Author: Orson Scott Card

There are certain staples of fantasy writing that must certainly have been done to death by constant repetition, and dragons must certainly be among them. Yet just as you think dragon books have become too passé to be worth reading, something comes along to change your mind

I’ve been writing this column in the Rhino Times since January of 2002, and I haven’t missed a week. In that time I’ve reviewed a lot of movies, old and new. But it came to me a few months ago that I wanted to compile a list of...

This week we saw a couple of new TV shows that seemed like old series rising from the dead. The promos for Manifest reminded us of nothing so much as Lost. We loved Lost during the first season, because of all the crazy stuff...

Hurricane Florence mercifully weakened just before hitting land, but its slow pace and heavy rains caused awful damage to the coastal regions. The fact that Greensboro ended up getting only a glancing blow from the storm is a...

The worst time of year for sunlight dazzlement is winter. With the leaves off the trees, suddenly the early morning or late afternoon sun can blind you whenever you’re driving toward it. You all know what I mean. You’re stopped...

I’ve been reading the Bell Elkins mysteries by Julia Keller. Set in West Virginia, and featuring Belfa Elkins, the county prosecutor, we get immersed in smalltown West Virginia culture

The Carolina Cobras, in their first season in the National Arena League, romped to a victory on Monday night, defeating the Columbus (Georgia) Lions for the second time this month – this time in the league championship game....

I have it on good authority that people suffering from depression often design their own therapy around late-night random television watching. You just sit there in a chair or on a couch with a TV remote control in your hand,...

When my wife and I were both delighted by the performance of Lily James in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, we had no choice but to look her up, because I had no memory of seeing her before, in anything. But we did. One of my...

I am not currently a fan of NFL football (I always have to ask on Superbowl day what teams are playing). But there was a time when I was. Or rather, I was a fan of the Chicago Bears during that glorious year when Mike Ditka...

Stunts, of course – amazing ones, usually involving Tom Cruise suspended over deadly falls, getting shot at while running, driving or flying, leaping over abysses, almost getting caught at a moment of complete physical helplessness, and facing impossible choices with dire consequences no matter what he does.

In Parks and Recreation, we first met Chris Pratt as Andy Dwyer, the soft-bodied free-loading doofus who for some reason had managed to acquire Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) as his girlfriend. We had no trouble understanding why...

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the story of the life and ministry of Fred Rogers, the creator and star of the long-running children’s show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I’m not even going to mention the fact that I was always annoyed...

Last Tuesday night my wife and I decided to go to the movies. We had either seen or rejected every film playing except Tag. The premise of Tag is that a group of boys began an ongoing game of Tag in junior high, and it never...

My wife and I allocate our in-the-theater movie events very carefully.  If it doesn’t look good to both of us, then we don’t go together.  Usually, we wait to catch it on cable. Ocean’s 8 looked good to us.  We have a fondness...

If you liked the first Deadpool movie – and I did – you will like Deadpool II – and I did. If you hated the first one, then for heaven’s sake don’t go to the second, because everything you hated in the first movie is doubled...

We were listening to The Blend on Sirius XM while driving home from Washington, DC, last week, and just as we were approaching our house, a song came on called “Insensitive.” I stayed in the car to hear it to the end. I had...

A friend recently mentioned the book Earth Abides as something important in her life, and how she meant to reread it soon. I realized that while I’ve heard about the novel, which won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951...

I know, Americans hardly ever read poetry anymore, and they certainly don’t read narrative poetry – poetry that tells a story. But we listen to plenty of country music that tells a story, and in fact most pop music at least...

Once you get the premise of Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty, you pretty much know the whole movie: Renee Bennett (Schumer) is an ordinary-looking woman who thinks she looks kind of awful but still manages to be happy hanging out...

Let’s face it – in the aftermath of a tornado, not everybody can show up all at once to help. If too many people are trying to work on the cleanup, they can easily get in each other’s way – potentially causing as much damage as...

The most powerful reviews are not the ones you read. The reviews that lead us to action are the oral critiques spoken aloud by friends. I’m pretty impervious to written reviews, which is ironic, given that I hope people will...

Here’s something that surprised me: I think the contestants in this season’s American Idol may be the best group assembled in any season. The voting part of the season is just starting, so if you start tuning in now, I think...

In a recent What’s New Now mailing from PC Magazine, editor Dan Costa made an interesting point. If, in the not-so-distant future, most cars are electric, it might have some unexpected consequences – because most electric car...

When we see them from a distance – as most of us do, most of the time – we really have no idea of what kind of person celebrities are. This actor might be wonderful and generous to work with; that one might be arrogant and...

If you’ve got a small, light e-reader, like the Kindle Oasis, then you know that there’s no convenient way to grip it if you aren’t sitting up, reading it as it rests on a table or on your lap. If you’re lying on your back in...

The Graham Norton Show on BBC America is the best talk show on American TV, in large part because the British understand what makes an interesting chat show. With the American format, one guest at a time has a one-on-one chat...

Pronunciation of English words isn’t always easy. There really are solid rules about spelling, but those rules all have exceptions. And it doesn’t help that as spellings and grammar were getting locked down in the 1800s, the...

Sunday night, and my wife was getting home from a trip to join with her parents in celebrating her mom’s 90th birthday. Our two daughters also flew from Seattle and Los Angeles to join her, and they had a great couple of days....

Most of my life, the Oscars for short films were about as mysterious (and boring) as the Oscars for editing and cinematography, because I had no idea what they were. When it comes to film editing, now that I know what editors...

Oh, right. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. My wife and I have never made that big a deal about Valentine’s. It’s a greeting card holiday, right? It’s not something real, like our anniversary. Or birthdays. Or Christmas. Right?...

I’ve known Rusty Humphries for more than a decade now, and I count him as one of my best friends. I suspect, however, that I am one of dozens, if not hundreds, who account him so, because Rusty has a way of earning friendship...

It’s weird how we can become so concerned about a social problem that we can come up with a new set of rules and then go way overboard in our enforcement – while nothing is actually accomplished in attacking the underlying...