Has anyone else been disappointed by an author?

[dustinzgirl]

You know, I think that it is all right for Orson to think the way he does. People are not forced into joining the church. I don't like or dislike him for his personal religious opinion as he has a right to it. Now, if he starts kidnapping homosexuals and putting them through mormom anti homo camp, then yeah, I would have a problem with it.

We are also not going to go extinct due to homosexuality. Considering that we can now turn bone marrow into sperm and populate the world from a laboratory, as well as impregnate ourselves, heterosexuality is becoming fairly useless, other than to spread germs.

However, I can see how the argument that homosexuality is unnatural as it is in respect to the tradition of creating and keeping a family nucleus as it goes against thousands of years of human history. So that makes sense to me.

What I don't get is why, in this day and age, do people give a crap what someone does behind closed doors with other consenting adults? Hello, world famine, world recession, alien ships, cancer in animals, missing insects. Seriously world, we have more important things to freak out about.

[biodroid]

I feel that an author should keep religion out of his books. If I wanted to read about religion I would get a magazine or buy a bible. I am an atheist and respect all peoples beliefs but I feel that that belief should not be "forced" onto a person. OSC I think kind of slanders some religions which I find irritating. I read 2 of his books - Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead and started getting put off by his preachiness. I would like for him to tell a story and not give a sermon.

[The Procrastinator]

You can't tell someone what to write or what not to write, though. People will write what is in their hearts. You, as the reader, have the right not to read whatever you like.

[KESpires]

Exactly. OSC writes stories that are important to him and a great deal of his audience. If someone doens't like the story, they are free not to read it or return it within the window that some bookstores allow and decide not to buy another.

Personally, I think his views are misunderstood a great deal of the time. He's not a republican or a libertarian. He calls himself a communitarian. He has strong feelings about the global conflict we're in, and so do I. So do most Americans, whether they agree or disagree about our chosen methods of combat.

Also, as for the O'Reilly bit, I hadn't heard about that; I'll have to check that out.

I, personally, love his show. Compared to guys like Hannity and Levin, he's more moderate than most think. He's also not afraid to take up for someone getting shafted. I think that most people dislike him because he's the most popular show in that timeslot of all the cable news channels.

But the thing I like about him most is that he's honest about his position and honest about when he's giving opinion, not fact. That is a statement that can't be said for some other shows, notably on MSNBC or CNN. Commentators masquerading as journalists on those networks enjoy giving opinions as facts. Like when a CNN reporter "broke" the news story that Palin's child with down syndrom was "suspected" of being her daughter's child, and "sourced" a blog on a liberal site... Yeah, very objective.

But I don't want this to break down into a rant about political sides. OSC is doing what he feels is right in his pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. We'll all do the same. And hopefully when a lot of us are successful authors we won't get as much flaming hatemail.

[the smiling weirwood]

This thread was never meant to be "flaming hatemail" but rather an open query. That I disagree with his personal opinions is a given, but the original topic was the question of whether a similar disagreement has ever colored anyone's perception of an author's work.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by the smiling weirwood

This thread was never meant to be "flaming hatemail" but rather an open query. That I disagree with his personal opinions is a given, but the original topic was the question of whether a similar disagreement has ever colored anyone's perception of an author's work.

LOL

True.

Unfortunately I don't know how to type without sounding like an arrogant cuss word.

I'm really not so crass. Really. I'm a nice person.

[KESpires]

I don't mean this thread. I mean the kind of mail that OSC gets from angry fans who didn't realize he is a human who feels conservatively on some issues and liberally on others.

Not this thread. This thread has been very civil.

[the smiling weirwood]

I see. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your meaning, KESpires.

[biodroid]

I'm just saying according to this thread that his view points made me dissappointed but I will most likely carry on reading him sometime again in the future.

[weirdside]

If it bothers you, you have got to make the distinction between his work and himself. I personally don't mind his view because he's American and he can believe whatever he wants.

[the smiling weirwood]

Because he's American it doesn't mean he isn't wrong.

[Hober Mallow]

I've learned to enjoy many works of Sci-Fi, despite an author's personal beliefs. I think Scientology is a wacked cult and L. Ron Hubbard was a nut-case but I still loved Battlefield Earth (the book, not the movie). I'm only just beginning to read Robert Heinlein (Have read SiaSL, currently 1/2 way through ST) and already I'm beginning to dislike some of the philosophy he preaches but, I will still read and be entertained by more of his books. I plan to read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" eventually (all 1300+ pages) even though I'm very progressive-minded and anti-corporate. As long as a story is entertaining, unique or unusual in concept and not dull, I'm interested. That sums it up for me.

