Orson Scott Card: Evil Fiction
Charles Johnson
Sun Mar 4, 2007 at 11:05 am PST • Views: 370
In a way, Orson Scott Card is tilting at windmills with his latest essay, because there is simply so much of this deceptive propaganda in circulation; but he really nails the sheer evil intentions of those who perpetrate the lies: Evil Fiction. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
Let me tell you about an audiobook that I hated.
I didn’t hate it because it was badly written — it was mediocre in the way that mediocre thrillers usually are, and that means it would ordinarily have been tolerable.
No, the reason I stopped listening to Steve Berry’s The Alexandria Link is that this book is evil.
I don’t mean it’s about evil. I don’t even mean that it is evil-porn, like those horror books whose authors are pervertedly devoted to thinking up cool ways to torture and kill people.
I mean that this book, to the degree that it is read by people ignorant of history (i.e., practically everybody), will move us closer to a future in which our society permits or even approves of the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel.
Wait! This book is fiction! How could it have such an effect?
Well, it can’t — not all by itself. Its effect is incremental. But it’s real.
Here’s how it works.
Frank says: