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Worthing #1
Capitol
A Sleep and a ForgettingA Thousand DeathsSkipping StonesSecond ChanceBreaking the GameLifeloopBurningAnd What Will We Do Tomorrow?Killing ChildrenWhen No One Remembers His Name, Does God Retire?The Stars That Blink
278 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
6 people are currently reading
827 people want to read
About the author
Orson Scott Card
892 books20.7k followersOrson Scott Card is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is (as of 2023) the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for his novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in 2013. Card also wrote the Locus Fantasy Award-winning series The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987–2003).
Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; his opposition to homosexuality has provoked public criticism.
Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and historical fiction genres starting in 1979. Card continued to write prolifically, and he has published over 50 novels and 45 short stories.
Card teaches English at Southern Virginia University; he has written two books on creative writing and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. He has taught many successful writers at his "literary boot camps". He remains a practicing member of the LDS Church and Mormon fiction writers Stephenie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, and Dave Wolverton have cited his works as a major influence.
Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; his opposition to homosexuality has provoked public criticism.
Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and historical fiction genres starting in 1979. Card continued to write prolifically, and he has published over 50 novels and 45 short stories.
Card teaches English at Southern Virginia University; he has written two books on creative writing and serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. He has taught many successful writers at his "literary boot camps". He remains a practicing member of the LDS Church and Mormon fiction writers Stephenie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, and Dave Wolverton have cited his works as a major influence.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 27, 2025
A decent short story collection revolving around the central idea of cryosleep and a planet wide city called Capitol.
I didn’t like the first story at all, but the second and third more than made up for it. Overall this collection is a mixed bag with very early Card brilliance alongside some other stuff you’ve read before.
Card was an excellent SF writer right out of the gate, but I would recommend Songmaster before these Worthing books if you want to read the earliest Orson Scott Card material.
I didn’t like the first story at all, but the second and third more than made up for it. Overall this collection is a mixed bag with very early Card brilliance alongside some other stuff you’ve read before.
Card was an excellent SF writer right out of the gate, but I would recommend Songmaster before these Worthing books if you want to read the earliest Orson Scott Card material.
November 28, 2019
Back when I was a young man, Capitol was the first hard scifi I ever read. I really impacted me then and I continues to do so when ever I return to it. This collection of related stories about the far future of humanity is centered around a drug called "Somec". Somec allows a person to go into stasis, or sleep, in order to skip through the eons of history, waking for a short time, and then sleeping more generations away. It instantly develops a class system where only the privileged can partake of this faux immortality as mankind spreads throughout the galaxy over thousands of years. Each story is thought provoking, and, to me strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.
June 7, 2017
I am not a fan of short stories, simply because I invest so much into what I'm reading that to have it end after so few pages is, to me, frustrating and exhausting. This work, however, is a collection of stories so intertwined that it feels much more like a full length novel - "grand conclusion" and all. Add to that the fact that it is written by an author possessing such a brilliant mind (and the talent for expressing it in words), and you have - well, an excellent and worthwhile read.
June 9, 2008
I loved the tag on the front cover (I had a different edition). ""A planet of plastic and steel that rules the known universe - but cannot rule itself."
August 9, 2019
A collections of stories that became the Worthing saga. My copy has a spaceship on the front and says it is An Analog book. One of the stories was entirely too gory for me, but all the rest were quite palatable. A little free library coughed this one up for me and we are keeping it.
December 21, 2012
I had read the Worthing Chronicles ages ago and confess to of late having lost faith in Card's writing. This set of entwined short stories however are him at his best. His insight into human nature, politics and religion ring truer today than ever. Eminently readable, thought provoking and well with your while. I'm going to have to look up more of his old short story anthologies now.
November 5, 2019
I had a hard time putting this one down. All of the stories built and fed upon each other. If you are thinking of reading just one or two, don't. Just start at the beginning and read until you get to the end. Carve out a few hours of time and just do it.
October 11, 2016
Preface - this is not a specific review of this novel, so much as a reminiscence of my time of life and feelings generated when I read this book. I loved this book, craved its heavy-handed attitude to a drug of control, not recreation or desire, and seized on what it implied might be human society's possible future.
