Orson Scott Card

“Who was better, Hitler or Mussolini?” Such an ambiguous question. Who was the better strategist? Mussolini had no idea of what was possible and kept embarking on ventures his people could not accomplish. Invading Ethiopia, then Albania, then Yugoslavia, pointless acquisitions even if he won, yet incapable of making wise decisions. Hitler had audacity, too, and his earliest ventures into conquest were begun by demanding, not invading, and by sheer luck his opponents were so afraid of reigniting the Great War that they kept giving in. Was Hitler better as a conqueror? Not really — he was luckier, and when he committed his troops to battle the troops he sent were Germans, trained and led by German officers, with German-made weaponry, and with the knowledge acquired by savage warfare between 1914 and 1918. Italy had pretty much sat out that war, and had not industrialized to the same degree. So was Hitler a better strategist? Or merely lucky enough to have a superb officer corps, soldiers, and armaments, and gun-shy opponents? Or are you asking, who was the better human being? Mussolini was vain and bold, and perfectly happy to have his followers brutalized anyone who stood in his way. But he had no vision beyond this: Romans are conquerors. We're the successors of the ancient Romans. Look at all these monuments. Let's get to it. Hitler also was vain and bold, but came at the world as a vengeful, angry victim. His memoir and blueprint? “Mein Kampf” — My Struggle. See how I've suffered the indignity of defeat when I deserve so much better. So here's how I'm going to put the rest of the world in its place. This message of ill-treatment at the hands of the enemy so my failure is not my fault resonated with an aggrieved German public. They had won that war, crushing Russia and decimating their western-front enemies till the French Army broke in mutiny and despair. Yet because of betrayals from within, Germany was stabbed in the back, and had lands and wealth taken from them, leaving them kingless and broke, denied their rightful place in the world. Hitler had a more effective message to rally and inspire his people, and also had a populace that had, till the Great War, been the intellectual and industrial champions of the world. War reparations had shattered the German economy and left it in ruins. So Hitler violated every treaty that was holding Germany down, with a nation of coconspirators who cooperated in rebuilding and rearming. His message was: We deserve better! And his people demonstrated the accuracy of his vision in ways the Italian people could not. As a human being, though, was Mussolini less evil and therefore “better”? Mussolini lacked a scapegoat to blame and destroy, so he did not construct and use death camps in the industrialized slaughter of millions of civilians within his borders. But he killed whoever he wanted to kill. He was also self-indulgent and extravagant, while Hitler was abstemious and harder-working — virtues that made Hitler more effective in monstrosity. Since both men were vile in their treatment of enemies, it's hard to judge — did Hitler's greater effectiveness prove him better or worse than Mussolini? Better at badness … worse effects on the world.

Seven dogs stolen from their owners have gone viral after escaping from an illegal transport truck and making their way home. They traveled around 17 km together, led by a corgi across highways and fields, now safely back with their respective owners..🐶🐾🥺❤️

Good talking to you @iSamw1se

“Why have people fallen in love with a system that exploits them?” All systems and societies are created by the decisions, efforts, and contributions of the members. Some may benefit without contributing. Some who contribute may not receive the hoped-for benefits. But if the society is more or less stable, then everybody benefits from its existence, since the alternative — having no system or order in society — harms almost everyone. Even oppressive systems may be better than anarchy or chaos. Seeking to alter, modify, or improve society may sometimes result in change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Simply fighting against the existing order with no replacement plan only rarely results in improvement for anyone. The American Revolution was designed to remove England as overlord, but the rebels wanted a stable replacement system to maintain order without interruption. Hence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the continuation of state governments with elected leaders. People with property held on to their property. But the French Revolution was spontaneous and undeclared; radicals of a certain stripe proclaimed themselves the bosses and got enough soldiers to agree that they could be called a government. But they were murderous and vengeful and demolished the institutions — the system — that had maintained order, however unfairly. The new system collapsed as a heroic strongman emerged to become dictator --i.e., a replacement king. Napoleon defeated invading enemies and then invaded them back, ostensibly for the revolutionary ideals. But he led a generation of young Frenchmen to be slaughtered or starved and frozen in a pointless Russian campaign and those who replaced him tried to restore the previous order. But the instability in France lasted through the first and second republics and on into the third, and one might argue that it was Nazi occupation and the Gaullist government that restored a more or less stable system to France. Chaos is less satisfying and less prosperous than order. So a system, call it good or bad, is built by its participants and generally is better than no system at all. It can be said that all systems exploit the contributors, and benefit many noncontributing parasites. I can think of no example from history that benefits all contributors and excludes all parasites. The continuation of good order requires the compliance or cooperation of almost all, even those who feel under-served by the system, because if the system falls without a sturdy replacent ready, the resulting chaos is worse for everyone, and worst for those already vulnerable and weak. So to call the contributors exploited and call all defense of the status quo “propaganda” is to advocate for destruction and anarchy, which hurts worst those least benefitted by the system as it was. The destroyers, however, don't care — they are poised to take control locally, mafia style, or, in other words, feudally, or else make accommodation with whatever strong man emerges on top. Every utopia I've ever heard of that promises to benefit rather than exploit the contributors turns out to be gamed by power-seekers, who develop, usually through an eventual monopoly of violence, a new system which is only rarely an improvement. So to those who berate and seek to bring down the current system really ought to present their plan for a new system clearly, or, if they have no plan, shut up until they do.

