Conference noted::sf

    ... and thy spaceship SHALL be 40 cubits in length and 10 cubits
    in breadth with 2 cubit combustion chambers. And thou SHALT find
    two of each species, one egg and one sperm, to take on the voyage 
    I shall set for you...
    
    Sounds like a familiar story...  Religion seems to be intruding
    more and more into Card's work.  /jlr

    re.1 Agreed. Maybe he should just rewrite the bible and get it out of
    his system ;-)/2

Re .last_two:

At least in the Bible they took more than two of each species ....

 (Gen 7:2-3, 8-9)

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re .1 & .2:
    
    Ringing variations on the Bible is a grand old SF tradition -- so much
    a tradition that I have seen guidelines from magazines including "And
    we DON'T want to see the story about two stranded space-travelers who
    turn out to be Adam and Eve ... yet again."
    
    Roger Zelazny used the trick very cutely in "Lord of Light," and made
    it the axis of "For a Breath I Tarry."   Lots of robot- and computer-
    centered SF plays on the god:human::human:robot analogy, going all the
    way back to Karl Capek's "Rossum's Universal Robots," the play where
    the "robot" was introduced.  
    
    If you're going to convey the godlike role of a character to a Western
    audience, it's a very natural ploy.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    >Religion seems to be intruding
    >    more and more into Card's work.  
    
    Card is after all a Mormon.  But perhaps you're saying that,
    notwithstanding that fact, you'd prefer less religion in his work?
    
    --Simon
    

    re .5
    
    Actually a former Morman elder who is estranged with the church.  He is
    not irreligious by any means, but he does not approve of religion for
    religion's sake.
    
    This is, after all, the man who brought us the "Secular Humanist
    Revival", a camp revival based on the studies of secular humanism
    vis-a-vis the church's position on the world.

Remember too that just because he is a Mormon doesn't mean everything he writes
has to be related to religion. The fact that much of his work *is* indicates
that it does influence his life, but I read a lot of his work before I knew
his religion, and it never occurred to me that he was any more religious than
the next person. Of course, everything he wrote may just be allegory for all
I know of Mormonism...

    
    After "Xenocide" I think I'll wait till the SFBC offers it.  About how
    long will that be?
    
    Helen

    A good book, well worth the 4.95 paperback price, easy to
    read, lots of interesting characters and lots of possibilities
    on what can happen in the next four to come. I've enjoyed all
    of O.S.C.'s books and look forward to the next in this series.
    
    MDG

    I'm over half way through the book and I must say I'm enjoying it. The
    character development is more like the original Ender's Game characters as
    opposed to the more God-like Xenocide characters, which IMHO turned a
    lot of people off Xenocide.
    
    On Card's religious beliefs I don't really think they are impinging in
    a negative way here. He's certainly not pontificating religious
    zealousness and in character development he plays the cynics off against 
    the zealots very well in this book.
    
    Looking forward to finishing this and reading all the sequels.
    Joe.

    
    	Volume 2 of the 5 volume series came out sometime ago. The
    following is from the dust cover:

    	Title:

    	   Homecoming: Volume 2
    	   The Call of Earth
           ISBN 0-312-93037-2
    	   Hardcover Price $21.95
    	   TOR Books

       The Call of Earth continues the story of Nafai, his family, and the few
    other people selected by the Oversoul to leave the city of Basilica,
    and their former lives. 

       When the human refugees from a ruined Earth founded a colony on the
    planet Harmony, they determined that this world would not be devastated
    by the endless cycle of vicious warfare that had characterized the
    human life from the beginning.

       They didn't try to change human nature. Instead they installed a
    powerful computer, called Oversoul, and gave it the task of governing
    human affairs by subtly influencing human minds. That was millions of
    years ago. Now the Oversoul is growing weak, breaking down. It must be
    returned to Earth, to the master computer called the Keeper of Earth,
    to be repaired. The Oversoul must have human help to make the journey.

    	But as the Oversoul grows weaker, a great warrior has arisen,
    stronger, smarter perhaps, than Nafai and his allies. His name is
    Moozh, and he is deliberately flouting the will of the Oversoul. He has
    won control of an army using forbidden technology. Now he is aiming his
    soldiers straight at Basilica, that strong fortress above the plains.

    	Who will stop him ? Basilica remains in turmoil. Wetchik and his
    sons, Nafai and Issib, Elemak and Mebbekew, are not strong enough to
    resist alone. Can Rasa and her allies defeat him through intrigue, or
    will Moozh take the city and all who are in it ?

    	And meanwhile, in their dreams, the most sensitive people of the
    planet Harmony hear the call of the Keeper of Earth.

        
    	Volume 3 of the 5 volume series came out sometime ago. The
    following is from the dust cover:

    	Title:

    	   Homecoming: Volume 3
    	   The Ships of Earth
           ISBN 0-312-85659-8
    	   Hardcover Price $22.95
    	   TOR Books


	High above the planet Harmony the Oversoul watches. Its task,
    programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on
    this planet -- to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all
    threats. To protect them, most of all, from themselves.

