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.

***

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.

Reintegration

Crap, I always hate this part.

David sat on one side of the floating raft, reminiscent of an amusement park water ride. He looked at the polished, overly-expensive sides. It was better than looking at what lay ahead.

"David? David! David?"

He remembered, a bit too late, to squelch the instinct to turn around. The price he paid for a tardy brain signal was finding himself face-to-face with another David.

Well, he thought, at least he still looks like me.

In fact, there were around forty Davids on this raft, all coasting slowly to the reintegration chamber ahead. Why it took so long, he didn't know.

"Hi David! It's David! David David David! Hahaha!"

One of the side effects of multielement time travel was the creation of less-than-perfect shards, or copies of the original person. Occasionally the shard would be psychopathic, or philosophically inverted, or otherwise unsuitable for the job. Some would be deformed. All defective shards would be incarcerated upon creation and not released until reintegration.

Sometimes, they would have to be destroyed. The scientists said that the loss of a shard or two wouldn't affect his reintegrated self, though he always harbored doubts. He always felt a bit more... hollow... after a reintegration process short a few shards.

But most weren't psychopaths. Some were just... weird. Like this moron.

"We're going to the bright light! The bright light! Tra la la la la la!"

The first time he was being reintegrated, he tried to kill one of the annoying ones. But the technicians stopped him.

"Don't do it -- that's a part of your personality!"

"The fuck it is. There is no part of me that's like this dimwitted moron!"

But they stopped him. And it bothered him that he was part moron, deep down, somewhere in his psyche. He also knew, by the technicians' response to his attempted shardicide, that they were lying about the effects of reintegrating with fewer shards than were initially created.

He surveyed the large, open, metallic chamber. The sides, floor, and ceiling were unadorned and unbroken, except by occasional splotches of equipment and, of course, the river of glowing goo.

To tune out the babbling idiot next to him, he thought about how the program.

He was part of an elite group of agents responsible for protecting or repairing aspects of the timeline. They were chosen for the strength and consistency of their personalities and the ability to function under duress, important both for the multielement process as well as the missions proper.

I guess an average person would be stuck on a raft of weirdos. Maybe this is why I don't go out anymore.

Not all shards were created equal. Beyond occasional personality divergences, the process could generate a maximum of 16 shards at a time. Experiments involving more shards were ongoing, but he wasn't informed about them. The joke among agents was that the first 32-shard process generated a bunch of three-foot midgets. The truth was probably a lot less funny.

For complicated missions, it would sometimes be necessary to generate shards from shards. Sadly, the number of viable shards would decrease rapidly in subsequent generations. For that reason, no agent had been able to complete a mission that involved less than third-generation shards. At that point, it was classified a failure, the agent lost -- not enough viable shards would remain in the facility for reintegration -- and another agent would be sent to finish the job. David didn't know if there were any missions that were just total failures. In spite of his cynicism about how the program was run, the nature of temporal meddling could mean that new missions would just go back to the point when old missions were started, thereby providing infinite chances to get it right.

Despite this, some agents never came back. The cynicism resurfaced, and he concluded that it was because a failed mission mattered, while a success that involved an agent death was still a success. One didn't tempt the temporal gods through the pursuit of perfect outcomes. Or pester the director with rescue mission proposals.

And the missions could be hard. David had lost 11 shards -- two first-generation, nine second-generation -- during a mission last year. Shard 11 was able to blow up the power plant and return home, but died of radiation burns. Again, the scientists had assured him that reintegration would be complete and healthful, though they did insist he take a month of leave and scheduled intensive personality therapy afterward.

At least reintegration left only one real David at the end. Early efforts at multielement time travel didn't involve reintegration, which had the nasty side effect of agents not being certain who was the "real" one, and developing nasty psychological complexes over it. Initially, they tried killing all the shards except one, and only belatedly realized the nonviability of later-generation shards.

No, he thought, these are the golden days of this program. Even with stupid shards.

The stupid shard had gone back to bothering a shard in the fetal position two rows back. "Hey! Whassa matta wit you?" Another shard was masturbating.

David grimaced, then sighed. Well, he said, no one ever accused me of not being complicated.