Thanks for caring about a character I created when I was 24 and a book I wrote when I was 33. I'm old now, still trying to come up with truthful stories, and glad to know that you've taken Ender Wiggin to heart. @thomas_garrard *I’m also happy to see how many fellow humans have volunteered to replace Grok in a book discussion. **And speaking of being old, I first posted this incorrectly. Grok may have to replace me.

In my opinion, Dune Messiah is not a good sequel and not a satisfying book. While Dune is a masterpiece, ambitious and immersive, I found Dune Messiah to be ineffective as fiction, a real letdown. And when Children of Dune came out, I realized that what Herbert cared about in the Dune series was not at all what I wanted to pursue in sequels. So I decided to be content with Dune as a standalone novel and allow the rest of the series to float by, unread by me. Thus I am unqualified to say anything intelligent about the sequels, beyond, "These are not the books I'm looking for."

“How can a writer introduce a character without revealing their secret identity right away?” 1. Don’t use as your viewpoint character someone who has a secret you don't want the readers to know till much later. If we're getting her point of view EXCEPT for a key piece of information known to her all along, that's a cheap trick and your readers will, correctly, feel cheated. We only know what you tell us, so withholding information known to the viewpoint character destroys trust.  2. Use a viewpoint character who meets the secret identity character and values her for traits and attitudes that are NOT lies, so we still want them to be friends instead of feeling like the things we liked about her were all lies. 3. Remember that secret identities are concealing ONE thing, while everything else about the character is genuine. Clark Kent is as good-hearted as Superman — and Superman is as kind-hearted as Clark Kent. We'd like him and enjoy his company even if he couldn't fly. (This is what the series Smallville did so well.) 4. Remember that “giving away” a secret identity has two stages — letting the audience know, and letting another character know. Audiences love knowing what characters don't know yet — dramatic irony is much more powerful than ignorance as a source of suspense.  Also, having other characters learn the secret identity one by one can lead to multiple “meet-cutes” throughout the story or series. 5. Having a character (and the audience) fall in love with the double-life character separately, under BOTH identities, can be extremely powerful, both before and after the reveal-to-the-audience. 6. Having the secret identity be a source of mystery, and then revealing that the regular person behind the identity is someone we did NOT expect, can be a massively memorable event — provided that we weren't lied to and the real identity is believable.

“As a writer, how much time do you spend reading vs. writing? Do you take notes on other writers' techniques?” I only take notes on a book if I'm going to review it. Then I jot down the things I'll need to refer to but won't remember: character names, the author, the title, key locations whether real or fictional. I only notice the author's technique when it is obtrusive and damaging: present tense, redundant exposition, obvious author-intended allegory, metaphor, simile, and, Lord help us, Symbolism. I take notice of See-Me-Write passages of self-indulgent prose that distract from the narrative, and places where the viewpoint character comments on word choices or figures of speech that were used in the narrative and not in their own thoughts (it's amazing how many authors make this face-planting faux pas). At my age, I don't think I'm going to discover any more ways by which authors show either their ineptness or their contempt for their readers. If I'm not going to review a book, that means I don't have to finish it. So if it's bad, I don't. I owe an author ten pages. After that, he'd better have a story to tell, with characters I like well enough to want them to keep me company for a while. Otherwise, when he makes it a struggle to keep reading, I set it aside and read something else — sometimes one of the standby audiobooks that I always keep on my phone: three readings of Pride and Prejudice, both readings of Lord of the Rings, The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, Dune. I always have multiple books going, on Kindle, Audible, and paper. I read or listen constantly. Thanks to audiobooks, shopping, driving, and waiting are way more entertaining and don't waste my time. I can't write while shopping or driving (I don’t like the result when i dictate my fiction). I used to do most of my writing by hand in notebooks while waiting for things, but now anything I write by hand will have to be typed in later, so I usually write only verse when waiting with a notebook. (I can't compose verse on a computer.) So my reading-to-writing ratio is usually 3 or 4 to 1. Or, when I'm lazy or uncertain, 3 or 4 to 0. If you add in reruns of NCIS or Bones, Beat Bobby Flay, Family Feud, Jeopardy!, The Chase, Beat the Bridge, The Perfect Line, and Harry Potter movies when they're popping up everywhere, you have accounted for nearly 100% of my waking hours.

