Hamlet's Father Cover - What Nightmares May Come

We interrupt this Revealing Eden sporking to bring you a quick spork of Hamlet's Father!  The bonus sporking that nobody asked for!

Hamlet's Father is by Orson Scott Card, and was originally published in 2008 by Tor Books, as part of an anthology titled Ghost Quartet, edited by Marvin Kaye.  It was re-printed as a stand-alone novella in 2011 by Subterranean Press (which, incidentally, also publishes one of my favorite steampunk series, The Clockwork Century).  Subterranean Press's printing was a limited run of only 1,000 books, so I guess I'm lucky I got my hands on a copy at all.

Orson Scott Card, for those who might not know, is no Victoria Foyt who had to self-publish to get his work to see the light of day.  He's a HUGE name in the science fiction community, probably best known for his bestselling novel Ender's Game, though he's also written such series as Alvin Maker, the Homecoming saga, and the religious novels Women of Genesis, as well as miscellaneous fantasy, sci-fi, and religious fiction series and stand-alones.

Anymore, however, Card seems to have gained a reputation for using his books as a soapbox for his political views.  TV Tropes has an entry for him on their Fallen Creator page, which reads thusly:

Orson Scott Card is also an excellent example of this trope in action.  Between Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, the early books of the Alvin Maker series, and even his work on games like Monkey Island, Card was easily one of the best sci-fi/fantasy authors of the '80s and early '90s.  But he took a turn with the increasingly political and continuity-contradictory Ender's Shadow series and Advent Rising.  Now Card can't seem to write anything without having to rehash his political views and run them smack dab into the plot as he did in Empire.  His online non-fiction essays and blogosphere reaction to them also made his more controversial social and political views much more visible and hotly-debated, reaching a peak with an article (which he later back-pedalled from) that appeared to suggest that legalisation of gay marriage in the US would justify armed revolution against the government.  Now just the mere mention of his name can cause problems, such his work on the plot for Shadow Complex.

Then under another bullet they have this addition, which got me interested in this book in the first place (warning for spoilers):

Then he rewrote Hamlet and explained that Hamlet's father was a gay pedophile who was killed by Horatio because he molested him as a child. Oh and he, Laertes, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern all turned gay because of it.  It ends with Hamlet damned to Hell, where his father tells them now they can be together.  This was initially published in an anthology, and then someone somehow decided that it should have a wider release.

What the frag...

Welp... needless to say, this book hasn't gone over very well with Card's fanbase, Shakespeare buffs, or readers in general.  With a 2.6-star rating on Amazon and a 2.56-star rating on Goodreads, it rates only slightly better than Revealing Eden, though part of me thinks that's mostly because Card is an established writer who was partially saved by his prior reputation, whereas Foyt didn't even have a reputation to squander.

Card himself had a rebuttal to all the hate and backlash this book has gotten... but I'll save his reaction for the end.  It's a doozy...

I did not purchase this book -- I actually had our library ship it in from a library in Oregon.  I honestly did not feel like shelling out twenty to sixty bucks for a book that I would only read once, probably hate, and then be stuck with because it feels wrong to throw away or burn a book that costs that much, especially a signed limited-edition copy.  (For the record, this copy happens to be #139 out of 1,000, and yes, is signed by Orson himself.)

Looking at the cover of this book... it's actually pretty decent.  The cover art is a bit murky-looking, but given that the play it's based on is a tragedy, gloomy cover art isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Said art is hand-painted (credited to one Tom Kidd, who also did interior illustrations) and portrays a dead king on a bench in a garden, with a hooded ghost/angel looking on from the garden gate.  This doesn't look like a scene from the play, but it's possible the artist took some creative license, or just decided to combine two of the most famous images from the play into one image.

Summary from the dust jacket:

We all know Shakespeare's classic ghost story -- the young prince Hamlet's dead father appears to him, demanding vengeance upon Hamlet's uncle Claudius, who has usurped the throne and, to add insult to injury, married Hamlet's mother.

Hamlet dithers and delays, coming up with reason after reason to postpone his vengeance.  But it's not for the reason Shakespeare told us.  It's because Hamlet keeps discovering evidence that things are not quite what they seem in the Kingdom of Denmark -- and never have been, throughout Hamlet's entire life.

Once you've read Orson Scott Card's revelatory version of the Hamlet story, Shakespeare's play will be much more fun to watch -- because now you'll know what's really going on.

Hmmm... seems a bit presumptuous for the publisher to claim that this book tells the REAL story about Hamlet.  It's one thing to claim that your book is an alternate retelling, or even "Hamlet as you've never seen it before," but for Card to claim that his story is the "TRUE AND HONEST" story of how Hamlet really went down seems rather arrogant to me.  Orson, it's okay to admit you've written Shakespeare fanfic, you don't have to pretend Hamlet was broken and you had to fix it...

Strap yourselves in, folks -- we're about to go for a ride.  And for those of you disappointed that the longer sporking is being paused, don't worry.  This should only take a few posts...