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and if you're not up for the whole novel, the complete text of OSC's 1977 short story Ender's Game (warning, it's a spoiler for the novel) is available here on his website

"It worked, but the point was that Ender wouldn't have done it if he knew it was real."

Actually that was one of the points of the book. Another key point is that the child soldiers were used by the adult soldiers to perform an action that the adult soldiers were unable or unwilling to perform.

"You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it." Ender's Game Page 298

Fan's of Ender's Game may want to check out Orson Scott Card's web site Hatrack River.

A song of Ice and Fire is brilliant, I am rereading books 1 and 2, then starting on 3 - can't wait for book 4.
For more info - George R R Martin's homepage

Orson Scott Card's Ender series, and the Shadow series that follows it, are brilliant.
Official Site

Now for mine:

Tracy Harding: Ancient Future, An Echo in Time, and Masters of Reality (The Ancient Future trilogy)

That's all I can think of right now. Try Neil Gaiman as well.

Google sci-fi directory

As a Die-Hard Orson Scott Card fan, I have the pleasure of owning all but two of his books -- all of which I've read at least twice. The man is a literary genius; his character building skills are second to none.

Definitely recommended are his Ender series (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind) as well as his co-existing Bean series (Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets).

For a look towards the Fantasy world, the tales of Alvin Maker (Seventh Son, Red Prophet, Prentice Alvin, Alvin Journeyman, Heartfire, {And Hopefully Coming Soon} Crystal City) is possibly one of the most interesting historical fiction/scifi stories I've ever read.

As mentioned in the previous post, the Homecoming series (Memory of Earth, Call of Earth, Ships of Earth, Earthfall, Earthborn) is an excellent sci fi series -- my only hitch on it was Card's obvious use of Mormon symbolism in parts of the stories. (Come on, Nafai?)

Any way you chop it, OSC has excellent stories; there hasn't been one I've read where I've disliked it. Some are a little slow moving at the start (The Worthing Saga, for instance,) but once it's captured you, that's it. You're enthralled for the next [200-400] pages.

Check out OSC's Webpage at Hatrack River (www.hatrack.com) for rants, raves, reviews, and upcoming news all about the author.

They're working on it. It's not quite as far along as Orson Scott Card envisions it.

Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free... 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?

Well, there is a difference between reading and audio. People don't want to get monitor eyestrain from pleasure reading, and a printed book is usually quite portable. Putting a book out for free will entice a user to purchase the physical copy, for the aforementioned benefits, whereas the same cannot be said for MP3s, which suffer little loss in fidelity or functionality in the trip from .cda to .mp3.
Personally, I still wouldn't give the whole book away, I'd pull an Orson Scott Cardand post the first three chapters online to hook in readers.

Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) has posted a copy of his short story Angles for free on his website . He also wrote an interesting piece about copyright back in May of this year. An interesting quote:

And for those who say, Ah, but would you put your books online where people could download them for free? -- well, my answer is, I not only would, I did. Until the bookstore chains made me stop.

It didn't cost me royalties. It widened my audience. But try persuading a greedy paranoid of that!

Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) has posted a copy of his short story Angles for free on his website . He also wrote an interesting piece about copyright back in May of this year. An interesting quote:

And for those who say, Ah, but would you put your books online where people could download them for free? -- well, my answer is, I not only would, I did. Until the bookstore chains made me stop.

It didn't cost me royalties. It widened my audience. But try persuading a greedy paranoid of that!

of course, wrote a fantastic book called Ender's Game

except, you know, the music industry, tv, the news-media and painting... having hung around at hatrack as long as i have, this does appear to be a legitimate drive to try and get this film actually made... i think philoticweb.net has more info on it as well.

Hmm . . . I'm not sure I agree with the above . . . How much of Card's writing have you actually read? A list of his works is available here. I've read the vast majority of his work from Ender's Game up through Sarah.

Arguably many of his protagonists are youth, but there are also a lot who aren't. Treasure Box, Enchantment, and Sarah, along with the mentioned Postwatch, all have main characters who aren't kids.

Besides that I think it's interesting that Card has been able to write in what I consider 3 universes (Alvin Maker series, Homecoming Saga, and Ender Books) that I consider to be unique.

