Oh hell Gus, I wasn't comparing him to them. I just want to take more extreme cases. Yeah they are more repulsive morally and larger figures artistically. But in this case I think point to the extreme case makes a stronger point for the more usual one. If a fascist literary giant can be enjoyed, then so may a far right loony who tells a decent story.

You know, I have actually met the dude, and had private conversations with him. He struck me as quite sane. He also struck me as a person who abhors fascism in each of its particular elements.

Carp! This is not about me.

Why are these things never about me?

I seem to recall OSC having some off politics, but I can't remember what they were.

Mostly I'm just tired of the notes he hits repeatedly in his books -- the exploited angelic genius children get old with me fast.

Mostly I'm just tired of the notes he hits repeatedly in his books -- the exploited angelic genius children get old with me fast.

This is entirely fair, and if ever I form a rock band, we shall be called the Exploited Angelic Genius Children.

Card may be personally sane, but his politics are from my point of view loony (remembering that to many here my politics are ditto).

His claiming that any criticism of "Passion of the Christ" as anti-semitic was a case of Jews telling Christians how to be Christians, his argument that homosexuality is a way god uses to mark some people as unclean and morally unworthy, strike me as two examples of fairly loony political and theological viewpoints; neither one as far as I know is inherent in being a Mormon.

The fact that Card is an ultra-conservative Mormon is not, in and of itself, a reason not to enjoy his later books.

The (just to pick the most concrete example that leaps to mind) transformation of Petra from warrior girl-child to weepy existing-only-to-make-babies teenager, on the other hand, is.

Whether the one informs the other is of no interest to me at all -- I still threw the book across the room.

Which books was Petra in?

Yak. I -- of all people -- am not going to try to support any of Card's positions. He is not insane or a pederast, just a Mormon, and thereby estranged from reality.

Sure: I think a lot of his stuff makes me cringe. And not only his latest. But I really like the first three books in the Alvin Maker series, as well as Ender;s Game, and nothing he writes since will change that for me. Also "Lost Boys" (the novella, not the novel), and a number of others.

Ender's Game, and the Shadow books. She's post-puberty in the second one, which I got about twenty pages in before throwing it across the room. It was just so sickeningly sexist. And badly written.