Interviews with OSC • PreAP- Mr. Card Responds -- Sterbenz's Student Blog 7 April 2011 • Buggers and Pathfinders–Orson Scott Card -- Interview with David Steffen 25 January 2010 • OSC Interview at National Review Online 2008 • Q&A with Orson Scott Card -- The full interview text June 2006 • E3 2005 Orson Scott Card Interview 2005 • OSC Interview by John C. Snider. April 2005 • Ender's Game Q&A 2004 • Ender's Game questions from a student in Singapore 2004 • Interview with Sonja 2004 • MBA Class Interview - Dartmouth College 2004 • Orson Scott Card interview in French 2003 • OSC interview about Advent Rising. Interview at gamepro.com September 19, 2003 • OSC interview with a French magazine August 2003 • OSC answers questions about achieving a successful film based on a book 2003 • If you speak Polish, here's an interview with OSC published by the magazine Esensja 2002 • Interview by Kristin Galetta and Justin Goldner October 2002 • Interview from Poland January 17, 2002 • Questions from Playwriting Student Darren Pine April 2001 • Various Student Interviews With OSC  1  |  2  |  3 • Publishers Weekly Talks with Orson Scott Card November 2000 • A Conversation With Orson Scott Card - by Claire E. White September 1999 • CARD'S GAME: An Interview With Orson Scott Card - by Scott Nicholson 1998 • An Interview With Orson Scott Card - by Jeff Duke 1997 • AOL Interview January 19, 1994

OSC Answers
As children, Valentine, Peter, and Ender had the normal range of entertainment - movies, computer games, television, etc.  none of those are going away. They also played outside - and played games against each other.

But the real game, for all of them, was real life, from a very early age. That is, they regarded adults as adversaries, other children as competitors. Even Valentine, the "peaceful one," was a competitor and liked to win. So for them, the nets were a way to compete with others outside the scope of their local schools or neighborhood.

Three-D games are fine, but they don't really add anything to the games we already play except that spectators and competitors can stand in other positions.

Question
What kind of jobs were available at that time? The same as now, or different? What was the pay for some of them (i.e., IF Commander, military strategist, etc.)? What was the currency - was it a world currency, or did they use different currencies for different countries?

OSC Answers
As for jobs, I really didn't envision much change - nothing like the huge change at the beginning of the 1900s, when all the horse-related jobs vanished, car-related jobs sprang into existence, and even people's living and commuting patterns changed. I did envision a post-petroleum world, with public transportation far more common than private cars; but the vast gains in technology acquired from the Hive Queens had far more effect in space than on Earth in people's daily lives.

We already have a world currency - the dollar. That's what everything else is measured against. The Euro is an attempt to stabilize a currency against the dollar, but if the dollar collapsed, everything else would collapse with it. However, you can be sure that the first action of the Hegemon's office, the moment it was established, would have been to "fix" all world currencies at their current value against an arbitrary standard (i.e., the dollar) - but beyond that the nations of the world would have rebelled. Now that you bring it up, though, I'll deal with the currency issue in the final Shadow book. It would matter in that story, and I should have addressed it already. Thanks for the reminder!

Question
What were the civilian clothes like? If you look at the past seventy years, the clothing styles have changed drastically. What did they look like in the year 2070 and beyond? What about food, and music?

OSC Answers
Clothing styles are absolutely unpredictable - except for the one sure thing: If you could accurately foretell what people would wear in the future, you would appal and disgust the contemporary audience. Think about it - if, in 1973, when we were wearing platform shoes and wide ties and bell bottom pants, someone had shown us the grunge look of the 90s, we would have found the styles ridiculous and hilarious. But if someone had shown people from the 50s - with their poky-out petticoats and poodle skirts and bobby sox and ducktail greased-back hair what the styles of the 70s would be - well, they would have been just as disbelieving.

So a smart science fiction writer makes NO effort to depict future costumes, because to the degree that the prediction is realistic (i.e., showing the right degree of change), the characters will be made ridiculous in the eyes of the contemporary reader; and to the degree that they don't look ridiculous, they won't be realistic.

Think of those movies from the fifties that show ancient Romans looking an awful lot like 1950s movie queens. Ditto with the 30s and 40s.  You just can't stray too far from contemporary fashions in the direction of authenticity.

In books, I can ignore such things In movies, the poor costumer can't. Which is why you have the absolutely ridiculous "futuristic" costumes that show up in movie and tv sci-fi from the 50s and 60s and 70s.