This week, an acquaintance I met at ICFA emailed me a question:
As a Mormon fantasy scholar, what do you think of Brandon Sanderson? I mean, I love him and I’m teaching The Emperor’s Soul in my fantasy fiction class next year, but as a local boy made good, I’m just kinda curious about whether he has, like … Elvis Presley status within LDS circles.
Obviously, this was a very dangerous question thing to do and resulted in me typing a three-paragraph email instead of making breakfast for my kids. But this question has been rolling around in my head for a few days now, so I figured I would try to put my thoughts together into a more cohesive format for your perusal.
So: on the one hand, yes. Brandon Sanderson is extremely well known in Utah circles, particularly LDS circles. I live in Utah County which is sort of the bread-basket of church membership. My son’s middle school English teacher made a rule that for their monthly book reports, they could only use one Brandon Sanderson book. I can imagine that teacher had 7th grade heard summaries of every single book multiple times a year for several years and finally called uncle.
On the other hand, since Brandon Mull (author of Fablehaven) lives in my stake, people around me are more likely to think of him than Sanderson when I mention an LDS fantasy author named Brandon. This is also because he does a lot of local library and school appearances, so people know him because their kids saw him at something. And, hard as it is for those of us who grew up in the fantasy generation to believe, there are plenty of church members out there who aren’t interested in reading at all, much less in speculative fiction. If you asked them to name a famous Mormon, you’re more likely to get singers like ex-Mormon David Archuleta, athletes like Jimmer Fredette, YouTubers like Mark Rober, or of course, Mitt Romney.
So fame as a fantasy author is a relative term, but Sanderson has a good amount of it, and Latter-day Saint culture has a lot of nerdiness in it, so this is nothing to be scoffed at.
But then I got thinking: how does Sanderson’s rock-stardom compare to the previous highwater mark for LDS speculative fiction authors, Orson Scott Card?
Between the two, I have to say there’s really no comparison. Though Sanderson’s massive output of books means his overall fame is larger, Card is much better known in LDS circles.
Why? Engagement within the community.
Sanderson has never been shy about publicly acknowledging his faith and its influence on him. He has done two devotionals with The Road to Hope and Peace (I saw both, but only the latter one exists as a recording). He mentions common LDS cultural experiences on his podcast like preparing to teach Sunday School or mission prank memories, telling about how awkward it is to get recognized in the temple. There’s a whole section on his website FAQ answering common questions fans have about his faith. It’s nice. He’s never phony or cagey about it, though some conservative members are increasingly uncomfortable with how his stance on LGBTQ issues is evolving.
But compare this to Orson Scott Card. Whereas Sanderson’s involvement with the Mormon community tends to be just being an example of a normal person being LDS (which is definitely a work worth doing in the era of Under the Banner of Heaven and the new Secret Lives of Mormon Wives), Card spent a good chunk of his career being involved in inward-facing discussions about things that matter within the Church. He wrote many of the scripts for the early Living Scriptures animated productions, which influenced the scriptural interpretation of my whole generation. He worked in at the church magazines plus rewrote the Hill Cumorah pageant which only just recently concluded its over 30 years of massive cultural influence. He published representational Mormon literature like his Women of Genesis series (though I’m still waiting for a resolution to the Rachel & Leah cliffhanger! Please, Scott, have mercy!) as well as Stone Tables, Folk of the Fringe, Lost Boys, and several of his short stories, not to even mention the more veiled stuff like Alvin Maker and the Homecoming series.
Card continued to engage with the Mormon thought community for many years even after achieving critical success, publishing in Dialogue and Sunstone, as well as running a regular column at the Nauvoo Times about Mormon issues. Maybe I’m wrong about this because I was just super into Card as a teenager and read basically everything the man wrote, but I think his involvement in the community made him more famous to Mormons as a “famous Mormon.”
I despair that we’ll ever get something like A Storyteller in Zion out of Brandon Sanderson, or even the Mormon-themed science fiction short story he once speculated about writing. Sanderson does have the advantage of living in the homeland, whereas Card lived on the east coast for his greatest years of fame. But Sanderson is firmly in the camp of “fantasy author who just happens to be Mormon,” whereas Card fully embraced how Mormonism influenced his identity and thought and thus became known as the “Mormon science fiction writer” within the LDS community.
Of course, Card’s focus on the interior conversation has gotten him into trouble over the years–see the whole Ender’s Game film boycott debacle. So perhaps the route that Sanderson and other “just happens to be Mormon” celebrities have taken is the better one if you want to build massive overall success and fame. The LDS community is too small (and, at times, too fickle) to be an author’s only source of income. However, I think every community needs both types of celebrities–those who face in to talk to the community itself and those who present it to the outside. Orson Scott Card was uniquely deep in both sides of this conversation, whereas Sanderson is only casually involved in one.
