Don’t boycott ‘Ender’s Game’; donate to the Trevor Project instead

Konrad Juengling asked for my opinion about his article about Boycotting “Ender’s Game”. This is a topic that I feel strongly about, so I’m putting it here.


Dear Konrad,

I agree with you 100% when it comes to your opinion of Orson Scott Card as a human being. His own political and social beliefs are reactionary, despicable and vile. The fact that he is such an activist about his beliefs upsets me. I think we need to fight against him, and against people like him who want to impose their own personal views on the rest of us.

However, when you say that these views are present in “Ender’s Game”, or that the world depicted by “Ender’s Game” reflects these same bigoted views, you are just plain wrong.

The Ender’s Game books – and here I speak to the entire long story-arc presented in the four books from “Ender’s Game” all the way through “Children of the Mind” – are among the best articulation of humanist philosophy that I’ve ever come across. In the later books, when Andrew Wiggin is an adult, he is an atheist and a moral relativist, and one of the most intelligent and articulate characters in the series.

If anything, “Speaker for the Dead” (the second book) pokes more fun at Catholicism than anything else.

But even confining the analysis to just the first book, Ender’s Game — the book on which the movie is based — there is absolutely nothing moralistic or “conservative” at all in the story or the world portrayed.

Just to give you some personal context: The first time I read “Ender’s Game”, I was in 6th grade. It has been one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels ever since. I have re-read the book dozens of times. When I first found out the Card was a Mormon, I was actually shocked, because after reading the Ender’s Game series I had assumed he was an atheist. When I found out he was homophobic, I was even more surprised, because there is nothing like that in the books.

And when I’ve re-read the books since finding out about his personal beliefs, I still cannot find any hint of it in this particular series.

[Note: I’ve read some other stuff of his that is more blatantly political, and it’s trash. Just so you know: I’m not defending him globally as an author, by any means. Just this series.]

It’s a bit of a puzzle.

Why would Card write the Ender’s Game series the way that he did, given his personal views? Why would he create a world where the main character, an incredibly sympathetic character, argues passionately for people to understand that “when you understand how other people see themselves, you come to realize that everyone is, in his own eyes, good”?

I don’t know the answer to that question.  But I do know that the  compassionate, understanding, humanistic message of the “Ender’s Game” books stands apart from the personal views of Card — and the philosophical message expressed by the books is one that I agree with 100%.

So, in conclusion, what to do about the movie?

Personally, if the movie AT ALL reflects the book, then it will be amazing.  Although you can potentially deprive Card of some amount of income by not going, you will also be depriving yourself of an experience of a truly great science fiction story.

So what will I do?

I will spend $18 (or whatever it is) on going to see Ender’s Game.

Then I’ll donate $100 to The Trevor Projects, or to GLAAD, or to NoH8, or to any number of campaigns that fight for our rights.

In the end, economically, that will do more to fight against Card’s personal beliefs than refusing to see his movie will.

 

Ender's Game Movie Poster