Orson Scott Card says what many of us were afraid to say Posted Tuesday, May 03, 2005 5/03/2005 07:47:00 PM

The L.A. Times has a commentary by Orson Scott Card where he expresses his ambivalence towards the end of the Star Trek franchise. Card argues that the Star Trek franchise was the bottom of the barrel science fiction. While written science fiction has a lot to offer Star Trek was

sci-fi as seen by Hollywood: all spectacle, no substance.

While the original Star Trek was playing on air:

science fiction writing was incredibly fertile... with writers like Harlan Ellison and Ursula LeGuin, Robert Silverberg and Larry Niven, Brian W. Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke creating so many different kinds of excellent science fiction that no one reader could keep track of it all.

I agree with Card. I was a Star Trek fan but all along I knew that it didn't compare to what I was reading. The thing that kept me into it was that I could suck down one episode a night (re-runs) while a novel took much longer to finish and greater concentration. But these days with good sci-fi like Battlestar and Firefly (shame it was canceled) who needs Star Trek. I once expressed a similar feeling to a group of strangers during a lunch gathering. I was later taken aside by a young lady that began to franticly yell at me that, being a Star Trek fan, she was extremely insulted. I had to explain to her that I was also a fan but that doesn't mean I can't call it like it is. I don't think I ever spoke to that girl again. I think many Star Trek fans have earned the full term "Fanatic".

Speaking of Orson Scott Card and good science fiction, I have just finished Card's Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel "Enders Game". It was an amazingly intense and entertaining book. I felt the end was rather abrupt and I didn't care much for the subplot involving Valentine and Peter but a minor distraction in an otherwise great book. Even though this book was written relatively recently (1994) I think it is already considered a classic in the genre, I highly recommended it.

[via slashdot.com]