Keep in mind also that Orson has written several books for writers and does a ton of workshops etc. For sci-fi he's a pretty prolific (and good imo) writing teacher. In his response he was specifically targeting literary concepts that he teaches and has written about while trying to dilute some of the ad-homonim attacks that were apparently exploding for the book at the time.

These days Amazon has a place where writers can comment on their books. It may not have existed in 1999.

It's one thing to fake a review, but there's nothing wrong with using that spot to talk to your readers.

I agree that authors should avoid responding to reviews. However, this is the most gracious response to a review I have ever read from an author. From everything I have read from authors, it does not matter how many books they sell, bad reviews still hurt.

<grin>

I felt similarly. “Why not write a blog post?” I thought.

A blog post in 1999 is asking a little much.

But then again, Ender's Game included the general idea of blogs as a plot point... (Not sure what else you would classify Peter/Valentine's self-published online essays as.)

Aren't they explicitly described as forum postings?

Yeah, it's described as something more akin to Usenet than anything else from what I remember.

Yeah, they were using some use-net like technology to post, since the web wasn't really around when the book was written.

I'd argue they carried the same social role as blogs. To me, the key vision is that online, self-published essays could be widely read and influential.

-edit- Actually referencing the book, they do eventually become part of "newsnets", being paid for their work and gaining a wider audience.

It also describes them using temporary anonymous accounts, injecting deliberately inflammatory comments into discussions to provoke a response. >_>

Yes. And, sadly, USENET still has a lot of ways it was superior to current web-based forums, blogs, etc.

I find it hard to resist posting the obvious XKCD reference (http://xkcd.com/635/).

On a more salient point, I always find it interesting to compare the idea of anonymity in the Ender world compared to what we have now. I'd be curious in seeing Card's take on it; despite how prescient the idea of a blog was, I don't think he ever conceived of how massively outweighed the signal could be compared to the amount of noise.

IIRC Orson Scott Card had his own area on AOL in the mid 90s, and possibly earlier. Not sure when he moved to the big-boy Internet but the name is the same, "Hatrack River".

It wasn't a 'blog' per se, more of a forum, I think ... I only dropped in once or twice and my recollection was that the discussion was (at the time) more about his religion than about his writing.

But if he'd just wanted to speak to fans he's certainly had an outlet to do so for a long time, and had it at the time the review was written. Presumably he chose to write the response in the form of an Amazon review consciously, and not for want of some other venue.