Orson Scott Card Picks a Nerd Fight with J.K. Rowling (Updated!)

Update: Holy shit! You do a post with no research whatsoever, stop working for the day, check your email drunk at midnight, and everything goes to hell. Okay, so I’ve read all your comments and chosen to do the tiniest bit of research and am willing to admit I was wrong; Card was indeed being sarcastic. I blame the internet for failing to present me with all the facts immediately, which I did not know could happen. Interestingly, I now sympathize with Rowling?someone’s trying to profit off her work in the most simple way, so she should get a cut of those profits, or at least be able to say yay or nay to the project?and I still feel Card is being kind of a dick. His analogy of incredibly traditional plot devices doesn’t hold weight, because the dudes doing the Potter Lexicon are printing Rowling’s words verbatim, not replicating story elements used since the dawn of time. If someone reprinted Topless Robot shit and just changed the titles (or just prefaced every entry with “Rob said”) I’d be pissed, and legitimately so, I think. If I claimed that I was the first person to make fun of toys and comics and anime and all that shit, I’d be a moron (a different kind of moron). So the end result is the same as per my original post (which is after the jump, if you’d like to revel in my ignorance), except for Rowling, who should be allowed to make an additional billion to her jillion dollars. Now I’m off to continue getting shit-faced, thank you very much.

Let’s get the facts of this thing out of the way. Here’s it all neatly summed up by Wired’s GeekDad:

Last year, J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers filed a lawsuit against RDR books seeking to block the release of The Harry Potter Lexicon, the print version of a fan-created online encyclopedia helmed by school librarian Steve Vander Ark. While RDR has assembled a defense team including Stanford Law?s Fair Use Project to fight the suit, Vander Ark, who apears to have aroused the ire of much of the vocal fan community, has recently received a vote of support from a seemingly unlikely ally.

Author Orson Scott Card blasted Rowling in Greensboro?s news and opinion weekly The Rhinoceros Times saying:

“Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling’s hugely successful novel series, is just a “rearrangement” of her own material.

Rowling “feels like her words were stolen,” said lawyer Dan Shallman.

Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.

A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.”

I fully believe Rowling is being a bitch by stopping the Potter Lexicon; there’s no reason to stop someone from publishing what is more or less a big Harry Potter fan book other than money, and Rowling already has a jillion dollars. So not cool. But for Card to call her out for copying Ender’s Game? Also a dick move.

Hey, Orson?”a young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities”?that plot has been used with minor tweaks from the days of King Arthur (best exemplified in The Once and Future King) and Cinderella. It’s pretty much the based for the Lord of the Rings, Eddings’ Belgariad and about a zillion other fantasy stories, and your whole little diatribe is nearly a perfect match for Mobile Suit Gundam (minus the experienced older man), which came out in 1979. Oh, and a little movie called Star Wars seems a bit close to your description as well.

I fully think Ender’s Game is a better book than Harry Potter, but Card did not create the “special child” in fantasy literature?but calling out Rowling for being unoriginal and citing a mess of plot devices used for centuries as your own? That makes you an ass.