Orson Scott Card
1 book analyzed
Biography
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) published the short story 'Ender's Game' in Analog Science Fiction in 1977. It was a complete story, not a chapter. Card had been wrestling with an idea for Speaker for the Dead — a novel about a future anthropologist who speaks at funerals, bearing witness with complete honesty — but realized he needed to establish Ender Wiggin's history first. The short story became the outline; Card expanded it into a novel published in 1985, winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel in 1986 — the only book to win both awards in the same year. He completed Speaker for the Dead in the same year, which also won both awards. Card served two years as a Mormon missionary in Brazil (1971-73), which informed his later interest in interspecies communication and the ethics of contact. He has been publicly controversial for his political and religious views; this has complicated the novel's reception without diminishing its classroom presence or literary achievement.