Comments on: "It's a Sugar song."

"It's a Sugar song."

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:06:22 -0800

Orson Scott Card's Unaccompanied Sonata [Google Books], which he has called one of his favorite short stories, is an darkly enchanting tale about a boy who, at a young age, is taken from his family and brought to a house deep in the forest...

By: justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow

justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:16:30 -0800

Proof that you don't need to be a very good person to tell a great story.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:50:16 -0800

I was really into Card, whose work I knew from Analog, when this was published.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:01:45 -0800

Wow, thelonius, that's a real find. Pity there aren't more illustrations for Card's story there. For all his icky personal life stuff and his uneven-quality novels, he is a phenomenal short story writer, really able to tell and sell a wide variety of stories. He has a knack for casual gruesomeness and for capturing small, beautiful moments. It's a shame he's doing such a good job of burying what would otherwise be a legendary career as a writer.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:03:29 -0800

Read it in Omni when it came out. Great and disturbing story.

By: escabeche

escabeche — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:06:56 -0800

A couple of years ago I went back and read some of OSC's 70s stories, including "Fat Farm." They were really good, but you could really see how driven they were by horror at the human body and its appetites. This was not something I picked up on when I was eight.

By: infini

infini — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:08:00 -0800

one of my oldest favorites... Never thought i'd see it as an fpp

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:15:19 -0800

I nominate Card as the Lovecraft of the modern age.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:23:29 -0800

that's a real find I learned about archive.org's OMNI magazine stash elsewhere, but it's been posted here too. I loved that best of SF issue #1 SO MUCH when I was a kid, and now I have the rest. Sweet! I think he expanded the idea in this story into the novella "Songbird". It's funny, I was Card's #1 fan for a couple of years, but then I lost interest in SF and never even read "Ender's Game", which is, I guess, what most of his fans first read.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:24:36 -0800

Nomyte: "I nominate Card as the Lovecraft of the modern age" Lovecraft was really quite a lot less odious and theoretical about his horrible opinions, and was much more a product of his time. He also got a bit more enlightened towards the end of his life. Card has no such excuses, actively participates in policy debates, and seems to only get worse. So I'll take Lovecraft any day.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:26:48 -0800

Songbird was based on another short story of his, actually: "Mikal's Songbird", which is available on Card's web site if you're curious. I recall it being one of his better ones, too.

By: doctor_negative

doctor_negative — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:44:35 -0800

I read this in Omni, too. Thanks for posting it.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:50:08 -0800

Thanks Rory. The thematic similarity (children, music) and 30 years distance have led me astray.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:59:32 -0800

Card is absolutely a born storyteller. I wish we could have seen a world in which he didn't become such a raving loon corrupted by his LDS upbringing. But I still love many of his works.

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:21:53 -0800

"It's a Sugar song." What does any of this have to do with Bob Mould?

By: happyroach

happyroach — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:25:35 -0800

I'd say rather that Card is the Dave Sim of our era.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:26:38 -0800

Card is absolutely a born storyteller. I wish we could have seen a world in which he didn't become such a raving loon corrupted by his LDS upbringing. We tried that, and it turns out that in that world the Tlaxcalan Empire invade Eurasia and institute a regime of maize cultivation and human sacrifice. So we had to send another guy back and, uh... how much do you want to know about the sterile piercing implement?

By: straight

straight — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:27:38 -0800

I can't believe in this genius who invents great music all by himself without any connection to other musicians. I think even a musical genius in that situation would just reinvent the pentatonic scale and produce some basic stuff that's not all that different from existing music. One part of the story that I think Card gets horribly right is the way the protagonist becomes a Watcher at the end. If you had your fingers and tongue cut off "for the good of society," the most likely reaction would be either to reject that society and rebel against its values or to become a True Believer and try to rationalize society as somehow worth what you had to sacrifice for it. Such True Believers would be ideal enforcers. "If I gave up my fingers for the greater good of society, I can cut yours off too."

