At BYU’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Symposium this January (which I was very delighted to attend), Orson Scott Card gave two addresses. The first was a main address seeking to answer this question:

“Why are Mormons over represented among emerging Science Fiction and Fantasy writers?”

That phenomenon has relatively recently emerged in the history of Science Fiction and Fantasy writing - this has been going on long before Stephanie Meyer’s now great fame (and her work certainly counts as fantasy and science fiction). As an example, the Writers of the Future Contest is a blind contest (I’ve personally dreamed of entering since a teenager - and gee golly, I’m a Mormon! - but I’m still sitting on the seeds of ideas which are germinating) - none of the judges know the identities of entrants, and every year a disproportionate number of winners of the contest happen to be Mormons.

Card’s second address was entitled “Science Fiction as a Valid Literary Genre”. To introduce it he said that every year, articles come out in either Atlantic, or Harper’s, or New Yorker about, as he puts it, “.. why Science Fiction sucks.” In this speech Card completely shredded (in my opinion) the snotty, self-absorbed triteness (my words) of literary fiction and most of all literary fiction writers which the aforementioned magazines (and also elitist literature programs at universities) apparently encourage. I have audio recordings of both speeches, which are both very enlightening, entertaining and to me even moving - but unfortunately my recording of the latter is cut off too soon. However I have a full, cleaned up recording of the former speech, which I here present. Strictly I may not have any authorization to do this, so I’m not giving a download link for this recording, and I want to seriously advertise the symposium and the proceedings; if you like this, you’ll probably like Card’s other address and anything and everything else at the symposium, so please: watch BYU’s web site for news on next year’s symposium, and releases of the proceedings from previous years. Email them via the “contact” link at that page and ask them what’s up and when the proceedings will be published.

Meanwhile, here’s my audio recording of Card’s main address. This is just over 47 minutes.