Young men reading great books and encouraging others to do the same. Hopeful this keeps catching on and goes beyond a trend!

The Lord of the Rings is a book that evolved in the writing. Tolkien's brilliance as a writer is his mastery of etymologies and language borrowings; the whole of English is masterfully used throughout the books as only a true philologist could do. I also don't see any excess infodump passages even in the tedious Tom Bombadil section before the hobbits get to Brie. At that point in the writing, Tolkien did not yet know what book he was writing. Later, when he realized it was about the Ring, he went back and inserted Gandalf's account to Frodo of the history of the ring before F left the Shire. Writing can feel puffy and empty when you, as a reader, are not yet fully engaged. This is so well known about LOTR that people recommending the book to friends usually warn, “You don't really connect with the story till Frodo meets Strider in the Inn at Bree.” Did you give up before you got that far? It would have been easier to enjoy LOTR if Tolkien had written it with a coherent plan from the start. But he was not writing a commercial fiction. He was struggling to write a contracted sequel to a book that did not need a sequel (“The Hobbit”), and wanted it to provide a framework for his fairy stories and Old English narrative poems. After a while he was fully caught up in the Great Story that he discovered in the Mines of Moria.  But even in the parts where it's hard for readers to fully engage, his mastery of English prose is unmatched. He did not waste a word. So whatever you think is wrong with his prose, I believe you are mistaken. It is not the language or the rhetoric, the problem is the emptiness of the story until Strider shows up and brings authority to the action.  This is what happens to most books written by humans (the only kind avaiIable to us) — when readers notice writing problems what they're really seeing are STORY problems, which cause readers to disengage and stop thinking about what happens next. Instead, they recognize that they're disengaged from the plain tale, but because all they can see now is the writing, they think it's badly written and start diagnosing the flaws. But when you're fully engaged you don't notice the writing at all. You just notice what happens and why.

Wonderful!

@Wally_Ribbiton How wonderful to know, thank you.

@orsonscottcard I adore Salvage from The Folk of the Fringe and my 12-year-old daughter (to whom I first read it when she was about eight) and I know the dialogues by heart.

Isaac Asimov’s prose is SUPERB. There is no better master of the American Plain Style. The goal of that style is to disappear: you aren't meant to notice the writer at all. When Asimov realized that he didn't want to write the purple prose that dominated the pulps, it took him a little while to get this new invisible style down pat. I, Robot collects stories of which many show signs of his learning to get himself offstage. It’s clear his only goal is to get the story into your mind with as little friction as possible.  Few have achieved Asimov's level of invisibility and clarity… but I’m still trying…

My Persian friend is sending me videos from Iran. I'm sure they can be found elsewhere on the internet, but I am happy to amplify them for him. #IranRevolution

Dear world, Iran was not a Muslim country.
 It was conquered by Islam.
 Today, Iranians are fighting for their freedom, and their bravery should hold us all in awe.

@jondelarroz Completely.

@orsonscottcard Are you an introvert?

Marvelous writer. And seems we would’ve had a lot in common… including never feeling the need to meet

I took a long hiatus from X. Had a nearly-fatal sepsis scare this fall, but thanks to my quick-thinking wife, I made it into and out of the hospital with my seventy-four-year-old life… and nine-and-a-quarter toes remaining. For this I’m very grateful in the New Year. I may only post occasionally, and will work on replies to the DMs I missed. Meanwhile I thank you all who follow here and read my books. This account follows many of you back, and when I do sign in, I enjoy seeing your posts, what you think and care about. My favorite stories are about good people doing good… and it’s heartening to see how many of you are those people in real life.

A salute to H.G. Wells, who remains relevant today, not just as a writer, but as a huge contributor to world culture; he wrote before the genre of science fiction existed. The original term for science fiction stories was, “You know, H.G. Wells kind of stuff.” The other genre name was “Stuff like Jules Verne writes.” As one of the two genre-shaping founders, his relevance in science fiction is inextinguishable. *Claude Rains in the 1933 Invisible Man*

The Hatrack River Christmas Store is open! Get signed hardcovers (including first editions) and check them off your Christmas shopping list for the readers in your life. Click the link below and order by December 18th! hatrack.com/store/store.cgi