It shocked me more coming from Dan Simmons because that was so out of nowhere.
From Card's fiction I had picked up a lot of cues that he and I were coming from very different places, politically - he wrote with approval of the strongman who ends wars by winning them all in Songmaster, and in many, many places he clearly approves of communities which are held together by a coerced religious consensus. Similarly with Wright, who started out as a hardcore Objectivist, and then converted to Christianity, which one might think would soften his views, but no - apparently he views the Gospel as yet another buffet table at which he can find reasons to consider people beyond the pale and undeserving of human treatment. It simply adds a "tough love" gloss to the same old libertarian kindness-is-just-coddling-the-weak hoo-ha. All this is front and centre in his books (which, full disclosure, I still enjoy).
But from Simmons it kinda seemed like a bolt from the blue! He's always seemed like a centrist, more or less, at one with a general consensus on liberal democracy which includes due process, racial equality and freedom of religion; hardly a barnstorming radical but not someone you'd expect to find suddenly haranguing you about how some race or creed was a Menace to Civilization.
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From Card's fiction I had picked up a lot of cues that he and I were coming from very different places, politically - he wrote with approval of the strongman who ends wars by winning them all in Songmaster, and in many, many places he clearly approves of communities which are held together by a coerced religious consensus. Similarly with Wright, who started out as a hardcore Objectivist, and then converted to Christianity, which one might think would soften his views, but no - apparently he views the Gospel as yet another buffet table at which he can find reasons to consider people beyond the pale and undeserving of human treatment. It simply adds a "tough love" gloss to the same old libertarian kindness-is-just-coddling-the-weak hoo-ha. All this is front and centre in his books (which, full disclosure, I still enjoy).
But from Simmons it kinda seemed like a bolt from the blue! He's always seemed like a centrist, more or less, at one with a general consensus on liberal democracy which includes due process, racial equality and freedom of religion; hardly a barnstorming radical but not someone you'd expect to find suddenly haranguing you about how some race or creed was a Menace to Civilization.