Oh. So, you feel it’s the publishers who should be compelled to continue to buy the publishing rights to Orson Scott Card’s books, regardless of whether they are able to sell them? I’m sorry: we live in a universe where publishers are by no means compelled to agree to publish books they know will be unsellable.

If you have no problem with people not buying Orson Scott Card’s books because they do not wish to do so, I cannot see how you can have a problem with publishers no longer buying Card’s books because they can no longer sell them.

It’s easy to be tolerant of popular speech. The true measure of one’s devotion to free expression is how tolerant they are of unpopular speech.

Indeed. And Orson Scott Card’s devotion to free expression is measured by how intolerant he is of the unpopular idea that everyone should be treated equally regardless of sexual orientation. But this is slightly irrelevant to the thrust of what appears to be your main argument: that Card has some magical, mystical right to continue to sell his books, regardless of whether anyone wants to buy what he writes.

No one is suggesting anyone be compelled TO buy his books. The suggestion is that various publishers be compelled to STOP buying his books because people are boycotting them irrespective of their quality. I have a problem with the latter.

And I formally apologize for any off-topic subjects I brought up…or would if I had.

PAD

To Peter David, the issue of Scans_daily and the fans who don’t love hin any more, may loom rather larger than any: but you may take this as formal notification that any further attempt to discuss Scans_daily and Peter David on this thread will be disemvowelled and persistent offenders will be banned.

Here are some links to blogs&c where the topic was being discussed: Thoughts on Scans_Daily and Peter David, scans_daily suspended, The Death (and resurrection) of Scans_Daily, Editorial: Livejournal Kills Scans_Daily, And I Shall Call It Dumbassopalooza: scans_daily and Peter David.

I’m sorry: I think you have this confused with some other universe where people can be compelled to buy books they don’t want because those books are so well written.

This is true for some groups of people (students on courses with compulsory textbooks) and for some authors (the sort who write works that appear on compulsory reading lists) but it is by no means a universal rule, and most educational establishments will allow a student who finds a specific novel distasteful to choose another.

Orson Scott Card writes well. This does not mean he “should” be able to earn a living as a writer, if no one wants to publish him because no one wants to buy his books. If that day ever comes, and in a world with Mormon-owned publishing houses it seems unlikely, then Card will simply have to do what every other good writer who isn’t able to earn a living as a writer does: find another job.

No, I understood that that’s the point. I get that, and others have made that clear in the event that I didn’t. The endgame is to create a world wherein Orson Scott Card is unable to make a living because publishers and editors (and presumably other writers) don’t want to associate with him, and that potential customers will steer clear from his work.

Here’s the problem: If you do your job well, you SHOULD be able to earn a living doing it. The fact that Card has loopy ideas about gays doesn’t make “Enders Game” (for instance) a crap book, and people shouldn’t be discouraged from reading it, nor booksellers from shelving it, nor editors or publishers from desiring more sequels. If you don’t like what a person has to say, then attack what he’s saying; don’t try to destroy the person’s ability to earn a living just because you don’t like his opinions. It’s a course of action that is antithetical to a free society.

It’s easy to be tolerant of popular speech. The true measure of one’s devotion to free expression is how tolerant they are of unpopular speech. The problem is that many people don’t understand that unpopular ideas–or at least the ability to express them–need to be protected even more than the popular ones, because many ideas that we now consider to be common sense began their existence perceived as bad ones. The earth moving around the sun, the smallpox vaccine, interracial marriage, were all once notions that flew in the face of then-accepted beliefs.

Do I agree with Card’s beliefs? Hell no. But trying to shut him down or make it impossible for him to earn a living because of them is the wrong approach. Bad ideas shouldn’t be driven underground; they should be confronted and addressed. “I disagree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it” is a far healthier attitude than, “I disagree with what you have to say and will try to convince as many people as possible not to associate with you.”

“Softestbullet: Oh yes – I’d forgotten. That pile of crap, the Peter David who decided he wanted to shut down scans_daily because the community was being insufficiently respectful to His Greatness …and somehow, I’m unsurprised he’s also breathing in the pile-of-crap air around Orson Scott Card without apparent disgust.”

You know, repeating a lie endlessly doesn’t make it any more true, although it’s becoming comical that any discussion involving me will always result in someone throwing around lies about Scans_Daily. SD got itself shut down. They ran material that was far in excess of fair use under copyright law. Just as conscientious fans routinely point me to pirate sites of my work, I pointed out to Marvel that SD had run half the art pages of an issue of X-Factor (and the only reason I knew about it was that people on a Comic Book Resources thread wanted to know where they could read the issue for free and a link to SD was posted). It was only after I took that step that I then started reading the comments, which consisted of profanity-laced wishes for my demise. The latter had nothing to do with the former.

