The gift of faith, in his case, has been a complex offering. No secret lies behind this success, for Card has always been entirely explicit about the two factors which have shaped his career.

That dominance extended well into the 1990s. After a highly promising start at the end of the 1970s – he won the 1978 John W Campbell Award – he entered a period during the early 1980s when that career seemed to be drifting it was only after the Ender successes that he clearly established himself as one of the dominant figures of recent sf. But this was after his career had entered its pomp. This was nominated for a Hugo and served as the germ for the Ender series, the first two volumes of which – published 19 – each won both Hugo and Nebula, the first time the two major prizes had been swept in successive years by one author.

He wrote several plays and other works with religious content before exploding onto the sf scene with his first published story of genre interest, 'Ender's Game' in Analog for August 1977. (1951- ) US author who began his adult life with activities befitting his faith – he worked as a Mormon missionary in Brazil, 1971-1973, an experience seemingly fictionalized to revealing effect in 'America' (January 1987 Asimov's).

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