Orson Scott Card - Liz Busby

What I Read: August-October 2025

As usual, my attempts to be a regular correspondent have not survived contact with the semester. It’s been a busy but fun time. I have a lovely office on the fourth floor of the humanities building on campus, with a great view of the courtyard, and I’m having fun developing my lesson plans for an honors writing class on creative nonfiction.

In August, I presented at the Online Midsummer Seminar for the Mythopoeic Society. I was very intimidated by the amount of Tolkien knowledge on display, but our little King Arthur corner of the conference was productive for me. I got lots of good feedback on my discussion of religion and the character of Nimue in Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword. The paper will soon be published as part of the conference proceedings. I look forward to going to future conferences!

I attended both the Restore conference and LDSPMA this fall. What can I say? I’m a conference junkie. LDSPMA was particularly productive as I met the team behind the new LDS sci-fi/fantasy magazine Infinite Valley as well as Cole Melanson, the designer behind the always gorgeous Wayfare Magazine. I’ll definitely need their advice as I head into laying out the first issue of Further Light!

Speaking of which, we’ve selected the pieces for the first issue of Further Light magazine. Developmental edits are going well and I’m so excited for you all to get to enjoy them. I’m in the midst of commissioning art for some of the pieces, which is a whole new world for me, so lots to learn. I’ve also been commissioned by BYU to be the new faculty advisor for Leading Edge. This student-run science fiction and fantasy magazine has been running for almost 50 years now, and I’ve argued before that its existence is one of the driving forces behind the huge numbers of LDS SF authors. Now that the magazine is moving back to the English department after its sojourn in linguistics, I’m excited to be part of helping to carry on that legacy.

And if all that wasn’t enough, I’m starting a new podcast! The Storming Journey is the brainchild of El Call, but when she asked me and Adam McLain to cohost, I couldn’t say no. The goal of the podcast is to read The Stormlight Archive as though it were a sacred text. If you’re familiar with Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, you know the vibe to expect. We’re reading chapter by chapter through the series looking for deeper meaning and personal growth. Our third episode released this morning, so if you’re all caught up on Stormlight (spoilers do abound on this podcast) and want to dive deeper into the books, join us on the podcasting platform of your choice!

(Don’t forget Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree which has recent episodes about The Wild Robot, The Good Place, and Cinderella retellings!)

Below are my book reviews from the last three months with a large caveat. I’ve started a project to read through the rest of the Jo Walton books that I haven’t read. I’ve got three more books, I believe, and I’ll be putting my review of her entire corpus into a separate post once I finish. Of course, if you’re dying to know what I thought about things, you can always follow me on Goodreads for more regular updates.

On Mormon Rock Star Status, Brandon Sanderson, and Orson Scott Card

What does it mean to be a Latter-day Saint rock star?

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.

ICFA 45 Debrief: Notes from the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

I’ve recently returned from the 45th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Since I’m an introvert and have to push myself to network, I set a goal before the conference to talk to three new people each day and have at least one interesting conversation. Well, that goal was absolutely an underestimate of how much fun I had talking to all these wonderful scholars and creatives. It was an absolute dream to attend. When you want to study fantasy and science fiction, there are a lot of people in English departments who won’t take you seriously. Being in a place where everyone else is also interested in what speculative fiction has to say was so refreshing.

My presentation was part of a panel of two papers on Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. It was a fascinating panel in that my co-presenter and I came to exactly opposite conclusions about whether the novel supported or denied the idea of Escape into the fantastic, as theorized by Tolkien. John Pennington (whose work on George McDonald I’m going to have to look into when I finally get around to reading Phantasties) framed the novel as rejecting the premise of a secondary world in favor of a world that is deeply intertwined with, and even formed from, the primary world. He also cited a lot of postsecular theorists in his discussion, which gave me a whole different way to understand the book that I’m going to need to spend some time working on.

My paper, “‘The Beauty of the House is Immeasurable’: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape During the Covid Pandemic,” took an opposite tack. I looked at the relationship of the protagonist to the artistic and symbolic world he lived in as representative of our relationship with speculative fiction, coming to the conclusion that the book demonstrates how Tolkien’s idea of constructive Escape functions. I tied in the public reaction to the book when it was published in the early pandemic as well as my own experiences using media to cope with 2020.

I was blown away by the discussion which brought up ideas that could spark at least 3-4 other papers about the novel. (Edited collection on Piranesi, anyone?) It was an honor to be in a panel with such an intelligent audience. I felt like I finally experienced the purpose of an academic conference: getting feedback on your ideas from people who really care about the subject.

David G Hartwell Award co-winners, Liz Busby and Sasha Bailyn

I guess the people running the conference also liked my paper, because at the closing banquet, I received the David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award, along with Sasha Bailyn, whose interesting publication Inglenook Lit combines creative nonfiction and speculative fiction which blows my mind. I’m really honored by this award; it gives me real validation and encouragement for my crazy desire to spend the rest of my career focused on speculative fiction.

Below are some comments and notes on my favorite papers and panels that I attended. (There were so many good panels that I didn’t get a chance to attend as well!)

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