I graduated from Star Trek to Isaac Asimov - Robots series, along with EE Doc Smith and other popular (safe) authors; to my first 'adult' sci-fi anthology/collection by Orson Scott Card - Capitol, a galaxy spanning drug-based society evolved from Earth and a time not too dissimilar to our planet in the 1980's. Stories which were shocking in its casual depravity to a young teen of the early 80's. If I, like many others back then believed, in the eventual coming of either humanity's mutual destruction or subjugation by a foreign power (it could have been ANY superpower back then, not just the one speculated about in this novel) sown by the seeds of mutual paranoia / depression in our society; you could see how a story like Capitol might have had a lasting effect on a young mind craving future sci-fi that extrapolated the here and now, more than the space operas or fantasies of previous generations. This was before the hard sci-fi of Banks et al emerged that we are all familiar with now. Even now with the gross ills of slow societal breakdown evident, people are grasping for anything to soften their pain through ever more esoteric drug use, to shield them from their fears of the future. In the right circumstances, a drug like somec could become the solution to everything. And if the current governments and amoral corporations that exist now, let alone the publically questionable ones of an uncertain corporally-controlled future Earth, could be believed to condone the use of drugs to exercise control of elements of society now, what a small step it could be to widespread use in order to preserve 'law & order'.
NB: the next paragraph has no direct connection to the above 'review' of Capitol, but has some bearing on how it connects to the 'real world'; so stop here if you would prefer to forgo the diatribe that follows........
If at some point, a 'corporate-minded' businessperson rose to the highest political office in the world, AND the world for whatever reasons, sleepwalked into a future where corporations openly controlled the world through corporate appointment like many a dystopian future - we would basically have deserved what had befallen us due to our really, really desperately wanting to believe in a fantasy of our own making. These comments in no way hide a critique of the current political systems or personalities in place in 2016, as truthfully I could and was describing what was generally believed by many in 1970's and 1980's, and by myself as a teen, influenced by what I experienced. Can anyone honestly say that our society is any better or more mature with respect to government, corporate or criminal interests now than it was 30 or 40 years ago?
I graduated from Star Trek to Isaac Asimov - Robots series, along with EE Doc Smith and other popular (safe) authors; to my first 'adult' sci-fi anthology/collection by Orson Scott Card - Capitol, a galaxy spanning drug-based society evolved from Earth and a time not too dissimilar to our planet in the 1980's. Stories which were shocking in its casual depravity to a young teen of the early 80's. If I, like many others back then believed, in the eventual coming of either humanity's mutual destruction or subjugation by a foreign power (it could have been ANY superpower back then, not just the one speculated about in this novel) sown by the seeds of mutual paranoia / depression in our society; you could see how a story like Capitol might have had a lasting effect on a young mind craving future sci-fi that extrapolated the here and now, more than the space operas or fantasies of previous generations. This was before the hard sci-fi of Banks et al emerged that we are all familiar with now. Even now with the gross ills of slow societal breakdown evident, people are grasping for anything to soften their pain through ever more esoteric drug use, to shield them from their fears of the future. In the right circumstances, a drug like somec could become the solution to everything. And if the current governments and amoral corporations that exist now, let alone the publically questionable ones of an uncertain corporally-controlled future Earth, could be believed to condone the use of drugs to exercise control of elements of society now, what a small step it could be to widespread use in order to preserve 'law & order'.
NB: the next paragraph has no direct connection to the above 'review' of Capitol, but has some bearing on how it connects to the 'real world'; so stop here if you would prefer to forgo the diatribe that follows........
If at some point, a 'corporate-minded' businessperson rose to the highest political office in the world, AND the world for whatever reasons, sleepwalked into a future where corporations openly controlled the world through corporate appointment like many a dystopian future - we would basically have deserved what had befallen us due to our really, really desperately wanting to believe in a fantasy of our own making. These comments in no way hide a critique of the current political systems or personalities in place in 2016, as truthfully I could and was describing what was generally believed by many in 1970's and 1980's, and by myself as a teen, influenced by what I experienced. Can anyone honestly say that our society is any better or more mature with respect to government, corporate or criminal interests now than it was 30 or 40 years ago?
February 21, 2015
I let this book sit on my shelf for so many years before reading it and almost didn't finish, because of the first two stories, but I'm glad I did.
