james_davis_nicoll | On a related note

I don't. I've given that book to too many people (even people who don't generally read SF) and had them devour it.

I vote for Stranger in a Strange Land, which is already only of historical interest.

Ender's Game is horrifyingly powerful; it is very like 1984. My college freshmen last semester found it timeless and frightening.

And hooooo, doggy, do I agree about Stranger.

I will admit that I haven't read any of the Ender stuff. Yes, I know, I ought to.

No, there's no need, especially where the Ender's Risk Game novels are concerned.

The pinks take long showers.

Shadow and the sequels are kind of Risk fanfiction. I enjoyed them, but I also know that I'd be well in the minority for that.

I wish I had a better way of expressing what I felt when I reread Ender's Game. It was like and unlike my reaction to rereading a Jack Chalker book I loved as a teen. I felt like I had been horribly manipulated as a teen, that I'd been fooled into liking something because of the over the top misunderstood child hero that I identified with.

I agree about Ender's Game, but I think there's still potential for looking back with wonder and confusion, not based on the book but the writer. I don't think that counts here, though.

Never did understand the people to whom Stranger was a big deal. They seemed not to be people from SF fandom.

speaking as someone who read it as a youngish teenager during the 60s, it was a huge deal. I can understand how it may be highly dated now, but it was actually a major influence on my way of thinking, and some things remain today (for instance, I find that, not altogether consciously, I try to be a Fair Witness). And I still find it meaningful when I re-read it.

Thinking it's important is probably a generational thing, but still, I don't think that there's any reason to say "In retrospect, what the hell were we thinking?" We were thinking that this is a book that explores, whether we agree with it or not, a great many of the things that we are thinking about and questioning in society. And I don't think that was something we should be retracting, even though it may no longer be relevant to think about some of those things today.

I read it when it was pretty new, probably in the mid 60s (I think it was the SFBC edition I first read). I'm certainly an "it's white on this side" person, but I've always associated that with Doc Smith's concept of a person being a "precisionist", which is the way I was raised (I certainly recognized that piece of the Fair Witness concept as matching something in me).

For me, it's "what were they thinking?", for a "they" apparently including you (sorry!). As I said, I never got the iconic importance it had for many people. Can you go into more detail? I'm wondering if it's things I don't think the book has, or things I got elsewhere, or things I didn't want, or what. Clearly lots and lots of people did find it an important book.

I think it may be crucial for me that I read it just around the same time that I was starting to be heavily involved in the countercultural movement, the alternative spirituality movement ("New Age" philosophy) and also getting into political activism. I suspect that if I hadn't been the kind of person who was headed in that direction, it wouldn't have meant as much to me.

I'd certainly read a lot of science fiction prior to that, and have been a fan all my life, so I wasn't exactly a stranger to sfnal critiques of various elements of society (I was also reading the Kornbluth/Pohl collaborations and Delaney and what nascent feminist SF there was (Suzette Haden Elgin, for one) all the dystopian classics of the time and so on and so on).

I think some of the attraction had a lot to do with the combination of looking at everything from a fresh eye - as Mike does in the novel - and really thinking about how it functioned and whether it was actually necessary for it to function that way or could it be done completely differently, and the cynicism of Jubal who knows every con game in the book and tells us how it operates. This was very meaningful to the budding radical socialist that I was - showcasing two very different kinds of social criticism.

At the same time, Mike's "new religion" took me toward a serious study of non-monotheistic religion, which also influenced who I've become today. And although Heinlein's examination of alternative sexual expression in Stranger totally failed at re-examining homosexuality, still the questions made it easier to figure out my own non-heterosexuality when I came face to face with it.

There were certainly a lot of people at the time who didn't want any of that, and still don't, and lots of other people who had read or experienced something else that had already gotten them to similar places, but... for me, Stranger was one of the (many) books that were part of my learning to question what I saw around me.

I almost do. At 21 (way too long ago, I read it in two days. I started in the evening and when I put it down (around halfway through) I considered it to be one of the best (at the time) SF novels that I'd read. I eagerly started it when I got up, and unfortunately the rest of the novel was all about the church and other similar nonsense, and with every page that I read, my opinion of the novel plummeted.

Edited 2009-03-15 18:54 (UTC)

In retrospect he asked some very good questions, and then had some very bad answers.

I was about to suggest the same, though I suspect it may retain its potence given the continued existence of sufficiently cloistered teenagers. I and my friends found it inspiring way back in the late 90s.

It's a very popular book, and Card creates a very strong sense of reader participation.

And two steps back, it looks insane. In 2030, people will say, that guy had issues with kids. Which, of course, he does.

People say that now.

It's still the minority opinion.

Science fiction sure has a lot of books for young adults by people you would never want to babysit.

It's still the minority opinion.

If more people had read Songmaster, I suspect that this would be different.

Speaking of "issues with kids" . . . Almost anything by Piers Anthony; certainly Bio of a Space Tyrant.

It's a very popular book, and Card creates a very strong sense of reader participation.
And two steps back, it looks insane. In 2030, people will say, that guy had issues with kids. Which, of course, he does.

SENTENCES I NEVER THOUGHT I'D WRITE (#8 OF A SERIES):

Carlos, I think you may be a little overly positive and optimistic about science fiction fans.

Oh, not them. Fans will defend any piece of crap that tickles their sensawunda bone. Walter Breen had his defenders and he died in Chino.

But a lot of people have read Ender's Game who don't usually read science fiction, mainly in school. It's one of those viral books that gets recommended by other tweens (not so much teens). And it's old enough to see the wtf beginning among people who read it twenty years ago and have kids of their own now.

In 2009, Ender's Game has a lot of competition in the angsty boarding school of special people sweepstakes. The Cold War videogame ambiance is dated and the premise itself is a cliche. And in comparison to its competition, what really makes Ender's Game stand out is its psychosexual content. It's like an Edward Albee children's play. That Dumbledore had a thing for Magic Hitler is a mere peccadillo in comparison.

I now see the bad parts of Stranger, but I can still see the good parts.

Re Ender's Game: I think the first book will last (maybe even the first three), but not any of the sequels. Admittedly, I haven't reread it for 20 years.

As for _Stranger in a Strange Land_, the religious satire is, if anything, even more accurate than when it was written. The casual sexism: unfortunate, but of that time.

I think I'd vote for _I will fear no evil_ (Heinlein), And perhap's KSR's Mars trilogy?

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