An amusing back-of-the-book blurb

[elfs]

Karl Hansen's books War Games and Dream Games remain influential, at least to me, because they were so rich and forward-looking in terms of technology, personal ennui, and cultural malaise. The main character opens the book as a teenager subject to vicious abuse by his infinitely wealthy parents and siblings, all the while observing long orgies in which said older relatives attempt to alleviate the tedium of their long, jaded lives with ever-increasing doses of drugs, perversion, sadomasochism, and the degredation of lesser peers.

The protagonist doesn't necessarily view this lifestyle as a bad one; he just wants to be on top, a victor rather than a victim.

The book blurb on the cover of the first printing, 1981, from Playboy Paperbacks, reads:

More real than life, more painful, and in the end, more beautiful. Hansen really goes for the jugular!

Exclamation points are de rigueur for book blurbs, especially in the 1980s.

The blurb was provided by Orson Scott Card. Yeah, the "gays are a domestic enemy destroying the fabric of our society, and Obama's giving aid and comfort to that enemy!" Orson Scott Card.

The cognitive dissonance is... dissonant.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

what What WHAT? How did I miss that?

May I link to this?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/elfsternberg/4143794473/)

Karl Hansen's War Games

Absolutely. As you can see, I have even provided scanned evidence.

[solarbird]

Oh, once upon a time Orson Scott Card spent a lot of time making fun of the fundamentalism he now embraces. He used to go around at SF conventions doing this Secular Humanism Revival Meeting shtick that was very popular, for example. But now it's just sad faces, all the time.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

Another ex-mormon that knows OSC referred to OSC's schizophrenic two sides. (Looks like one side has publically won out though.)

True story: OSC stopped at my friend's booth at the San Diego ComicCon to purchase her True Porn comic anthology and we chatted about video games. This was about four or five years back. He was very complimentary about my friend's art and mini-comics. This was about five minutes after Joss Whedon had dropped by and we were all suffering mental whiplash still.

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

I had to go dig that up from last year. Wow, what a whole passel of crazy.
http://mormontimes.com/mormon_voices/orson_scott_card/?id=3237

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Here via james_nicoll's LJ...

I just read that whole thing, I now I need a whole bottle of brain bleach.

He says, "Wives need to have the whole society agree that when they marry, their husband is off limits to all other females. All of his protection and earning power will be devoted to her and her children, and will not be divided with other women and their children." My first thought was, "What about the woman's earning power, in relationships where it's the man who stays at home?" I know they're less common than the reverse, but they do exist. No doubt Card would find a relationship like that to be equally offensive to him.

Part of me wants to leave a comment along the lines of, "If you want to provide a good example of heterosexual marraige to your children, then do so, and more power to you. My loving relationship with my boyfriend should have no bearing on that. The only bad example they're getting is from your intolerance of people you don't even know and who wish you no personal ill will."

But if I left such a comment, no doubt I'd be inundated by hate emails - and I get enough email already. I don't need any more. Either that, or I'd just be banned from the site for being "hateful".

(I do find it interesting that the place for leaving comments is on an external site, and not the site where Card's article appears...)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

My first thought was, "What about the woman's earning power, in relationships where it's the man who stays at home?" I know they're less common than the reverse

True, but both "man stays at home" and "woman stays at home" are significantly less common than "both partners work outside the home" in opposite-gender couples, so Card's point is moot for the majority.

[maureenlycaon.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to Karl Hansen, anyway? I'd always hoped for a sequel to the two books, and it never came. No one seems to know what happened.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Legend has it he got a medical degree and is a doctor somewhere. I do not know if this is true (And I am not confusing him with Bass/Bassler).

[maureenlycaon.livejournal.com]

Well . . . thank you. I wish there were more information out there. He seemed a promising writer.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I checked in Clute and Nicholls but all I learned is that as of the 1993 edition of their encyclopedia they expected Hansen to keep writing.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

More real than life, more painful, and in the end, more beautiful. Hansen really goes for the jugular!

So, in other words, "Our society is as bored and sick as it is in this book, and such perversity must be eradicated from our society. Decadence is evil, and our only salvation is hard work and sacrifice."

Except for one other commenter who pointed out that Orson Card was pedalling secular humanism in a former life, I see no dissonance at all.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

It's not particularly dissonant compared with the OSC that was writing then. (Have you read Wyrms or Treason?)

If he blurbed it that way NOW, we'd all be blinking though.