Aside from a few cute anachronisms like computer modems, paper printouts, and Isaac Asimov still being alive, it's a solid, timeless compilation of advice for SF writers. Lots of specific tips on world building, SF themes, and even market wisdom that still seems on target 24 years later. Much more useful than his other (bland) writing book on characters and viewpoints.

Fiction publishers learned something from the non-fiction side of the business, which groups books by super-subjects, or categories....
Why not group fiction in a similar way? Micro-subjects wouldn't do - it wouldn't be practical to have sections called "Dog Stories," "Horse Stories," "Mid-life Crisis and Adultery," "Writers and Artists Struggling to Discover Themselves," "People in Past Eras Who Think and Talk Just Like Modern Americans," and "Reminiscences of Childhoods in Which Nothing Happened," even though these are all fairly popular themes for fiction.

This very short book is quite pithy, but helpful to people writing in the niche market of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It's from 1990 so sections on getting published are less relevant than previously, but it has some solid advice on story crafting, choosing where to start your story, and thinking through the consequences of your worldbuilding.

You can't just put a demagogic preacher in your town, leading a mob of self-righteous church people into a book-burning frenzy; the result is inevitably caricature. Instead, take the time to work out why these people are following the preacher...

For instance, the reason Mick and Janna would follow Reverend Bucky Fay to hell and back is because when their baby was sick, he came into their home and looked into the baby's eyes and then cupped the baby's head in his hands and said, "I see you're only a few weeks gone from the presence of Jesus, and he sent you into this world to do a great work. Satan has filled your body with disease, but you are such a magnificent glorious spirit that you have the power to fight it off within you - if you want to. But I can't ask you to heal yourself, no sir. You can sense all the evil in the world, and you're so good and pure that I don't blame you if you decide not to live here a moment longer. But I beg you to stay. We need you."

Thus when the baby dies a few days later, the parents don't blame the preacher, but believe in him even more fervently because not believing in his spiritual insights would be like desecrating their lost baby's grave.

I really love Card's insights sometimes.

I'm so deep in writing lectures at the moment that I can't see the forest for the trees. I'm not sure I'm taking away anything new from this, but it's a fair book nonetheless.

I will admit: I went into this book a bit smug, judging from the title that it was going to be far below my "level" of writing and that I would come out feeling completely validated in my world-building because the advice Card gave would be for beginners and I, though unpublished, was of course not a beginner.
However, I was pleasantly (and sometimes rather uncomfortably) surprised on many counts. To begin, I must say that Orson Scott Card is a good writer. I have never read a single one of his books and, having no prior knowledge (and expecting something rather bland), I was glad to find a "how-to" book full of examples from both his life and from the works of others. Much of what he breaks down in his world-building and story construction chapters should (I believe) come intuitively to an author and to have principles such as 'who should be the main character' laid so bare made me a bit self-conscious in the end, like when someone makes you aware that you are blinking or breathing and you must then focus on the fact nervously for the next few minutes or so until it passes.
The chapters about storytelling itself are about the only ones still relevant as the book reaches its 25th anniversary and an updated version would be nice at some point, as things have, I am sure, changed considerably for Card(not to mention sf/fantasy in general) in the intervening years. That being said, the book is good in its ability to make the writer think: what story am I actually trying to tell here? Does the format I have picked actually work? In the end, why am I writing? Even someone who considers themselves a success, perhaps an expert in the field, could benefit from a read.
Pride is the enemy of writing, I am discovering, especially when it causes me to reject the works of all other fantasy/sf novelists, either because I think their writing beneath me or because I am secretly jealous that I didn't think up their idea myself. Either way, this book was a good reminder for me that the field exists because people write. Every victory for a sf/fantasy writer is a victory for all. Instead of sitting stubbornly on the sidelines, grousing that their ideas are better than mine (or are very similar) I need to be out on the front lines, writing furiously, and hoping that together we can elevate opinion on the creation of worlds, helping people see it for the high art that it is.

Decent book. It wasn't the most helpful book I've read and a couple bits were outdated, but it was an enjoyable book to read (a bit like a memoir at times) and did have some useful advice on writing science fiction and fantasy. Given Card's brilliance, I was hoping that there would have been a bit more of that brilliance in here. But I did glean some good advice and tips from this book nonetheless.

Rating: 3.5 Stars (Good).

Consejos y análisis sobre distintas áreas estructurales acerca de la creación de mundos scifi y/o fantásticos; lo bueno es que mucho de lo expuesto puede aplicarse en otros géneros literarios. Un libro útil para escritores principiantes -y no tanto-.

Can't say this book had enlightened me with anything I haven't already figured out for myself.

I have owned Orson Scott Card's How to Write Fantasy & Science Fiction since 2007 and have repeatedly tried to read through it. It's a tough go. Indeed, How to Write Fantasy & Science Fiction is not as good as some of the other books on writing Science Fiction/Fantasy that I've read as of late. 'Tis disappointing, coming from one of the leading figures in speculative fiction.

