Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card (born August 24 1951) is a prolific and best-selling author of numerous genres.

Orson Scott Card lecturing

Table of contents

1 Overview
2 Quotations
3 Selected bibliography

3.1 Pre-Ender's Game works
3.2 The Ender Saga
3.3 The Shadow Series
3.4 The Tales of Alvin Maker
3.5 The Homecoming Saga
3.6 The "Women of Genesis" Trilogy
3.7 Other post-Ender's Game works
3.8 Books on writing

4 See Also
5 External Links

Overview

Card's launch in the publishing industry was with science fiction (Hot Sleep and Capitol) and later fantasy (Songmaster). He remains best known for the seminal Ender's Game, which has been among the most popular sci-fi novels ever since its publication in 1985. Both Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were awarded both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the first author to win both of sci-fi's top prizes in consecutive years.

He has since branched out into contemporary fiction, such as Lost Boys, Treasure Box and Enchantment. Other works demonstrating his versatility include the novelization of the James Cameron film The Abyss, the alternate histories The Tales of Alvin Maker and Pastwatch, and Robota, a collaboration with Star Wars artist Doug Chiang.

His writing is dominated by detailed characterization and moral issues. As Card says, "We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction."

Some of his novels, for example Stone Tables, about the life of the Biblical prophet Moses, his Women of Genesis trilogy, and Saints, about Latter-day Saint pioneers, have explicit religious themes. In his other writings, the influence of his Mormon beliefs is less obvious; Card's Homecoming and Alvin Maker sagas are partly retellings of the Book of Mormon and the life of LDS founder Joseph Smith, Jr

Card was born in Richland, Washington, raised in Utah, and now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He and his wife Kristine are the parents of five children: Geoffrey (a published author in his own right), Emily, Charlie Ben, Zina Margaret, and Erin Louisa, named for the authors Chaucer, Brontë and Dickinson, Dickens, Mitchell and Alcott.