject to the control of adults. The adults determine their lives, even as those same adults place the fate of humanity in the hands of those same children.

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So what about the politics of Orson Scott Card? Should that color how we view this book? How can we enjoy it fully if we know that this man campaigns actively against the identity of some of the same children who find, in his book, some strength and security from the complexity and hostility of real life?

For this the tragedy of Ender's Game. Or, it is the triumph of that book to transcend its author and become something else.

Ender's Game means a whole lot to precocious, nerdy children. I didn't have the privilege of finding this in my youth. But a lot of my Mudd friends did read it as children and young adults, and credit it for being both entertaining and inspirational. Some said it helped them deal with the ways adults usually treat children, especially bright, precocious ones.

And, yes, some were gay.

How ironic that it helped gay men and women, bright as hell, deal with misunderstanding long enough to break out and become who they were meant to be!

Except that it's not ironic at all: that's how art works.

Sometimes, a book (including That One), can become agents of change in ways directly contrary to the author's intent. That's what happens when art is created. It no longer belongs to the artist -- it belongs to us. All of us. (Especially That One.)

Ender's Game now belongs to my gay friends, and there's not a damn thing Orson Scott Card can do about it.