His more religous sci-fi writings, such as you might find in anthologies, are also quite different.

I surely don't think of Card as a formulaic writer (though I do admit I enjoy Clancy). Yes, the Ender series does appeal to a lot of the /. crowd because many of us can relate, but I think you're selling Card short by making the gross generalization you have.

I don't know if I'd praise Card as a great author, but he is definitely an entertaining and talented writer, able to write convincing novels in many different environments. Are his stories going to be considered classics a hundred years from now? Who knows?

Although the Authors Guild is signatory to this letter, I suspect that the whole scenario is similar to the current conflict between musicians and the RIAA on one side and consumers, MP3.com and Napster on the other. In that case, a few, very high profile, musicians have sided with the RIAA to try to eliminate fair use (e.g. My MP3.com) as well as unfair distribution (e.g., Napster) in one fell swoop. The less-well-known authors, or those who are not beholden to a single publishing company (e.g., Stephen King and Orson Scott Card) may very well have no objections to Amazon.com's completely legal and ethical desire to facilitate the transfer of physical copies of copyrighted works from person to person.

This is not the first time OSC has used an electronic medium to allow his readers to get an advance look at a novel. IIRC, the Hatrack River area on (gasp) AOL was a popular hangout for Card fans some years back... I don't know whether it still exists, as I haven't subscribed to AOL in many years. However, when I was a subscriber, OSC released the entire text of Children of the Mind before the book hit the presses. I downloaded my copy, read it voraciously, and then bought a dead tree version in hardback.

Recommended OSC books:

• Ender's Game
• Speaker for the Dead
• Ender's Shadow
• Stone Tables
• Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
• Lovelock (first in an unfinished trilogy)

Check out Hatrack River for more official details about OSC's work, and the Philotic Web for the unofficial details.

My understanding was that Card plans two more books before finishing off the Alvin Maker series. The sixth book, which he is currently working on is called "The Crystal City" (Card's Bibilography). Hmm, and I can't seem to currently find info about book seven, maybe there's only going to be six . . .

Is the Alvin Maker series as good as the Ender's Game series? Well, they're really pretty different. I like both series, the Ender's series is a nice philosophical debate while Maker series is a nice historical fantasy about America. Heh, if it's by Card, it's probably good . . .

That's probably a little out of reach for now. But what about a game that figures what the player seems to enjoy (mind bending puzzles, traps, fighting, strategy, etc), and works to change the game for more of that aspect.

It's an idea...

I like how you can download the first installment before paying. I think this makes a great system (kind of like how you can read the first 3 chapters of Orson Scott Card's next book at his web site). This lets the reader get a preview of the book, and if they like it, they can pay the dollar like a down payment for the rest of the book.

Another nice feature is instant gratification. I'd much rather be able to read the book immediately rather than wait for it to ship (or pay for shipping costs in the first place). Granted, reading on my computer monitor isn't as nice as reading in bed, but for the money I save, it's probably worth it.

Even though I'm not a King fan, I may just pay out the 1$ to support the cause, it's not like 1$ is gonna hurt me. If you have a buck to spare, I would encourage you to do the same, it may mean cheaper books in the future.

Before launching into debate on whether this is a good or bad omen (I'll leave that to the repliers), I'll go on to my next morsel.

Orson Scott Card made a review of TPM, and until I read it, I didn't realize how precisely that was how I felt. Read his review, he has some very insightful comments. It's at http://www.hatrack.com/os c/reviews/summer-movies-99.shtml. Enjoy.

Another place I've seen extreme microfilaments mentioned was in Orson Scott Card's Wyrms . The protagonist, a 15-year old heiress trained as an assassin, kept a very thin (i.e., molecules wide...) cord in her hair for strangling herself if necessary. Wyrms is a great book, BTW. Very strange in places but flows extremely well.

Whoa, cool! I just found you can read Chapter 1 of all his stories at his official site. And it turns out she's 13. The "loop" is mentioned in the preview chapter.

De gustibus non disputandum est, of course, but in my opinion the best of Card's work is Enchantment. I found "Enders Game" to be an absorbing and wonderful story, but the above to be more philosophical and thought-provoking.

Asimov - "I, Robot" is a collection of short stories about the robots, little bite-sized entertainments. Asimov's at his best when he doesn't have to do character development, and only has to spin a tale. See where Star Trek's Data got his positronic brain, and the origin of the Three Laws of Robotics that just about every SF author uses.

Bradbury - "The Martian Chronicles" is a delightful slice of mid-20th century sensibilities, projected into the distant future. No hard science to speak of, these are stories of lonely people, homesteaders, soldiers, salesmen, racists, and the occasional native Martian. Bradbury has made an art form out of the bittersweet short story: look for "Kaleidoscope" and "I Sing the Body Electric" in the anthologies.

Card - "Ender's Game", as everyone here will tell you. Oh, and check out Uncle Orson's official web site.

Clarke - "2001" and "Rendezvous with Rama" were good stories with enough credible science to make it all seem plausible. "Childhood's End" is also good, but he lapses into some metaphysical crud that I found a little farfetched, if not tedious in places.

Heinlein - don't think anyone has mentioned "Time Enough for Love", which I've worn out a couple copies of. (Some sexual content, though no more than you'll see on the Fox network on any given night.) "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is wonderful, and I remember being entertained by "The Door into Summer" when I was a babe.

Niven - others have already mentioned "Protector" and "Ringworld". Niven does aliens really well, I was impressed by the Pak.

Niven/Pournelle - "The Mote in God's Eye" has a great description of an alien culture and ecology, very different and very believable. "Footfall" is an old-fashioned invasion-of-Earth-by-aliens romp, a lot of fun and no social value whatsoever.

Stephenson - I found "Snow Crash" vaguely entertaining, but a little bit of cyberpunk goes a long way. (I expect this won't do much for my moderation here.)

Tolkein - LOTR, of course. Don't pay your child's allowance until she finishes it. Two-thirds of all root passwords are place names from this book.

Back in September, my wife and I attended a book signing for Orson Scott Card in Virginia, and I took copious notes on my Pilot, but never posted them. He spent about an hour talking about the movie, his books, etc.

Rather than trying to re-write my notes, I'm just going to paste them in here and do some quick abbrev expansions, etc.. Hopefully, they'll still make sense. :-)

Ender's Game Movie

• "jake lloyd 'is' ender, in every way that matters to me" -- Said that Lloyd really enjoyed the book, and could do a great job with the part, and that we shouldn't judge his acting skills based on SW:TPM
  
• Movie should have some cool stuff, surprises
  
• OSC wanted to do new version of Enders Game with new stuff (like a movie novellization) - tom doherty (publisher? editor?) said no
  
• Hasn't watched 6th Sense, and won't, because he feels that his story Lost Boys will never filmed because it's too similar to 6th sense (which I disagreed with, later, and he said that the "catch" ("he's dead!") was too similar to Lost Boys' catch. I still think Hollywood wouldn't care.)
  
• He also said that the 6th sense boy (don't remember the actor's name) is to old to play Ender convincingly
  
• Keep in mind that there are too many variables, jake lloyd still completely uncertain - he could be 15 by the time the movie gets off the ground
  
• His ultimate dream - film both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow at once, same cast, etc.
  
• Working on integrating the flash suit gun into glove (he described this, and I remember it sounding cool)
  

Some other stuff

• Working on a tv pilot called bordertown, filmed in mexico
  
• Another book after Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, about Bean as the right-hand-man, general, shadow, of Peter the Hegemon (was going to do a book about Peter, but publisher didn't like it, and later, neither did OSC -- too dark a character, not enough room for development, etc.)
  
• Following that, would like to do a book about Petra
  
• Expect two more books in the Alvin Maker series: Crystal City and Master Alvin
  
• "And if you don't know that Alvin is really Joseph Smith and Arthur Steward is really Brigham Young and that they're going to...(forget the whole quote), then You Haven't Been Paying Attention!" (I never noticed the parallels between the two, personally... :-) )
  
• Will be doing Pastwatch books on Adam & Eve, and the Flood (don't remember if that was Noah's flood, or Atlantis. There's a Pastwatch Atlantis short story on OSC's web site, http://www.hatrack.com/osc/storie s/atlantis.shtml.
  
• Expect three books about biblical women: sarah, rebecca, and rachel, presumably in same vein as Stone Tables or Saints
  
• Working on a 6-part ANIMATED TV series based on Treason (!)
  
• Let on that the Homecoming series is detailed retelling of Book of Mormon (never noticed this, either, and there's a great essay about the shit he took from other Mormons about his "plagiarizing" of this on his web site: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/art icles/openletter.shtml.
  

That's about all I have...if you ever get a chance to see him, I recommend it highly -- he was a funny, intelligent, engaging speaker and answered all questions fully (and sometimes got on a soapbox, but he put pretty clear disclaimers around those self-described diatribes...)

-david.

Back in September, my wife and I attended a book signing for Orson Scott Card in Virginia, and I took copious notes on my Pilot, but never posted them. He spent about an hour talking about the movie, his books, etc.

Rather than trying to re-write my notes, I'm just going to paste them in here and do some quick abbrev expansions, etc.. Hopefully, they'll still make sense. :-)

Ender's Game Movie

• "jake lloyd 'is' ender, in every way that matters to me" -- Said that Lloyd really enjoyed the book, and could do a great job with the part, and that we shouldn't judge his acting skills based on SW:TPM
  
• Movie should have some cool stuff, surprises
  
• OSC wanted to do new version of Enders Game with new stuff (like a movie novellization) - tom doherty (publisher? editor?) said no
  
• Hasn't watched 6th Sense, and won't, because he feels that his story Lost Boys will never filmed because it's too similar to 6th sense (which I disagreed with, later, and he said that the "catch" ("he's dead!") was too similar to Lost Boys' catch. I still think Hollywood wouldn't care.)
  
• He also said that the 6th sense boy (don't remember the actor's name) is to old to play Ender convincingly
  
• Keep in mind that there are too many variables, jake lloyd still completely uncertain - he could be 15 by the time the movie gets off the ground
  
• His ultimate dream - film both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow at once, same cast, etc.
  
• Working on integrating the flash suit gun into glove (he described this, and I remember it sounding cool)
  

Some other stuff

• Working on a tv pilot called bordertown, filmed in mexico
  
• Another book after Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, about Bean as the right-hand-man, general, shadow, of Peter the Hegemon (was going to do a book about Peter, but publisher didn't like it, and later, neither did OSC -- too dark a character, not enough room for development, etc.)
  
• Following that, would like to do a book about Petra
  
• Expect two more books in the Alvin Maker series: Crystal City and Master Alvin
  
• "And if you don't know that Alvin is really Joseph Smith and Arthur Steward is really Brigham Young and that they're going to...(forget the whole quote), then You Haven't Been Paying Attention!" (I never noticed the parallels between the two, personally... :-) )
  
• Will be doing Pastwatch books on Adam & Eve, and the Flood (don't remember if that was Noah's flood, or Atlantis. There's a Pastwatch Atlantis short story on OSC's web site, http://www.hatrack.com/osc/storie s/atlantis.shtml.
  
• Expect three books about biblical women: sarah, rebecca, and rachel, presumably in same vein as Stone Tables or Saints
  
• Working on a 6-part ANIMATED TV series based on Treason (!)
  
• Let on that the Homecoming series is detailed retelling of Book of Mormon (never noticed this, either, and there's a great essay about the shit he took from other Mormons about his "plagiarizing" of this on his web site: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/art icles/openletter.shtml.
  

That's about all I have...if you ever get a chance to see him, I recommend it highly -- he was a funny, intelligent, engaging speaker and answered all questions fully (and sometimes got on a soapbox, but he put pretty clear disclaimers around those self-described diatribes...)

-david.

The first three to four chapters are online HERE.
ACK

The biggest problem I had with the book was the way Bean quickly figures out many of the things that Ender takes a long time to realize. I think that the reason he did this was to move the plot along... understandable, but it does make Bean seem rather omniscient.

This book also seems to set up a sequel, in classic Card fashion... can't really blame it for that, however..

BTW, Card has the first few pages of his Ender's Game linked to from his web site.