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New Ender Sequel
CMU_Nort writes "Orson Scott Card is at it again. Hot on the tail of Ender's Shadow, he's writing another sequel to the Ender's Game story. This one seems to cover the story of the immediate history following the original story when all of the children return home. Called Shadow of the Hegemon, it should give us some of the story of what happened to Peter. The
first five chapters
are already available online."
The rest of
his website
looks interesting too.
Why not Buggers, would the British be offended?
I believe that Orson Scott Card said, either in the forward to _Ender's Shadow_ or elsewhere, that the homosexual connotations of the word "bugger" justified changing it for the movie. I disagree, but whatever. Any role his religious beliefs play in this is unknown.
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Up there with Asimov's Foundation & Robot Novels as well as Herbert's Dune Novels.
flatrabbit,
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Erm, Did you mean to say Ender's Game is a Matrix rip off? (I might've read it wrong) First of all, Enders Game is much older than the Matrix, and if any movie has every ripped off anything its the matrix (see: dark city, countless other films/books)
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I must say, I rather liked the entire series. Enders game was great, it had action and I could relate to the main charecter. The rest of the Series was very differant. Mind you, ender is older. So you must expect things to be differant. I especially loved children of the mind and its weird plot twist. Enders shadow was also great. It was very awsome to see the world.. from a differant perspective. And in the newest book, we get to see what happened durring enders near light speed travel.
Luke
Why is it that otherwise excellent authors tend to start contemplating their navels as they get older?
Robert Asprin wrote a great book called Another Fine Myth. He then wrote many sequels to that book. After the first few, they started going down hill quickly. Reading the last book, Sweet Mythtery of Life, was like watching an episode in the last season of Moonlighting.
Robert Heinlein, considered by many to be one of the great authors of SF, had a habit of ending his books with about 70 pages where the heroes go through a time warp and party with all the characters of all his previous books.
Even Isaac Asimov, one of my favorite authors, fell into that trap when he wrote a series of novels tying the robot stories to the foundation stories.
For a demonstration of this phenomenon in miniature, read The Postman. There are three sections to the book. Each one was written independently as a novella so it is really a trilogy in miniature. The first story is excellent. The second story is ok. The third story was just annoying, and I gave up when he started in with the wierd zen cyborg stuff at the end. Buy the book, rip it apart, and burn all but the first third. Treasure the first third. Read it to your grandchildren.
Incidentally, I think that as a prophylactic measure, Brin should avoid writing stories in his progenitors universe for a while.
JRR Tolkein can be forgiven since the Middle Earth stuff that's been published for the past few years has been the work of his sons ransacking his office. This is why Harlan Ellison has given instructions that when he dies, everything in his office is to be destroyed immediately. I think he made a wise decision.
The only author I can think of who has a long series of books which are still consistently good is Terry Pratchett. I see signs, however, that he may be slowly succumbing to the same illness. If he wants to avoid this fate, he should probably not write any more Rincewind novels.
Orson Scott Card is an excellent author as well. I've stopped reading his books mostly because I got tired of watching a 10 year old boy save the universe in EVERY SINGLE BOOK. Also, while I believe in the value of family, I don't need to be hit over the head with it constantly. However, the Ender series has fallen into the same trap as the others. I gave up on the last Ender book I read when Ender's children appeared out of thin air when Ender merely thought about them while in hyperspace. Willing suspension of disbelief only goes so far. Now he is going back and filling in the blanks. There are probably a few die hard Ender fans who are looking forward to the book, but what they really want is more of the same, just reshuffled, and that is exactly what they will get.
Readers: If a series is more than a trilogy, wait for the reviews.
Authors: If a story has been completed, and a publisher comes to you and offers you lots of money to write another book in the same series, do so if you must, but remember, you are too close to make a good decision, your fans want more of the same, your publisher can get more money out of the same series, and your family likes you too much. Ask yourself: If someone who has never read your work before read this book, would they go out and buy another of your books?
Please support your local chapter of the American Society for the Prevention of Sequelitis.
pornking
Apparently Shadow of the Hegemon develops Achilles' character a bit more... he appears in one of the first five chapters. Peter had style, but Achilles, well, didn't. Perhaps that's the point... all our characters have IQs that are four st.devs away from the mean, while Achilles is just a thug with a 130 or so. Pure speculation on my part, though.
J
Hey! That's great! Have you submitted it to Rinkworks' book-a-minute?
