Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card (born 1951 in Richland, Washington) is an American writer best known for science fiction, above all the novel Ender's Game and the works that grew out of it. He writes in English, and across more than four decades he has built a career that places him among the most recognized genre authors in the United States. His name is also frequently part of public debate, thanks to his outspoken views on religion, politics and marriage.

Card grew up in Utah, California and Arizona, in a family with Mormon pioneer roots; one of his great-great-grandfathers was Brigham Young. He was a voracious reader as a boy and took an interest in music, but the most often-told episode from his youth is a story he wrote at ten about a clever child attacked by bullies, which later became the basis for the clash between Ender and Stilson. At Brigham Young University he turned toward theater, wrote a large number of plays and watched audiences closely to learn when a script was working. From 1971 to 1973 he served as a missionary in Brazil, and he graduated in theater in 1975.

He began publishing seriously in the late 1970s. He worked as an editor at the Ensign, a magazine of his church, and then turned to freelance writing. His first science fiction stories appeared in genre magazines, and in 1978 he received the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer. His early novels, which he later judged to be amateurish, were rewritten. He completed a master's degree in English at the University of Utah in 1981 and left a doctoral program at Notre Dame to devote himself to writing.

His best-known book, Ender's Game (1985), and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead (1986), won the Nebula and Hugo awards in consecutive years. His fiction often centers on characters with exceptional gifts who must make hard choices with high stakes. The Homecoming saga and the Alvin Maker series, begun in 1987, widen that world with themes of family, faith and vocation. Card has also written essays, columns and opinion pieces, and his public opposition to same-sex marriage has brought him criticism and controversy.

His legacy spans literature, film and other media. He coproduced the film adaptation of Ender's Game, released in 2013, and wrote the script for the comic miniseries Ultimate Iron Man between 2005 and 2006. His influence on American science fiction is clear, though outside literary circles his reputation is still shaped by his public opinions.