Maps in a Mirror: Orson Scott Card’s Short Fiction, From Flux and Cruel Miracles to the Lost Songs
Orson Scott Card is best known for Ender’s Game, but he is also a prolific writer of short fiction. Maps in a Mirror gathers it in one volume, divided into several books. The reviewer read three of them in their separate Spanish editions: Flujo (Flux), Milagros crueles (Cruel Miracles) and Canciones perdidas (Lost Songs).
Author: Orson Scott Card (born 1951)
Title: Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card (1990)
Format: English paperback omnibus (Tor / St. Martin’s), 686 pages
Includes: Flux: Tales of Human Futures, Cruel Miracles, Lost Songs: The Hidden Stories and more
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0765308401 (ASIN 0765308401)
Flux: Tales of Human Futures
This collection of short stories imagines how human beings might live in the future, touching on themes as weighty as death and religion, as well as fables and fantastic worlds in which science fiction explains the most varied situations. Some horror stories leave the reader utterly helpless, searching for a way out of unsettling tales that make your hair stand on end.
Today’s social issues are portrayed in futuristic worlds where some technological advances threaten the human race. One story follows a group of identity forgers and what becomes of them after they try to cheat the system. Cyborgs, part machine and part human, are the answer to traffic accidents and terminal illness, prompting questions about consciousness and the meaning of human existence. In another, DNA recombination lets a species spread over the whole surface of an inhospitable planet, making human colonisation impossible. The book is full of ethical and philosophical questions, raised in an enjoyable, concise way.
Cruel Miracles
A set of stories about miracles, some explained by pseudoscience: the power to heal an illness by touching the sufferer, or, in a fit of rage, to make the person nearest to you ill; religious rituals and the sacred. Some stories give hope; others are chilling, and Card draws on personal experience. As a boy he was fascinated by television programmes that claimed to heal people, and that gave rise to one of his stories; later, the kind of televangelists he had warned about became famous. The tricks of those healers made him feel he lived in a world full of lies, yet seeing the faces of the faithful gazing at their leaders made him think that some people need to believe it is possible. Stories of horror, futuristic and fantastic tales that encourage critical thinking.
Lost Songs: The Hidden Stories
Some of these short stories were later turned into novels, and even films. Here are Card’s beginnings, including the original short version of his famous Ender’s Game. One story portrays the Mormon tradition of the family home evening and the homely side of such families. "Mikal’s Songbird" grew into another of his novels, Songmaster. There is also a children’s story first published in a magazine; the tale of a family living in poverty whose great dream is to teach their daughter to ride a bicycle; and a playful piece about a novel that advertises itself like a brand. Stories, fables and anecdotes drawn from everyday life.
From Story to Novel
The original "Ender’s Game" was a novelette published in the magazine Analog in 1977. Card later expanded it into the 1985 novel, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as did its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, the following year. Reading the short version shows how much of the novel’s power was already there in a few dozen pages, and how Card deepened the characters when he returned to them.
Card’s Notes
Card introduces each section with long, candid essays about where the stories came from, how editors responded, what he got wrong and what he learned. For aspiring writers, these notes are a short course in the craft of fiction; for everyone else, they offer an unusually personal portrait of a writer at work.
Why Read It
Card’s author notes, which introduce each section, are almost as interesting as the stories. For readers who know only Ender, this is the best way to discover his range.
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