Death Is Bad

A comment to my previous Ender’s Game post said it “leaves the impression that you missed the part where O.S.Card throws a heavy critique at this “ultimate solution” — at the end of “Ender’s Game” and throughout “Xenocide”. Do you make a point that he criticizes it only on moral grounds, not on rational grounds?”

No, my complaint is that I don’t believe him when he throws in that critique at the end. The entire novel is a set-up to make sure Ender can commit genocide and still be innocent of doing so. It’s been a long time since I read it, but IIRC in the end no one is held to account, there is no war-crimes tribunal, and everyone goes on their merry way.

When I read Reynolds’ “Chasm City”, I got the distinct impression that Haussman did a terrible thing. Identifying with a mass-murderer felt creepy as hell, and there were all sorts of consequences. Not once was there a heavy critique of mass murder thrown in, because it wasn’t needed. The feeling that it was awful came from the story itself, not from an excuse added on by the author. When I read “Ender’s Game” I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker after blowing up the Death Star – victorious and righteous, with maybe some sadness that this much life had to be lost.

A fiction author doesn’t make his points through explicit argumentation, he does so via an emotional narrative. If the narrative leaves you feeling like genocide was kinda cool, it’s not actually a heavy critique, regardless of what he says at the end. I didn’t read Xenocide or Speaker For The Dead, so I can’t comment on them, maybe they served as a retraction (from what I’ve heard they’re mainly more apologia, but my sources are probably biased). But Ender’s Game clearly conveys a “crush anything that threatens you” mindset.

There’s been a lot of talk about the merits of separating the Art from the Artist due to the Ender’s Game movie coming out this year. It’s one of the classics of SF, but Orson Scott Card is a raging homophobe. I’ve always been fond of the Death of the Author, and I don’t want an author’s opinions and personal life affecting my judgment of their art, so I generally try to know as little about an author as possible. After all, the separation might be an ideal, but ideals are notoriously tough in practice.

On the other hand, it is fair to judge an author by his book, and interpret other statements of his in light of that judgment. When I read Ender’s Game I loved it. Bear in mind that I also loved Atlas Shrugged when I first read it – I’m a sucker for good revenge narratives. When I read Ender’s Game I was its perfect target audience – a nerdy teenage boy who felt like an outcast. I wanted vengeance on those who had wronged me, I wanted the power to crush all those before me, I wanted to express this power with extreme violence, and I wanted to be held as a righteous and blameless paragon of virtue for doing all this. Ender’s Game delivered that in spades, with a protagonist who was exactly like me (I felt) in very similar situations. There is nothing about this book I didn’t love.

Much like what happened with Atlas Shrugged, as I grew older and started thinking about it more, I grew more and more troubled by what was being supported by the narrative. In the case of Ender’s Game, it is the claim that the only way to be safe is to completely exterminate anything you feel threatened by. Up to and including genocide over what was clearly a mistake. The perpetrator of such extreme reactive violence is absolutely innocent and righteous in his actions because he felt under threat. This is a philosophy of fear, clung to by the terrified… and they will never feel safe no matter how many people they kill.

It is also absolutely unworkable in any sort of society. Pre-emptive or retaliatory violence must be moderated with the understanding that afterwards we all still have to live together. Extremely disproportionate response leads to scenarios like we saw in the recent Zimmerman-Martin exchange, that allowed a man to walk free after killing a kid because he was losing a fistfight. If this is enshrined as a legitimate reaction it leads to the conclusion that Card eventually brought us to – genocide is the only final solution to any perceived threat. Ender’s Game should be a chilling warning of that, rather than a ringing endorsement of it.

(I’m not unique in this insight of course. There’s been many great articles written about this theme in Ender’s Game, one of my favorite ones being Creating The Innocent Killer)

This portrait of Card’s mentality given his work is worrisome on its face. But even further than that, he’s a strong supporter of an organization that considers homosexuals to be a threat to America and Everything Decent In The World. If I was part of a minority (or cared for someone in a minority) that was being attacked by a group that considers themselves unimpeachably pure-of-heart, considers that minority a threat, and a well-known figure in that group has publicly shown that he considers genocide against those he sees as threatening to be acceptable if he himself is “good”… well shit, I think I’d be making a hell of a big deal about this too.

(As an aside, I fortunately don’t feel torn on the issue of this movie, because I never had any intention of watching it in the first place. I’m just not interested in seeing Hollywood screw up another SF novel. I find it interesting that everyone I know who’s said they are boycotting the movie has already read the book. The Quirrell part of me wants to say it’s not that much of a sacrifice if the book’s already been read…)