The book contains eleven stories that span centuries on planet Capitol, but it starts on Earth, very outdated retrofuturistic Earth where both the politics and science are embarrassingly old fashioned. I feel weird every time I read old American science fiction where the Soviet Union is condsidered to be a major threat and I feel sad whenever I read science fiction that is based on outdated scientific ideas from the sixties or seventies. But in the middle of all that there was a quote so timely I couldn't stop reading: "No one thought. Nobody gives a damn. For the last five years we've been in the worst situation the world could possibly be in, and no one stopped making money long enough to notice."
Card creates a future history for mankind spans centuries of hopes and fears and human nature, which never really changes no matter where we are. The stories themselves are small, glimpses of lives, but the story of the book itself is huge, telling the tale of an Empire, how it grows, prospers and falls. This is something Card knows how to do. How to put together small and large pieces to create his stories. And in this context it becomes understandable that the story must start with Soviet Union as the totalitarian enemy. Now, decades later it makes me wonder if USA has become what it most feared, too close to what Card describes in the second story. And the second to last story seems to foretell Card's own future of getting stuck on his childhood values. Despite all the wonderfull tales his told.
So the book was small and quick to read but it was so full of thoughts worth thinking that they'll last me a lifetime.
The book contains eleven stories that span centuries on planet Capitol, but it starts on Earth, very outdated retrofuturistic Earth where both the politics and science are embarrassingly old fashioned. I feel weird every time I read old American science fiction where the Soviet Union is condsidered to be a major threat and I feel sad whenever I read science fiction that is based on outdated scientific ideas from the sixties or seventies. But in the middle of all that there was a quote so timely I couldn't stop reading: "No one thought. Nobody gives a damn. For the last five years we've been in the worst situation the world could possibly be in, and no one stopped making money long enough to notice."
Card creates a future history for mankind spans centuries of hopes and fears and human nature, which never really changes no matter where we are. The stories themselves are small, glimpses of lives, but the story of the book itself is huge, telling the tale of an Empire, how it grows, prospers and falls. This is something Card knows how to do. How to put together small and large pieces to create his stories. And in this context it becomes understandable that the story must start with Soviet Union as the totalitarian enemy. Now, decades later it makes me wonder if USA has become what it most feared, too close to what Card describes in the second story. And the second to last story seems to foretell Card's own future of getting stuck on his childhood values. Despite all the wonderfull tales his told.
So the book was small and quick to read but it was so full of thoughts worth thinking that they'll last me a lifetime.
September 22, 2012
Another solid book (of shorter, related stories) from Orson Scott Card. He is a dependable author...I know that I will like the books that he writes (except for some of the series...but, that's more about me than it is about him).
The book revolves around emigration to a planet and the invention of a brain-taping capability tied with a hibernation drug that allows people to be awake for a while and then 'sleep' for a while, thus increasing the number of years that they live through (their lives aren't actually prolonged). Each segment of the story includes a different set of characters as the centuries pass.
What I liked most about the story was the have/have-not struggle that developed between people on the drug and those not on it.
If you want a good, quick, sci-fi read, this is a good bet and has enough of a different story-line that you won't feel like you're reading a warmed left-over.
The book revolves around emigration to a planet and the invention of a brain-taping capability tied with a hibernation drug that allows people to be awake for a while and then 'sleep' for a while, thus increasing the number of years that they live through (their lives aren't actually prolonged). Each segment of the story includes a different set of characters as the centuries pass.
What I liked most about the story was the have/have-not struggle that developed between people on the drug and those not on it.
If you want a good, quick, sci-fi read, this is a good bet and has enough of a different story-line that you won't feel like you're reading a warmed left-over.
November 22, 2025
This one is a gripping, multifaceted collection set in the larger universe of Card's early science-fiction work, particularly The Worthing Saga. Composed of interconnected stories, the book explores a society built on memory manipulation, pain suppression, and the moral corrosion that follows when powerful institutions control human experience itself.
Card uses this backdrop to examine themes that would later define his career: the burdens of leadership, the ethics of power, and the emotional costs of trauma.