I knew a previous co-worker who purportedly met OSC at a book signing. His comment about OSC was, and I quote "He was kind of a d*ck". I'm sorry to hear he may be a homophobe but I still plan on reading Ender's Shadow.

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread. I was bored.

[Mulcebar]

Originally Posted by the smiling weirwood

I asked if anyone else had been disappointed to learn unpleasant things about an author whose works they had enjoyed. That is all.

In answer to the question, yes, I was dissapointed when I found out OSC was quite intensely opinionated on many issues that I myself have the polar opposite view. But I still love his fiction and I just have to smile when I read a chapter that betrays his obviously religious or politically right wing attitudes in the real world. Honestly I wish I didnt research him because I do prefer to have a healthy respect for my favourite writers and OSC despite his brilliance is quite clearly misguided by his religious indoctrination.

[soulsinging]

Originally Posted by KESpires

I, personally, love his show. Compared to guys like Hannity and Levin, he's more moderate than most think. He's also not afraid to take up for someone getting shafted. I think that most people dislike him because he's the most popular show in that timeslot of all the cable news channels.

But the thing I like about him most is that he's honest about his position and honest about when he's giving opinion, not fact. That is a statement that can't be said for some other shows, notably on MSNBC or CNN. Commentators masquerading as journalists on those networks enjoy giving opinions as facts. Like when a CNN reporter "broke" the news story that Palin's child with down syndrom was "suspected" of being her daughter's child, and "sourced" a blog on a liberal site... Yeah, very objective.

I'll grant that O'Reilly is not as insane as Hannity, Coulter, or Beck, but if you think he doesn't do the same thing on his show that you note CNN and msnbc doing, then you might want to wax your ears. He's been caught many times passing off opinion as fact or outright lying about the facts. All of the cable news networks/hosts do this. It's not news, it's entertainment.

I was also a bit surprised to learn this about OSC, though I never noticed it in Ender's Game, which I enjoyed immensely. It has turned me off reading more of his books though. I dislike Twilight for similar reasons, and have avoided Brandon Sanderson on the same grounds... I read Elantris and could see the preaching, which I hear only becomes more over-the-top in Mistborn. Heck, I didn't care for Tad Williams' MST series because of the overt Catholic influences, which I found dull and heavy-handed and I was raised Catholic. I'm curious to re-read Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy because I am an atheist so I clearly agree with him, but I was younger when I read it and suspect I'd find the preachiness in that annoying as well. I read for interesting stories and characters, not political/religious argument.

On an unrelated note, what are Heinlen's controversial political beliefs? I've never read anything by him but have been curious. I'll never read Rand... I don't need to devote months of my life to a 1300 page ego trip.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by soulsinging

On an unrelated note, what are Heinlen's controversial political beliefs? I've never read anything by him but have been curious.

Heinlein has been accused of being everything from a fascist to an extreme libertarian to an ultra-hippy to... well, you name it. And, to some degree, there is a bit of truth to most of these... but only a bit. His actual political views, as I understand it, did tend toward a form of libertarianism, but they also had a considerable amount of influence from various other political philosophies as well. I've never read his single actual book on politics, Take Back Your Government!: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work (by the time I'd even heard of the thing, it was going for outrageous prices, and that has not changed), but that would be the closest you can get to his view of things at the time it was written (his views, as with most of us, apparently changed and modified over time). However, it would seem you can get some insight into this book via the reviews at Amazon... though such should, of course, always be accepted with caution:

Amazon.ca: Customer Reviews: Take Back Your Government!: A Practical Handbook for the Private Citizen Who Wants Democracy to Work

However, even this book apparently doesn't answer all that many questions, either:

Ham and Eggs and Heinlein, 1

So all that one can gather is from his fiction... and that is a notoriously slippery source unless backed by a writer's own correspondence or facts of his or her biography....

As for reading Heinlein... I'll admit I'm a fan fo the man's work, for various reasons. However, whether you would like anything he wrote (and he wrote a rather diverse array of types of tales) is difficult to say. I would not, however, make up my mind based on either a single piece or a selection of similar works, but through at least one or two examples of the different sorts of things he did....