    	But now the great artificial intelligence is failing. The Oversoul
    has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power
    systems are failing. On the planet, the Oversoul is losing control of
    the population. The only repair lies light-years distant on a lost and
    ruined Earth; the only way to get there is to teach forbidden
    technology to a few select people.

    	But war broke out on Harmony, and in the end the Oversoul's chosen
    servants-a man named Wetchik and his son Nafai are able to escape with
    only their lives. The City of Basilica is now in the hands of General
    Moozh, and Wetchik and all his family have been cast out. They cannot
    return on pain of death.

    	This third volume of the Homecoming Saga brings the Oversoul's
    chosen people out of the city and across the desert wastes, to where
    Harmony's spaceport lies silent, abandoned, waiting for the command to
    make the great interstellar ships ready for flight again. But of these
    sixteen people, only a handful have chosen their exile; the others,
    Rasa's spiteful daughters and their husbands, Wetchik's oldest son
    Elemak, have been forced along against their will. Their anger and
    hatreds will make the difficult journey harder.

Article: 525
From: Humphrey Aaron V <dg-rtp!amisk.cs.ualberta.ca!aaron>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: Prograde Reviews--Orson Scott Card:The Memory of Earth
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 16:43:48 GMT
Organization: not specified
 
Orson Scott Card:The Memory of Earth  [some spoilers]
 
I confess, the first thing I thought when _The Memory of Earth_ came
out was, "He's in the middle of two series(at least), and he's
starting _another_ one?"  But eventually I calmed down and figured
that if I bought this one, he'd be more likely to continue with
something I was reading.  So I did. 
 
Card is one of those authors who continue to surprise me.  His style
is quite consistent (barring anomalies like _Hart's Hope_*) and eminently 
readable.  But I guess it's more a case of "Where does he get his ideas?" 
 
Background: Earth gets blown up in a nuclear holocaust.  The
survivors, so disgusted with what they've done, abandon Earth into the
hands of a "Keeper" (I think a computer, but I'm not sure yet), and go
off to settle another planet, called Harmony.  To make sure it lives
up to its name, they design a computer, the Oversoul, with the
overriding purpose of keeping humanity alive.  Then they engineer
their descendants so that the Oversoul can influence them to make sure
they don't blow themselves up. 
 
The Oversoul selectively suppressed technological ideas that may prove
harmful; thus we have the bizarre situation of computers, holographic
projectors, antigrav devices, etc. being commonplace, but nobody
having come up with wheeled vehicles(which are harmful because they
can be turned into chariots). 
 
So, fine.  This goes on for forty million years.  But the designers of
the Oversoul had figured that humanity would reach a better state by
ten or twenty million at the most, and the Oversoul wouldn't be
necessary anymore.  Far too optimistic, they.  Now the Oversoul is
breaking down; people are becoming less receptive to its control, not
to mention a fair number of the satellites it uses to broadcast dying
of attrition.  And so people are starting to come up with forbidden
technologies. 
 
In despair, it turns to one family, in the city of Basilica, who seem
to be more receptive than average.  For most of the book we follow
some member of this family:  mostly Nafai, who is fourteen and thus
extremely annoying for most of the book.  Going into the society of
Basilica would be overlong here; suffice it to say it's
quasi-matriarchal in structure, with men allowed to own property only
outside the city walls, and women the ones who decide on who they'll
contract with for marriage. 
 
The book proper(this is just the setup!)deals with Nafai and his
family, and intrigue regarding these newfangled wheeled-carts and
those unscrupulous enough to sell them to other cities.  Having gotten
this far, I don't know what to say about the plot, except that it gets
most of its strength from the characters of Nafai, his brothers, and
his parents. Nafai's interaction with the Oversoul matures him visibly
over the course of the book, though he still makes some dumbass
blunders.  And at the end we seem ready to leave the city of Basilica
behind...though this could be deceiving, and I almost hope that with
all the work he put into it we see more of it in the next book... 
 
%A Card, Orson Scott
%T The Memory of Earth
%I Tor
%C New York
%D March 1992
%G ISBN 0-812-53259-7
%P 332 pp.
%S Homecoming
%V Volume 1
%O Paperback, US $5.99, Can $6.99
 
* Don't get me wrong.  _Hart's Hope_ is still my favourite Card to date.
 
--
--Alfvaen(Editor of Communique)
Current Album--The Waterboys:Dream Harder
Current Read--Mike Resnick:Purgatory
"curious george swung down the gorge/the ants took him apart"  --billbill

Just finished Volume 3 and have enjoyed the series very much.  I could
list a number of negatives (for just one example, a protagonist who is
so powerful and well protected that a threat to him generates absolutely
no suspense whatsoever, and makes you wonder if the characters doing the
threatening aren't completely brain dead), but they had no real impact
on my enjoyment.  I love Card's writing, and he has peopled these books
with some of the best characters he has ever created.

Now I *do* hope he will actually finish this one.  And then maybe even
pick up Alvin Maker again.

Steve