I've read (and loved) most of his early stuff (the original Ender books, the Alvin Maker trilogy back when it was still a trilogy, the Worthing Saga, a whole slew of short stories), but very little of his recent work.

I tried reading the Ender prequels, but once Petra hit puberty and realized her true mission in life was to stay at home and meekly pop out baybeez, I was too full of incoherent rage to continue any further. And I haven't had the heart to read anything he's written since.

I've read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, the first two Alvin Maker books, and some of his pre-1990-or-so short fiction (including the short stories or novelettes that became EG and the AM works). I vaguely remember a moment or two in Ender that one could, if one wished, interpret as homosexual in the sense of one male showing affection for another -- but I doubt OSC intended it that way.

I tried reading the Ender prequels, but once Petra hit puberty and realized her true mission in life was to stay at home and meekly pop out baybeez, I was too full of incoherent rage to continue any further. And I haven't had the heart to read anything he's written since.

They weren't really prequels as the continuing stories of the other Battle School kids. But, yeah.

I read them and found them fascinating in a "near-future warfare" kind of sense, and Bean just rocks, but Petra going from "bad-ass Battle School grad" to "I jus' wanna have Beanie-Weanie's widdle babies" was baffling. That and you got the sense that OSC became kind of lost in the expanse of his global war. Tom Clancy he ain't.

You really have to pick and choose OSC's writing.

Oddly, slashdot thought his essay about JKR's lawsuit was large with the funny.

Basically, OSC thinks that Rowling's bully and a hypocrite who should admit that Ender's Game: Harry Potter as Harry Potter: Lexicon, and stuff like that happens all that time, and what a whining cheat about the gay thing, just trying to get credit for something she's not willing to take a risk on.

Which might be a stronger point if he hadn't used himself as an example of how to handle gay characters instead.

See, Jessica? This way your blood pressure is much safer.

Also, she makes too much money.

Bitch.

And speaking of the whole thing, fandom wank has a new update, including links to articles in the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune.

I was reading Fandom Wank last night, and I think except for one comment (about how the respondent was so shocked she dropped her monocle into her martini) everybody there doesn't quite realize that the New Yorker is doing the anime squint at the whole thing: o.O

Not that the New Yorker would cop to calling it an anime squint, but the article dripped with condescenscion-border-on-contempt, and many of the respondents seemed worried that the writer was taking Steve Vander Ark's side. I was like, Oh honeys, I am absolutely sure that the New Yorker thinks that both he and you are exotic zoo animals. So don't worry.

The New Yorker article was written by Tim Wu, who's written another article about the whole thing in Slate (both made of fail, IMO) and is apparently one of the Stanford Fair Use people.