Sorry about that. It was careless, and I'm sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone.
No time for
I agree. all agenda's aside. Just because he is against gay marriage doesn't mean he is afraid of homosexuality. The probablem with homophobe is that it is a loaded word that now means "Someone who is against homosexuality" so it is applied to people in that sense and then they can automatically conclude you are afraid of them.
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not true...the last book in the series, children of the mind was pretty damn good. Much better than the 2nd and 3rd books of the series although not quite as good as Ender's Game
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This one is still from Bean's perspective...as you see if you read the first 5 chapters of it
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No, if you read Ender's Shadow, it's pointed out several times that Bean isn't human...so Ender is still the smartest =)
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All of his attempts at depicting serious relationships and social situations outside of childhood-angst-fighting-space-aliens are muted and bland, and illustrate how he is a socially backward jerk (has anyone ever read an interview with this nutbar?).
In chapter 3 there is a reference to "standard 2-byte format" as the standard character code. Unicode uses 2 bytes per letter doesn't it? Looks like Orson Scott Card has been doing quite a bit of research...
But yeah, I've read of most of his stuff, too. His earlier works are better than the recent stuff - I liked Pastwatch, though.
Are any of the sequels as good as the first?
For those of you who may not have read any Card, here's my take on his books:
Overall, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Pastwatch should be on one's "must buy" list. The others are worth reading if they fall into your lap, but don't go out of your way to buy them.
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He talks about Ender's Shadow mainly, but he mentions his plans (this was right after ES came out) for the series and other books as well.
http://www.laural.com/
I rather liked Ender's Shadow, it was mainly a rewrite of Ender's Game, but a damn sight better than the other sequels. The other books in the series just plain stunk.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
I'm not saying that I agree with him. Yes, he's anti-gay-lifestyle. And I've read other things from him which show this. However, this does not mean he is a homophobe.
Too bad nothing else Orson Scott Card did compares favorably to Ender's Game. Hopefully the new sequel will be different...
Free music from Jack Merlot.
The rest of the series is very different. Ender's Game is about the formation and manipulation of the boy, the power that adults have to mold children, and the ways that children both submit to that molding and overcome that molding. Ender is a confused, complex character.
... It's almost like the story of what might have happened to Ender if Peter had gotten his hands on him after the Bugger destruction. It's pretty complex.
The later books are more story-driven. It's more about the plot than the internals of how the characters are being shaped. Although his conversations with Jane (isn't that the name of the computer-mind?) attempt to give the same sort of insight that the first book contains, it falls a little flat.
The other OSC novel that I found as good as Ender's Game was Songbird - an early novel of his that might be out of print at the moment. It is also about the shaping of a young boy through an overwhelming force, the songhouse, and how that shaping affects his life and his rebellion. Unlike EG, it contains the idea of conflicting attempts to manipulate the boy. The songhouse shapes him one way, the gov't uses that shaping and manipulates it another way
Very true. I've read a lot of books about effective living and leadership (written by people like Covey and Zig Zigler) and I learned more about leadership from Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow than from all of these books and seminars put together. Ender is smart, but it's his leadership that makes the people around him better. Read the books again, and see how.
You know, /. type of people are the ones who will be looked to for leadership in this new "e-economy" (I know, I hate the e-buzzwords too, but it's easy) and the leadership qualities we can learn here will give us that edge. Besides, we can be the Brain without Pinky (having relegated Pinky to serving french fries), and take over the world!
Of course, real history always leaves loose ends...
He's planning out a series for this trilogy, from the perspectives of Ender's friends in battle school. This one's from Petra's perspective, I think, and the last one was from Bean's p.o.v.
:)
Ender's Shadow was pretty good, it was weird having a lot of the dialogue from Ender's Game but with completely different stuff going on, but interesting as well. Of course, I'm a fan, so expect some bias...
I just did a paper about (among other things) Orson Scott Card, so here's some stuff on the site: the partial movie script for Ender's Game, (they had better not call them "Wooly Ants"! Why not Buggers, would the British be offended?), the complete bibliography, and his essays (in the library).
The essay about Fantasy and the reader is cool, since at one point he talks about how people overinterpret books and then act like their interpretation is the "correct" one. (that's what my paper was about...)
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Look at Star Wars ep 3, as well.
Obviously they both ripped of the Matrix!
Ender's Game and Star Wars, however, did come out first, so they do get more originality points ^^
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Ender's Game was written years before The Matrix was even conceived. If one ripped off the other, then it was The Matrix ripping off Ender's Game.
Or are you just one of the new non-anonymous trolls, trying to break Trollmastah's record?
It seems to me that these types of books are designed to milk us consumers out of our hard earned dollars. I always question novelists who commit to these types of literary deals. It would seem to me that a true novelist would be in the constant search for new life experiences to drive his writing. Rehashing the same story over and over would seem to as limiting as you could get.
As a rule of thumb, I refuse to read these serialized stories. I may read the first in a series but that's all. If the novelist hasn't gotten his message across at the end of the first book, it means he is either a poor novelist or looking to get his new yacht. I won't be a part of that.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
The thing that really bothered me about OSC's sequels is his obvious total lack of scientific understanding. It becomes apparent that Card has no understanding of basic biology, and invents plot devices as much as in Star Trek. Oh, let's invent teleportation so I can work myself out of this corner!
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Normally I don't complain, but I would like to see the story finish first, eh? At the end of Children of the Mind, you still have some unresolved issues. What happens with the descoladores? Will the new Peter regain Ender's full memory and possibly become Ender? What happens to Starways Congress? What does the world do with Jane? I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW!!!
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Actually, the reason that Ender was the the right guy for the job was because he was empathetic. He had the ability to get to know someone, including his enemy, so well that he could see through there eyes and see why they did the things they did. At this point he could understand exactly why they were doing the things they did, but at the same time, he knew them so well he knew how to defeat him.
That is also why he made a good leader, because he could use those under him to there fullest potential.
These concepts came out more in Speaker for the Dead, but are still very visible from Ender's Game. He is smart. He is quick. But his biggest advantage is his ability to know and use people.
Their are lots of references to the Buggers trying to use there communication with Ender, hence the bad dreams during the end of the book. And the manipulation of the fantasy game hinted at as well (and the creation of Jane).
Makaer
Welcome to a society filled with capitalists! The almighty $ (or whatever it is in your country) is more important than substance. Like a dog who licks his gonads, they milk it because they can....
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
If you don't see the fnord it can't eat you...
With this book Card goes from a writer, to a milker of a cash cow.
Hell yeah he's milking that cash cow. Man's got to eat doesn't he? It's called supply and demand you fucking geek! He writes it, you buy it, he writes more. You don't like it, you don't buy it, and he stops writing it. Simple, no?
Jesus people, what's your major malfuntion? He wrote Ender's Game and everyone wanted more. So he wrote Speaker for The Dead. Everyone wanted more. So he wrote Xenocide, and everyone bitched, but still you wanted more. The Children of the Mind, more bitching and still you wanted more.
Fuck people, you weren't happy with the direction he was going so he goes back to square one and starts a new. What hell do you want?
Ender's Shadow is one kick ass book. If you don't like it or it gets your panties in a wad because he has a hit here, fuck you. Besides ES and Hedmond are not about Ender. They are about the other characters.
Get fucking over it.
Twit
Mr. Badass
"A human does inhuman things and saves world"
Hey, that's not a particularly new storyline, anyway. See also "Gilgamesh", the New Testament, Beowulf, etc.
If copying that general plotline counts as being unoriginal, there hasn't been much original work in the past few thousand years.
Ender's game was an increadable book. Speaker for the dead was even better despite the fact that it didn't have little kids beating each other up, which seems to turn alot of people off. Xenocide and Children of the Mind were ok but nothing really special. Then Card comes out with Ender's Shadow and even though it was a good book I got the feeling Card was writing for money. This new book comfirms my suspicions.
I love Ender's game. I read it in one sitting when I was a freshman in high school. For a few years I read everything of his I could get my hands on.
Sadly, in recent years I've learned things about Orson Scott Card that make him rather hard to enjoy. Specifically, he has advocated keeping sodomy laws on the books in order to allow the jailing of homosexual community leaders.
The following interview has its flaws, namely the self-obsessed interviewer. However, it will give you a pretty good idea of why I have trouble stomaching Card these days.
Dan
(Note, I understand others may be able to look past his political views, or even agree with them. I just can't and don't.)
I hate to say it but Ender's Game is somewhat juvenille. It's still a very enjoyable book though, just like the matrix was an entertaining movie.
Interestingly enough, he's a regular "columnist" on the Mormon section of the religious website www.belief.net.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
In the sequels the biology is that of a alien world. Why should it be anything like our biology?
My my, touchy, aren't we?
The fact remains that, no matter _why_ he wrote them, the later Ender books simply are nowhere near the quality of the original three books.
Which is a shame, as the first three books are fantastic.
But when a writer dips back into the trough, and doesn't bother putting the effort in because he knows that the mere fact that it's an "Ender Book" means it'll sell - that's just milking the cow. Going through the motions.
See "Star Wars, Episode I" for more examples.
"Ender's Shadow" was a shoddy mess. It makes no difference to me if he sold one or a billion, the book still stinks. And after reading the first few chapters of the followup, I find to my dismay that it's getting WORSE, not better.
What do I want? Quality. And lately, Card hasn't been delivering.
Get over THAT, fanboy.
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Oh yeah... It doesn't stop there. Many SCI-FI and fantasy books have been written that rip off the Matrix:
Dune
Lord of the Rings
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Stand
etc...
Hmmm... A person using the name Orson Scott Card has posted a few messages on previous threads concerning the upcoming movie, Ender's Game.
Enders Game is the best book I have ever read. I also have Enders Shadow and It is a good book but it doesn't even come close to being better than Enders game. If you havn't read Enders Game READ IT NOW.
As a rule of thumb, I refuse to read these serialized stories. I may read the first in a series but that's all.
I generally agree but I like to check and see who broke up the book. If it's the publisher, as was the case with Lord of the Rings, then you're really missing out.
I don't think that's the case much these days. Authors enter into some sort of multi-book contract and then just churn them out. There's no incentive to make just one epic book. Nowadays, I find myself browsing book stores for the largest books I can find. If the book is greater than 1200 pages, the odds of it becoming serialized are small.
Yeah, his earlier stuff is mush better. I also noticed that his first (and sometimes second) novels in a series have substance, but it starts to dissapate after two novels. I think that's why I like his short stories better. I like the rest though. Anything is better than nothing.
flatrabbit,
peripheral visionary
"Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
People often talk about Ender's Game and the related sequels. Ender's Game is my favorite Card book. In fact, it's probably the top book of all time, but if I were to pick a second favorite Orson Scott Card book, I would choose Lost Boys. Lost Boys is about a computer programmer in the 80's whose son is having all sorts of problems telling lies, misbehaving, and so forth. The book seems completely normal, but still fascinating, but it's not normal at all. It has an ending that grips you and slaps you across the face like the ending of Ender's Game. I recommend it.
ahahhahahaha....you got mod'd down, you socially backward jerk.
I always thought that the point of Ender's Game was to show the exploitation of Ender's talents by an uncaring government.
How many of us would want to be the Supergenius Who Saves The World if we had to wipe out another race to do it? Or even worse, to be tricked into wiping out another race when you thought you were only playing a game.
No time for
I'm a major fan of Ender's game, and I'm glad to see that OSC is doing another book. However, I'm rather disappointed that its set in the Battle School. I believe I'm part of a minority of fans for this, but I actually liked the "Hundred Worlds" setting better. And the end of Children of the Mind seemed to imply that another novel was forthcoming.
That said, both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow were very well done. For any fans who don't already know, there's a semi-official (we have OSC's permission, with a few of restrictions) MOO operating at telnet://ansible.org:6000. I really recommend using a MU*-client program like GMud. For those who don't know MOO's are text-based roleplaying games. Ansible is very RP-centered (RP=roleplay), even though some of our players may not be.
-RickHunter
For instance, I just finished with the third book in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and I found it very satisfying. Gibson had it figured out - make all the books able to stand on their own, but make it so that the trilogy together is bigger than the sum of it's parts. Not an easy thing to do, by any stretch, but worth noting when someone accomplishes it.
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What I thought was really funny about Ender's Shadow was the fact that Card completely manipulated events in the original book so that it turns out that the smartest kid ever in the history of the world was actually Bean, his new main character.
I don't think that Ender is meant to be the smartest kid ever, or what not, even in the original book. Yeah, he was really fucking smart, but that wasn't what made him the pick for commander of the invasion. He was smart, quick, and a great leader. Bean was super-smart, super-quick, but was a relatively poor leader, compared to Ender.
I think Ender's Shadow made all of this quite clear. Even in Ender's Game it is quite clear that is is not so much Ender's smarts as it is his leadership that make him the one...
I've been thinking for a while now why EG was good in the first place. My teacher at the time was a real nitpicker, and I ended up reading it about 5 times in most sections, with every little mistake burning a whole through the page. Anyone else catch the mistakes?
/. I'm sure) We'd like to think that our eccentricities and lack of sociability will be made up for ultimately; and that's where we're wrong.
I think the reason EG appeals to us is because we all want to be the supergenius who saves the world (at least on
Ender's game is not teaching us a positive lesson for people who follow that belief. Ender was more a leader than he was brilliant. Don't think the smart quiet guy always wins in the end. He doesn't.
Take every day as a new possibility to influence people so that one day you can be the manager. That is the real strategy to infer.
SF has gotten very bad about this. You sit down and read a 600 page book--like Dan Simmons' Hyperion--and then find it's just a set-up for another book. It takes three more books to conclude anything, and after all that reading the conclusion is almost always a great let down.
This is one of the primary reasons I stopped reading SF. I enjoy reading novels, but I hate getting sucked into huge series' of books unwillingly. Heck, Card himself warned authors against doing this sort of thing in his "How to Write Science Fiction And Fantasy" book which came out over ten years ago. That was before he turned the two volumes of Ender's Game into five, going on six. And the Alvin Maker series looks like a never ending bunch of nonsense too. Sigh.
Note to idiot moderators: Flamebait != Post you disagree with.
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.
This is exactly what I think about Orson Scott Card, especially the Alvin Maker series, where he goes from one half-realization to another over 4 or 5 books, and you wonder, when is he going to get to the point, and not all these half finished allusions to concepts that somehow work into his as yet unrevealed world picture.
If he just wanted to write interesting episodic fiction, like Piers Anthony does (or did), that would be okay; but everytime he writes something, he tries to take it to a new climax, or finale, and then he has yet another surprise\contination to pull on you...why? Because he gets bored, wants to write,but doesn't want to create new characters? Or because he has a "message" and wants to expliacate it to us, and figures he can just shove it into the mouth of his old characters?
Well, I guess I shouldn't say that much about this; because for all of this, the new book might be the best thing ever written.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Personally, I liked Speaker for the Dead the best of all of them, but that's just me...
(Also, my user name on Slashdot is based on "xenocide" for the Ender series - in an online game, someone changed their nick to Ender for a while so I decided to use Xenocide, and I've kept on using it.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The only thing sad about that is that no one has shown you the real reason for living.
when EG was written, the technology in the book was novel and unheard of, it came across as extremely futuristic and fantastical.
having read the first five chapters of the new book, i am extremely disappointed. he seems to be shaping the fantasy world (of 200 years in the future) around the modern world: using email, having addresses with *@foo.gov, etc. i dont know about you, but i'll be extremely disappointed if our electronic communication is symantically identical in ten years, let alone 200.
for god's sake, the books' earth history is screwed up enough as it is (the Warsaw Pact being a serious power?), why does he feel the need to make the stupid little techie details conform to reality? if he kept all the terms and ideas he laid down 20 years ago, i could respect that, i could understand that. but as is, the thing reads like an extremely uncreative look at a future history which might as well have happened in southern california five years ago.
strange things are afoot at the Circle K...
That interview annoyed me enough to provoke a letter to the editors of Salon. Ms. Minkowitz was completely biased, interjecting her personal agenda into everything that she wrote. Note: Not everything she SAID, everything she wrote. She distinctly mentions in the article that she saves her barbs and asides for after the interview, because she doesn't have the courage to say those things during the conversation. That technique is completely unprofessional, and her little asides detract from the conversation. I thought Card's responses without her comments were level headed, if a little conservative.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
I would berate you for giving away the plot, but plot generally implies continuation, which the teleportation certainly didn't have.
.o. "I may be in the gutter but I look to the stars"
CloudWarrior
I'm just as fustrated as you with the Alvin Maker series, but both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are both very good *self contained* novels. They just happen to be set at the same time.
;)
.o. "I may be in the gutter but I look to the stars"
Thats the trouble OSC suffers from - when he lacks a firm idea of what his plot is, he just lets the story draaaag on. With the current load of books, this doesn't seem to be the case. Yet
CloudWarrior
Why is everyone so down on the other Enders Game sequels? OK, so they don't have the same impact as Enders game from an originality and surprise ending (if you hadn't already had it spoilt by someone else, grrrrr) point of view, but certainly Speaker For The Dead compares well with the general run-of-the-mill sci-fi I've read.
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for a little while i was excited that there might be another star wars or matrix movie, until i actually read that it's about Ender's Game. 8)
seriously though, what did people think of the five chapters on the website?
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
(However, my opinion doesn't count because I also liked _Siddhartha_ by Hermann Hesse. Or at least that's what they tell me.)
Anwyay, I'm curious to see if the new books will also demonstrate that, actually, Petra was pulling the strings the whole time.
Want to work at Transmeta? MicronPC? Hedgefund.net? AT&T?
Can your IM do this?
JOY
Thought from the way the first chapter went this one will be focused more on the social problems of integrating those children back into society.
Something we all can relate to.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
I hate sequelitis. Mr Card is capable of great works of originality, rivetingly told, so why does he churn out this stuff? Please, new characters, new story. He was more than cabable of this once. Now it looks like he is becoming part of the machine.
Right now Amazon is hawking this as sci fi:
"The Captive Temple (Star Wars. Jedi Apprentice,7)
by Jude Watson
Book Description : When someone tries to kill Yoda, it's up to young Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn to investigate. Everyone in the Jedi Temple is a suspect - and the true culprit may be the darkest rival of all."
Fiction of the imagination my butt. A corrupt and venal franchise is what it is.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Actually, I would not be surprised if he was on here. If you look at what he has written, he wrote for computer magazines for a while. So it is not too far fetched that he would be interested in a Nerdy site like Slashdot... Especially if he hears about discussions about his book being posted.
of course, if you _are_ sleeping with keanu reeves... please seek psychiatric care immidiately. oh, and let us know what happens in the next two movies.
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Of course, this isn't exactly how the e-mail addresses are in the preview chapters...
At least, for my money there had darn well BETTER be.
The first chapters of Shadow of the Hegemon point to the fact that there will be... Ender's commanders have been kidnapped and forced to strategize for Achilles, and Bean is the only one still free. What I want to know is if Bean will join forces with Peter, and whether Peter will use Bean and discard him like all the rest.
J
Actually, Shadow of the Hegemon is supposedly from Petra's perspective. The first chapters seem to follow both Petra and Bean roughly equally, though, with one scene from Peter's POV. The technique of using correspondence from powerful figures to introduce each chapter is still used, to great effect IMO.
I loved Ender's Game. Speaker for the Dead was disappointing, not because it was a poor book, but because I expected more of the same. I read Xenocide, but haven't bothered with Children of the Mind yet. I still haven't found Ender's Shadow locally. No, I won't buy it from Amazon.
Point being, the sequels have a very different, late-Clarke feel to them. The difference between Rendevous with Rama and its sequels is similar, for those of you that have read Clarke's Rama books but not OSC's Ender ones. They're still recommended, but not as highly.
J
We know that Peter is the Hegemon when Ender and Val arrive at the planet 50 years later.
We know that the first thing Bean will do when he gets back is study Peter to find out if he betrayed Ender. Since Bean never wastes anything, he'll probably then try to assert himself as Peter's general. If Bean is seven, he's got maybe 13 years before his genetically altered body dies of old age. And we assume that three's some gigantic battle to occur between Bean and Achilles.
At least, for my money there had darn well BETTER be.
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
I think you missed when you were clicking on the reply link. Perhaps you were slightly distracted...
but I thought that I was just another
Matrix rip off.
1. protagonist not normal
2. taken and trained
3. saves world
Though the ending in Ender's Game was better
than the Martix.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
The ender series is definately one of my favorites although it began to get less and less storyline associated after "Speaker for the Dead". Still, I have read all of Orson Scott Card's books(and short stories, I loved "Maps in a Mirror" his short story collection.) and the others have a certain appeal of their own.
It was an interesting fact to find out that the "Homecoming" Series was a rewrite of "The Book of Mormon". I didn't even notice.
But then I haven't read the book of Mormon before.
flatrabbit,
peripheral visionary
"Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
Ender's Shadow is the most like Ender's Game. If you liked Game, then read Shadow. DON'T read Shadow first, as it spoils the whole point of Game. I assume the new one will be a lot like Shadow. I haven't read the chapters on the website yet, but I had heard that this one will still be from Bean's perspective, but will follow Bean "shadowing" Peter, Ender's brother, instead of Bean shadowing Ender.
As for the rest, well, Speaker for the Dead was pretty good. Nothing at all like Ender's Game, so if you're expecting more like that, don't get it. Xenocide and Children of the Mind were a lot like Speaker, only not as good. If you liked Speaker a lot, go ahead and read them, but otherwise just stop there.
-syrinx
(just read my email address in reverse)
-syrinx
(just read my email address in reverse)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
...so I don't have to pay outrageous intellectual property fees? Stick it to da man!
[/SARCASM]
Seriously, though, even though Card originally envisioned Ender's Game as a mere prequel, I think Speakers and the rest suffered, simply because most of the weighty themes were already dealt with. The last three books, while not bad in their own right, feel like an extended epilogue. Buy the series; show your support for a great author and own something in your library worth rereading.
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Lovelock was a truly original Sci-Fi book that Card cowrote with Kathryn H. Kidd. I enjoyed it immensely, but it was published in 1995 and there is still no sequel out. Does anyone know when and if "Rasputin" will be available?
That said, no one has toppled Heinlein as my favorite Sci-Fi author yet, but out of all of the current writers in the field, Card probably has the best chance.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
That's a fairly random comment. What are you talking about?
After being absolutely riveted by the first five chapters what upset me most about this book is that it dosen't come out until January 2, 2001. This book looks like it is going to give me exactly what I want from a sequel, more of the same characters. The same plot can only take you through one book, but character development is what makes me keep coming back for book after book.
What makes you want to see The Empire Strikes Back after watching Star Wars? Its not that the plot of Star Wars needs Empire to be complete, Star Wars was written and produced to stand on its own. The studio expected it to be a flop relative to American Graffiti, and was basically just humoring Lucas. You go see Empire because you want to learn what is going to happen the characters. Will Luke and Leia get together, or will she end up with Han etc.
That is the beautiful thing about Ender's Game. Yes it has a plot hook into the rest of the series, but it stands without them. What makes Card a truly amazing author is the mileage that he has been able to get out Ender's Game. How many people are able to keep going back to the same roots and still produce quality work 20 years later? Some of my favorite authors can't even do it. Piers Anthony did a wonderful job with the early Xanth books, my first, and one of my favorites is Castle Roogna, but the recent books in the series have descended to an infantile level.
This book looks truly interesting, as reunites us with the characters that we got close to back when we first read Ender's Game. At the same time it takes a look at them in fresh situations, giving Card all the more flexibility in continuing their growth. I just wish I didn't have to wait 8 months to read the rest of this book!
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
I guess that is an odd point-
I really do enjoy Card's works, and I have little objection to anything of ethics he wrote in the core Ender trilogy (not that I agree with him wholeheartedly...) but once he steps away from his typewriter I can relate to him less and less. The same goes for Arthur C Clarke- let's not get started on all the flame wars that have been started over the quality of his character, certain unfounded proclivities... Oh wait... I hate the way he treats women i his books! But I love some of the broader sci-fi ideas- what a wanker! Lastly- Al Gore.
Do we really want Al Gore in the president's chair? There is little as dangerous as one who maintains that he has a firm grip on technological issues, when he in fact hold command of more vocabulary than concept. I'm done.
But he keeps talking about it, and not "I think marriage should be for a man and woman" stuff, but 'I think it should be illegal' stuff.
I may not agree...defend to the death...right to say it... whatever, whatever... but I find it repugnant and it makes it harder and harder to like anything he writes.
Because the snark was a...
You hace to at least read "Speaker for the Dead". Xenocide, Children of the Mind and Enders Shadow were good too. But "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" were the best.
just my opinon.
flatrabbit,
peripheral visionary
"Never wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
Notice how all the email addresses look like normal email addresses, but not quite? Such as Carlotta%agape@vatican.net/orders/sisters/ind? I wonder what sort of systems are they running in the book...
First off, Ender's Game is the best book ever written, it even won the Hugo and Nebula awards. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you do so. Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game, is also a very good book. Like most sequels, it does not compare to the original, BUT it is better than 99% of other Sci-Fi books out there. Xenocide, to me, was not that great of a book (but it sure wasn't bad). It was still some good reading, but I could have picked up some books on Perl that would have been just as entertaining for me.
It may be boring to some people, but it has nothing to do with it being "juveline". The fact that reading it requires a lot of attention and that it doesn't have a lot of dazzling displays of brutal action means that its target audience doesn't consist of your average adolescents who consume two books of mass-market scifi a day.
Red Mars is an extremely entertaining description of the colonization of Mars, it has a lot of technical details that are easy to believe to be accurate - and the book doesn't forget the social aspects either. It's a very rich book, and I consider it one of the best scifi books I've ever read.