Presented to: Orson Scott Card
For: Xenocide
Discussing this novel, the awards committee stated, "Flannery O'Connor once pointed out that 'It makes a great difference the look of a novel whether its author believes that the world came late into being and continues to come by a creative act of God,' and 'whether [the author] believes that our wills are free, or bound.' Elsewhere she affirmed, 'I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy.' Sheldon Sachs has argued that novelists of integrity will inevitably reveal 'the shape' of their belief 'in the myriad judgments' that must be made on every page. We honor Xenocide as a first-rate novel that reveals on each page the shape of Card's orthodox Mormon Christian faith.
"Card began to establish what is now a world-class reputation in science fiction with work that contained no obvious clues that his own culture and beliefs were Mormon, and his work was appreciated and honored mainly outside Mormon culture. But when he began publishing his Tales of Alvin Maker series (1987), though these too were honored and read mainly by a growing national audience, it became clear to Mormon readers, who were able to see the parallels between Alvin and Joseph Smith, that he was moving toward more direct exploration of his own faith and heritage. The exploration became quite open in Folk of the Fringe (1989), a collection of science fiction stories centered in the life of Mormons after a future nuclear war. Michael Collings and other critics began to look again at the early work and to find there, certainly in the second Enders novel, Speaker for the Dead, and even in the first, Enders Game, a focus on savior figures and the process of redemption.
"Xenocide continues to improve on Card's earlier contributions to science fiction by creating a genuine novel of complex point of view and densely detailed individual and family and group life, centered in the continuing issues of violence, redemption, and the possibility of peace, even love, between very different species of life (including rodents that metamorphose into trees, and insects that create reality from imagination, and a wholly computer-contained intelligence). But here Card adds such directly Mormon matter as intense examination of religious self-delusion and self-abuse (we watch the "People of the Path" with bemused self-recognition, then horror, then compassion), as well as fascinating explorations of such theological matters as the possibility of free-will and the nature of Godhood and creation."