It's not that How to Write Fantasy & Science Fiction is written badly—the book is written well. And it's not like there isn't anything good to come out of it, because Card does include a lot of anecdotes and lessons in this text. No, what I think is most problematic about this book is that it is dated in a lot of different ways. That, and the fact that there was just something missing from it all. I came away from reading this book wanting more. Also, Card puts way too much of himself in the book. The most glaring problem of all, however, was that Card does not even pay lip service, or even hint at the possibility, of the notion of “speculative fiction” and all that it can be. Indeed, in How to Write Fantasy & Science Fiction Card seems preternaturally fixated on getting aspiring science fiction and/or fantasy writers to pick a genre and adhere to its conventions. This is probably some of the worst advice, unless Card secretly wants to see a world where perpetually drab and formulaic fiction continues to be published ad infinitum.

This book needs a revision and expansion. It was published in 1990, a few years before the Internet explosion, so that in itself should generate enough content for a new edition. Of course Card has also gone on to publish more stories, no doubt adding to the well of experience Card could draw from for the new edition.

In a nutshell, this book is very dated, definitely a characteristic you want to avoid if you are trying to write cutting-edge speculative fiction.

So sparse I didn't buy it, though it was the only book at the store on the subject. I checked it out from the library and thought it was ho-hum. No Beef with Card, in fact I recommend, "Characters and Viewpoint": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
Sometimes I wonder if I should read it again and see if I missed something, but how would having more experience make a "How To" book more appreciable?

Seems like he didn't have enough pages available, or had to meet a deadline or some unknowable factor. Not enough meat on the bone, especially now that the internet is bursting with information. For the money I did better with fantasy gaming books and non-genre writing books, in the same (Writer's Digest) Series. Read my review on this book to learn more. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

I went into this book already loving quite a few of Card's Sci-Fi and fantasy works and was happy to find that his writer's voice carried over from his fiction to his instructional book. I'm just a fan of his writer's voice.
But man this book was so informative for me. Yes, a lot of the publishing information is way out of date. We have the internet now for starters. (This book was published in 1990. It's older than I am.) But Card knows when he writes this that the market is bound to change because the markets always change. So he even reminds his readers to research where the market is at for their genre.
But the actual writing advice was still super helpful. I was challenged as a writer. Chapter 3 especially, on Story Construction blew my mind. I went to college and majored in English Writing and I don't remember ever learning this stuff. (Granted, it could be they taught it to me and I just wasn't paying attention, but still...). Specifically the 4 Types of Stories Model and using that to know how to begin and end a story. I'm going to use that forever now.
I'm super impressed by this book, and I know I'll be referring to it a lot as I continue to hone my craft as a writer.

Short but most definitely sweet. This provides a brief insight into the world of speculative fiction from one of its reigning masters. It begins with an introduction into the science fiction and fantasy genres before continuing with pointers to help in your own successful penmanship of them. I had feared this to contain a repeat of information found in any other conventional 'how to write' manual and was pleasantly surprised to find a good variation from the expected.

Whilst I did find that this was skewed in the favour of science fiction information, this was still a helpful tool for any wannabe fantasy writer, such as myself. There were also times where the information could not still be helpful to a modern-day reader, due this book being almost three decades old, but the majority of this can still be classified as a good instructional tool for any speculative fiction writer's arsenal.

The author takes you on a very good short and all-round trip of the world of writing SF and Fantasy. The book is also very useful if you want to learn how to properly evaluate/critique the SF & Fantasy books that you read.

Of all the many "how to write" books around, this is the one that I have found the most useful. Although it is focussed on the particular issues involved in writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, his advice on conveying setting should be read by all who set novels in any 'exotic' setting i. e. one unfamiliar to the average reader.

When I have spoken to others about this book, their reactions have often been coloured by how they feel about his own fiction, or about him as a person. I am aware that he is a controversial figure, but his politics do not enter this book, and he takes his examples from other writer's work, not his own. Whether or not one likes him as a person is surely irrelevant here - what matters is that his expositions are clear and his advice is sound.

But there are two caveats here.

Firstly, this is about the craft of writing, not "how to get published". The focus is firmly on telling a good story well, rather than marketing one. Its starting point is that uou have a story that you want to tell, rather than how to cone up with one designed to appeal to a particular marketing demographic.

The second is that it includes one quite shocking display of ignorance! The chapter on invented language, in itself completely sound, is marred by his choice of Nadsat (the language of the narrator of A Clockwork Orange) to illustrate his opinions. He discusses the psychological impact of the use of the phrase "horror-show" to indicate approval, while ignoring the fact that it is a crude phonetic rendering of the Russian word more commonly transliterated as "khorosho"! Whilst his analysis of the effect of choosing this particular spelling is quite valid, to ignore the fact that all the Nadsat vocabulary has its roots in phonetic Russian is to completely ignore the political statement about his vision of the future that Anthony Burgess was making by this fusion of English and Russian. In ignorance of basic Russian, Orson Scott Card is perhaps merely a product of his nationality and generation, but to be so ignorant of the themes and intentions of a fellow author - whilst nevertheless choosing to "analyse" his work at length - demonstrates a worrying insularity. Burgess and Card are unlikely to agree poltically, but to omit the political intent from an analysus of Burgess' linguistic choices amounts to a gross misrepresention of a fellow author's work.