Each story in Capitol occupies a distinct emotional register, yet all contribute to a cohesive portrayal of a civilisation teetering between utopia and tyranny. Card imagines a world where “God-like” powers—such as the ability to remove pain or alter memory—have become tools of governance, enabling both benevolent interventions and subtle oppression.
The implications are chilling: when suffering can be erased, responsibility becomes slippery; when memory can be revised, so can truth.
Card excels at building tension through character-centred storytelling. His protagonists are never mere mouthpieces for ideas; they are complex individuals wrestling with guilt, doubt, compassion, and moral conflict. Their struggles give the collection emotional weight.
The stories probe difficult questions:
Is pain necessary for growth?
What does justice mean in a world where memories can be rewritten?
Can empathy survive in a society engineered for convenience?
What makes Capitol particularly compelling is its blend of emotional intimacy with grand speculative concepts. Card’s writing during this period is less polished than his later work, but it is undeniably bold.
He experiments with structure, perspective, and tone. Some stories unfold like political thrillers; others resemble philosophical dialogues; others explore deeply personal tragedies shaped by societal systems.
World-building is one of the book’s strengths. Card constructs a civilization layered with technological sophistication and ethical rot. He sketches its customs, power hierarchies, and ideological fractures with careful precision. The result is a setting that feels vast even when described in fragments.
The prose is direct yet vivid, driven by sharp dialogue and immersive scenes. Card’s ability to articulate emotional states is evident throughout. Even when the stories become brutal or unsettling, they remain anchored in human experience.
As an early work, Capitol offers a fascinating glimpse into Card’s emerging themes and ambitions. It is not merely a companion to The Worthing Saga but a powerful exploration of its own philosophical terrain.
Readers interested in speculative fiction that interrogates the ethics of power and the fragility of human memory will find Capitol both challenging and rewarding.
Card uses this backdrop to examine themes that would later define his career: the burdens of leadership, the ethics of power, and the emotional costs of trauma.
Each story in Capitol occupies a distinct emotional register, yet all contribute to a cohesive portrayal of a civilisation teetering between utopia and tyranny. Card imagines a world where “God-like” powers—such as the ability to remove pain or alter memory—have become tools of governance, enabling both benevolent interventions and subtle oppression.
The implications are chilling: when suffering can be erased, responsibility becomes slippery; when memory can be revised, so can truth.
Card excels at building tension through character-centred storytelling. His protagonists are never mere mouthpieces for ideas; they are complex individuals wrestling with guilt, doubt, compassion, and moral conflict. Their struggles give the collection emotional weight.
The stories probe difficult questions:
Is pain necessary for growth?
What does justice mean in a world where memories can be rewritten?
Can empathy survive in a society engineered for convenience?
What makes Capitol particularly compelling is its blend of emotional intimacy with grand speculative concepts. Card’s writing during this period is less polished than his later work, but it is undeniably bold.
He experiments with structure, perspective, and tone. Some stories unfold like political thrillers; others resemble philosophical dialogues; others explore deeply personal tragedies shaped by societal systems.
World-building is one of the book’s strengths. Card constructs a civilization layered with technological sophistication and ethical rot. He sketches its customs, power hierarchies, and ideological fractures with careful precision. The result is a setting that feels vast even when described in fragments.
The prose is direct yet vivid, driven by sharp dialogue and immersive scenes. Card’s ability to articulate emotional states is evident throughout. Even when the stories become brutal or unsettling, they remain anchored in human experience.
As an early work, Capitol offers a fascinating glimpse into Card’s emerging themes and ambitions. It is not merely a companion to The Worthing Saga but a powerful exploration of its own philosophical terrain.
Readers interested in speculative fiction that interrogates the ethics of power and the fragility of human memory will find Capitol both challenging and rewarding.
July 14, 2019
I especially liked the plight of the whip trees in 'Skipping Stones' however I did find the skipping through time very unappealing. Enjoyable!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2020
Great book! Love the shirt stories coming all together
August 13, 2020
It occasionally is a bit hard to keep up with but definitely a great read if you want to challenge what life could be like.
January 7, 2021
Odd stories, the lot of them. Interesting concept though.
June 14, 2024
What a weird little book. I didn’t like it at first but it did get better. But only soso…
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September 16, 2024The details! This really reads like fanfic/ religious texts added on after the original. The painter friend stuck with me the most.