By: ovvl

ovvl — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:32:33 -0800

An excellent short story from back when I read it in Omni... But the main link here just goes to a generic title card blurb for 'Maps in a Mirror'... from my view, anyway.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:57:01 -0800

Regarding your last point, straight, I would say that one of Orson Scott Card's most fascinating talents is that he constructs these horrific scenarios where there's seemingly as much reason to love a world as there is to hate it. I've always taken Card's word in Unaccompanied Sonata at face value: this is a world in which nearly everybody, all but two dozen men and women, are truly, perfectly happy, and where those two dozen people are only miserable because their ideal path is somehow too disruptive to be allowed for. Where those people are given every possible joy they can be given so long as they are prevented from doing the one thing they cannot do. But the other possibility, that this is a horrible dystopia where the individual is all-but-repressed, is never far from the surface. In a sense this is a comment on Platonic idealism, hence the metaphor of a composer who only writes music of what is, rather than music which obeys any kind of pattern or fits into any kind of artificial order. Card has a fascination with that kind of idea, almost certainly because of his Mormon faith, but it reminds me more of Taoism than anything. And through that lens, Christian's struggle is a struggle to escape the anxiety of society—that which makes him the most purely himself is corrupted even by a brief encounter with another genius, let alone with Joe and Joe's bar or with the men at the working crew. Each time Christian "falls", it's because another man has attempted to give him something which he doesn't want and "shouldn't" have. And each time, he loses that which that man tried to give him. Yet ultimately he finds himself reflected in the society around him, sung back at him by people who appreciate him for that unique selfness which he always seems to be in danger of losing. The deeper he loses his identity, the more widely his impact is felt—from the Listeners who, it's implied, share nothing of what they hear with the world, to the people at Joe's bar, to the working crews that spread his music, and finally down to the teenage kids with their guitars. While Card focuses on this idea that there's something pure from which we're all shaped, he argues that what we lose in the shaping is made up for in the impact of our connections to each other. It's an ambiguous and surprisingly insightful take on humanity, identity, God, and faith, and for a while that was Card's trademark as a writer. That ability to see things both ways and write without paying any overt allegiance to either perspective is still kind of remarkable to me. Many of his novels have that, including most of the Ender quartet, but then at some point I think he convinced himself that he "knew" the answers to the questions he'd been so interested in, and at that point he became more overtly preachy and more convinced that he understood all the mysteries that he once was so good at revealing. It goes beyond caricature. The most recent additions to the extended Ender universe have been truly appalling.

By: escabeche

escabeche — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:02:37 -0800

I think RM is basically right, but I also think this puts a finger on why I think "Unaccompanied Sonata" is weaker than some of the other OSC stories from around the same time; because it's too abstract, like a thought experiment instead of a real experiment. Give me people with names who listen, not people without names called Listeners. It's the same reason "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is weak among Ursula K. LeGuin stories of the same period.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:04:17 -0800

I wish we could have seen a world in which he didn't become such a raving loon corrupted by his LDS upbringing. I read this story as an allegory for the conflict between art and authoritative religious power. Don't even get me started on Xenocide and the hand washing. I guess I'm saying that he wouldn't have written this same story without his LDS upbringing.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:04:59 -0800

I'd say rather that Card is the Dave Sim of our era. Yes, but galactically, humans are considered to be the Dave Sim of the sentient races.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:08:16 -0800

Curiously, escabeche, that reason is why Card counted "Unaccompanied Sonata" as a fantasy rather than a science fiction story in his collection Maps in a Mirror. He saw it as fable rather than fiction. And the charm of a fable is unique to the form. As far as ripping good yarns by Card go, I think "Eye for Eye" was always one of my favorites.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:15:18 -0800

From the start of "Eye for Eye":

Just talk, Mick. Tell us everything. We'll listen. Well to start with I know I was doing terrible things. If you're a halfway decent person, you don't go looking to kill people. Even if you can do it without touching them. Even if you can do it so as nobody even guesses they was murdered, you still got to try not to do it. Who taught you that? Nobody. I mean it wasn't in the books in the Baptist Sunday School—they spent all their time telling us not to lie or break the sabbath or drink liquor. Never did mention killing. Near as I can figure, the Lord thought killing was pretty smart sometimes, like when Samson done it with a donkey's jaw. A thousand guys dead, but that was okay cause they was Philistines. And lighting foxes' tails on fire. Samson was a sicko, but he still got his pages in the Bible. I figure Jesus was about the only guy got much space in the Bible telling people not to kill. And even then, there's that story about how the Lord struck down a guy and his wife cause they held back on their offerings to the Christian church. Oh, Lord, the TV preachers did go on about that. No, it wasn't cause I got religion that I figured out not to kill people.

Seriously, how does a guy capable of being that witty and cynical about religious faith turn into what OSC's become? Was it just a particularly bad case of mellowing out?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:00:12 -0800

We called it the Brain Eater on RASFW. OSC developed a particularly malignant case at a particularly young age but he wasn't alone in the phenomenon.

By: Decani

Decani — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:03:45 -0800

Am I being dim or is this just a link to a place where you can buy a book that presumably contains the story? Because that's what it seems to be, for me.

By: Purposeful Grimace

Purposeful Grimace — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:07:26 -0800

I'm echoing DecemberBoy, when you say "Sugar" and "song" and it doesn't have anything to do with Bob Mould, you're doing a great disservice to the community. Especially when it turns out to be something to do with OSC.

By: the man of twists and turns

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:10:34 -0800

Because that's what it seems to be, for me. Is the URL the same when you mouseover the link as when you open it? Because there might be a redirect in there somewhere.

By: Athanassiel

Athanassiel — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:51:22 -0800

I loved that story so much when I read it in my early teens. It actually inspired my own first world-building efforts based on the horrifying presence that people could try to stop you from creating. I just couldn't get that out of my head. Looking forward to reading it again, thanks for the post, Rory Marinich, and the link on the Internet Archive, thelonius!

By: MartinWisse

MartinWisse — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:32:31 -0800

is an darkly enchanting tale about a boy And a pack of sentimental, dangerous, moronic nonsense start to finish. "Great art only happens if the artist has no outside influences whatsoever" only being the least of it. The sadism that Card inflicts on his hero is of course not unique; he takes great pleasure to hurt and destroy children in his stories.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 01:32:14 -0800

No-sword: "Card is absolutely a born storyteller. I wish we could have seen a world in which he didn't become such a raving loon corrupted by his LDS upbringing. We tried that, and it turns out that in that world the Tlaxcalan Empire invade Eurasia and institute a regime of maize cultivation and human sacrifice. So we had to send another guy back and, uh... how much do you want to know about the sterile piercing implement?" Yeah, well, guys, that was me. My quantum bad. I was working on a world where both Card and Sim stayed sane and cool, Firefly stayed on the air, Mathowie was 1000% healthy and rich and hand every bike he ever wanted, and I could get dates like no one's business. So, statute of limitations in this light cone have expired, right?

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 01:40:44 -0800

had every bike, even.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 04:57:29 -0800

Am I being dim or is this just a link to a place where you can buy a book that presumably contains the story? Because that's what it seems to be, for me. It was definitely the text when I clicked it at the time of posting. Does Google Books have some kind of global limit for previews served, I wonder, after which you get the same kind of page that non-scanned books have?

By: enrevanche

enrevanche — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 05:05:44 -0800

I remember reading this in Omni when it first came out, too. Card certainly seems to have a thing or two to say about child prodigies and talent identification schemes.

By: Philosopher Dirtbike

Philosopher Dirtbike — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 05:11:19 -0800

Yes, for me this link just goes to a bunch of reviews.

By: taz

taz — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:08:38 -0800

Just talking with Philosopher Dirtbike, and yeah, it looks like this is blocked in some locations. It's (sort of painfully) readable from the archived Omni issue linked above by thelonius, here. You'll probably need to use the controls to zoom in.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:30:33 -0800

had every bike, even. Too late! (Cut to the dark, windswept ruin of a once-great city. Horrifying, Gigeresque hand/bike hybrids snarl and brawl for dominance. Caption: HAND-BIKE NEW YORK, 2020. Pan to half-destroyed but still recognizable Statue of Liberty, whose hands are both bikes.)

By: Wrinkled Stumpskin

Wrinkled Stumpskin — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:47:53 -0800

Wow, this story hit me really hard when I first read it, in a secondhand book with a hokey giant-metal-claw-surging-from-the-sea cover. At the time I was young enough that the cover of the collection was the draw, peeking out from the pastel flowers'n'tragedy of the church thrift shop books. I also didn't know until ten minutes ago that it was written by OSC. Talented. Great find, OP.

By: straight

straight — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:06:46 -0800

And a pack of sentimental, dangerous, moronic nonsense start to finish. "Great art only happens if the artist has no outside influences whatsoever" only being the least of it. To me, the story emphatically refutes that notion. The key is the Watchers and the Listeners are completely wrong about everything. They're wrong that Christian's music was/would be better without connection to other musicians. They're decadently wrong to value novelty and innovation above all else. They're wrong to attempt to draw a bright line between "high" and "vulgar" art. They're wrong that the masses are better off without being exposed to Christian's music. They're wrong to castrate disobedient artists, and Christian is tragically wrong for joining their cause after he's been castrated. All that seems completely supported by the text, except maybe the perversity of the Listeners' obsession with novelty (although that goes along with Card's views, if you read his essay "Vulgar Art.)

By: jfwlucy

jfwlucy — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:07:58 -0800

OH, I loved that story in high school, and it led me to get into classical music. So sad.