And gee, in my quarter of a century association with the Internet, no one has ever been mean to me. Please. If I had the power and intolerance to shut down every site where people posted vicious things about me or my work, there wouldn’t be a comic book related site left, and my own website wouldn’t have an open policy for talkback.

My assumption (purely a guess) is that Library Journal (the host site) was contacted by Marvel and told to take down the offending material. LJ presumably took a close look at SD, saw routine violation of LJ’s prohibitions against copyright infringement, and nuked the site. Either way, it had nothing to do with anything anyone said about me and everything to do with the fact that SD didn’t care about copyright infringement.

So what you wrote was a lie. I would appreciate it if you retracted and/or apologized for it. If you fail to do so, I will track down your employer and inform them that you are engaging in an act of libel and character defamation and should be sanctioned…

Oh. Wait. No. I wouldn’t do that. Because I’d rather rebut what you say directly instead of trying to find a way to damage you commercially.

But that’s probably just me.

PAD

I said “as a consequence”, not “as a result”.

He’s chemically castrated as a child, as part of his training/preparation to be a singer; they give him drugs to delay puberty, which have the side-effect (in adulthood) of making him incapable of having sex without horrible pain and seizures.

No, Ansset isn’t chemically castrated as a child. Because he is a Songbird, and because their culture values children’s singing voices far above adult singing voices (which is odd: children can have lovely voices, but I find adult voices much more beautiful) he is given drugs to delay the onset of puberty. These drugs already exist – they may have existed in principle at least when Card was writing Songmaster. What they do – and all they do – is delay onset of puberty.

Card’s invention, which is a Tomato Surprise and a classic example of Fridge Logic, is that these delay-onset drugs are (a) given in one massive dose before the Songbirds leave the Songhouse for several years – and (b) that, for boys only – since he had already written a scene in which a Songbird girl made love to a boy – these drugs make the boy’s first orgasm an experience so rackingly awful that he will never have another. The Songhouse has been giving these drugs to pre-pubescent boys for thousands of years, and Ansset’s teachers are supposed to care for him very much: and yet – we are invited to believe – they did and said nothing to ensure that his carers on Earth would know to give him the antagonist before his first wet dream became his last nightmare.

Both emotionally, in how the story works from the inside, and externally, looking at how Card’s mind works as a writer, Ansset is chemically castrated as a consequence of having a voluntary sexual relationship with another man. (We may also consider Josef, Ansset’s lover and friend, who is physically gelded as a consequence of having an affair with Ansset.)

It is blatant, symbolic, and direct: love another man, have a sexual relationship with him, and either lose your mind and your genitals, or your capacity for sexual feeling. At the point when I noticed this, I realised that I’d even lost Songmaster: one of Card’s novels written well before his 1990 essay which I’d used to love. I can’t any more.

L33tminion, the problem with “boycotting the people who won’t boycott” is that it all too often extends outward beyond the known universe. (As far as I know, Janis Ian has forgiven Orson Scott Card for his ugly remarks in print about her marriage: should I boycott Janis Ian because she’s not boycotting Card? I don’t think so: that would be absurd.)

The professional association is another matter. Peter David evidently figured it couldn’t hurt him to be associated with Orson Scott Card. I can see why people feel that boycotting Peter David’s game for being a prequel to Card’s is a bit tangential: I think you’re right that there’s a solid case for doing it: most of all, though, it needs to be talked about. Orson Scott Card’s bigoted views need to be exposed for the outrageous pile of crap they are: anyone who willingly sits down next to him does need to be asked “were you aware you have just chosen to picnic next to a humungous pile of crap”? If they are and they’re OK with the stink, well, fine: but it would be unfair to let them ignorantly unpack their picnic when the smell of that pile of crap is only going to get worse.

Softestbullet: Oh yes – I’d forgotten. That pile of crap, the Peter David who decided he wanted to shut down scans_daily because the community was being insufficiently respectful to His Greatness …and somehow, I’m unsurprised he’s also breathing in the pile-of-crap air around Orson Scott Card without apparent disgust. [Update: His Greatness has convinced me in private e-mails that I have the order of events the wrong way round: Peter David decided he wanted to shut down Scans_Daily, and then got into a fight on the community with fans of his work who were being insufficiently respectful of him. I note Catherynne M. Valente's wise words, and will be glad to drop the subject.]