October 29, 2025
Pretty strange concept that took me a while to get used to and even to see what what’s the whole point about it.
December 12, 2020
This is by far the best piece of science fiction I have ever read. It might just be the best piece of fiction I've ever read. It's so incredibly compelling and really presents an interesting vision of how humans are. Every story in this book is unique and interesting while tying together in the whole universe. The entire book is also uniquely horrifying in a way that makes me want to read more. I'm not a fan of horror pretty much in any sense, but this book was terrifying because it showed how terrifying people can and would be. That being said, likely no one would actually say this is horror or a thriller, it's just really good contemplative science fiction that makes interesting remarks about the human condition.
I'll be honest, I hate OSC, but boy does he write well, and boy does he have some interesting things to say in this short story collection. You don't have to agree with the man to think his stories are intriguing.
I'll be honest, I hate OSC, but boy does he write well, and boy does he have some interesting things to say in this short story collection. You don't have to agree with the man to think his stories are intriguing.
March 16, 2015
Die Elite der Gesellschaft des Planeten Capitol hat durch die Droge Somec die Möglichkeit ca. 10 Jahre im Tiefschlaf zu verbringen, ohne zu altern, man braucht nur wenige Stunden um die Geschäfte die regeln und sich wieder schlafen zu legen, die Gesellschaft und der wissenschaftliche Fortschritt setzen sich während der Schlafenszeit fort.
Wie funktioniert diese Gesellschaft ? und wie wäre es, völlig neue anzufangen, ohne die Fehler die gemacht wurden. Diese Fragen werden in beiden Romanen sehr unterschiedlich beantwortet.
Card zeigt hier die Fähigkeit, utopische Welten zu erschafffen und auf die Fehler im System hinzuweisen, in einer ungemein spannenden und unterhaltsamen Art...
Diese Besprechung bezieht sich auf beide Bände der Worthing-Saga.
Wie funktioniert diese Gesellschaft ? und wie wäre es, völlig neue anzufangen, ohne die Fehler die gemacht wurden. Diese Fragen werden in beiden Romanen sehr unterschiedlich beantwortet.
Card zeigt hier die Fähigkeit, utopische Welten zu erschafffen und auf die Fehler im System hinzuweisen, in einer ungemein spannenden und unterhaltsamen Art...
Diese Besprechung bezieht sich auf beide Bände der Worthing-Saga.
April 14, 2011
I enjoyed this series of short stories dealing with Capitol, and the drug Somec, which is given only to Capitol's elites, and allows them to extend their normal life spans over hundreds of years by sleeping a good part of the time. How Somec was developed, how Capitol was constructed, the used and abuses of the immortality drug in a strange society, are described in these interconnecting glimpses into fascinating characters. "The Worthing Saga" is the novel connected to these ideas, but I preferred the format of this book, rather than the drawn out plot of the novel.
June 2, 2013
Once upon a time, Orson Scott Card could really write and this book proves it. It's funny that he dismisses a few of these early stories as not being very good when it's really his more recent (meaning the past 15 years or so) material that aren't very good.
Overall, an interesting collection of short stories that, much like Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, takes place in the same world over a long expanse of time (in this case, many millenium).
Overall, an interesting collection of short stories that, much like Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, takes place in the same world over a long expanse of time (in this case, many millenium).
February 4, 2008
This book was my introduction to Orson Scott Card. I really enjoyed these short stories and I found myself still hungry after turning the last page. I find comfort in Card’s ability to negotiate time so easily. A fun read!
January 25, 2016
Scott Card is able to create a detailed image of future world by telling short personal stories and in the same time skipping over ages. This is also part of the story, because an elite starts to life forever by hibernating most of the time and only be awake for a few days.
April 18, 2025
"Who needs immortality, when every day is still full to overflowing? The long sleeps of somec are only useful to those who are bored, who hope that by skipping over time they will live long enough to see something new."
March 31, 2009
Capitol: The Worthing Chronicle (An Analog book) by Orson Scott Card (1979)
August 22, 2011
Orson Scott Card's first stuff. Very interesting, smells of Heinlein. Definitely recommend.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews