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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.

31 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yep... by legoboy · · Score: 2

    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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    If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
  2. Re:matrix rip off by dillon_rinker · · Score: 2

    Hey! That's great! Have you submitted it to Rinkworks' book-a-minute?

  3. Indeed by dragonfly_blue · · Score: 2
    Ender's game was one of those rare books that makes you want to go out and find everything else the author's ever written.

    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.
    1. Re:Indeed by ruin · · Score: 2
      Too bad nothing else Orson Scott Card did compares favorably to Ender's Game. Hopefully the new sequel will be different...

      I guess it depend on what you liked about Ender's game, but personally, I think that Card has written lots of stuff easily in the same class as Enders game. To wit:

      Speaker for the Dead: The year after Ender's Game won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, so did this one. While it's very different from Ender's Game, it's no less a sci-fi classic in its own right. After Speaker, the series of books takes a bit of a downturn, but that detracts nothing from this often powerful work.

      The Worthing Chronicle: This is one of my favorite books ever. It's so many of Card's most clear and imaginitive stories thrown into one novel. I don't know how to do the story justice in just one paragraph, but suffice to say I have reread this book many times and found it thoroughly moving each time.

      Maps in a Mirror: This is a large volume that collects a major portion of all of Card's short fiction. He's written many, many gems over the years, and they're all in here. These stories are back from when Card was younger and starting out; his vicious imagination is plainly evident, and all of his ideas are fresh and new.

      Others: If you've read a few of Card's books and liked them, then by all means go back and read some of his fine earlier novels. Seventh Son is an intriguing alternate history of colonial America. Treason is an interesting, fast-moving adventure. Wyrms is an inventive and compelling fantasy. (It's where I took the nickname 'ruin' from)

      Ok, yes, Scott Card is my favorite science fiction author. However, I would say the new sequel is unlikely to be the best in the series. If you want to find the best work by any given author, go look for things they wrote before they were writing for a living, when the ideas they had were all untried and new, bubbling out, desperate to be written.

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    2. Re:Indeed by Frizzle+Fry · · Score: 2

      How appropriate for this discussion. Your .sig is about Bender's Game.

      The bus came by and I got on
      That's when it all began
      There was cowboy Neal
      At the wheel
      Of a bus to never-ever land

      --
      I'd rather be lucky than good.
  4. Yep... by pb · · Score: 3

    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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    1. Re:Yep... by Woodlark · · Score: 2

      Back in the Fall when /. posted the story about the script, OSC was fielding a bunch of comments and he talked about this, too.

      Yes, there was the homosexual connotation, but there was also something else. The aliens in Starship Troopers the movie were called "buggers", too, so they didn't want to duplicate.

      Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...

      --
      Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
      Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far... -- Le P
    2. Re:Yep... by niteshad · · Score: 2
      The aliens in Starship Troopers the movie were called "buggers", too, so they didn't want to duplicate.

      If that was the case, maybe he should have thought of that before he even started writing Ender's Game! I read Ender's Game back when I was in high school, along with a lot of Heinlein's novels. After reading Starship Troopers recently, and reflecting with a more mature perspective, large parts of Ender's Game don't seem all that original to me. Card cribbed many of his ideas from Heinlein and Asimov. The "surprise twist" ending was a pale imitation of Asimov's novels; the only difference being that Asimov was the master of suspense and kept you guessing until the very end, whereas I was starting to suspect that the "games" might be real, by the time that they involved action with the Buggers.

      I just hope that Hollywood doesn't edit and dilute the plot of Ender's Game as much as they slashed apart Starship Troopers.

      --
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  5. Obviously... by Anonymous+Shepherd · · Score: 2

    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 ^^

    -AS

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    -AS
    *Pikachu*
  6. Re:The other books ain't so bad. by AaronW · · Score: 2

    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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  7. *sigh* by 8bit · · Score: 2

    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!!!
    Roy Miller
    :wq! DOH!

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    --Roy
    1. Re:*sigh* by drudd · · Score: 2

      This is my biggest gripe with Card. He used to be my favorite author, but I got sick of him refusing to let a story conclude.

      The first one or two books in a series are always excellent, well written, with very good character development. These books get me hooked on the storyline and characters, but they never quite allow the story to finish.

      By the 4th or 5th book, I realize that Card is simply writing to sell more books. The story has become stale, and these books lack the excitement of the first few.

      I just wish Card would push himself to give a decent conclusion within a trilogy, and demonstrate more concern for the story than for selling more books.

      Of course I am making a huge assumption about Card's motives here, and to be fair, he could also just lack talent at giving closure.

      Doug

      --
      Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
  8. Orson Scott Card's politics... by DoasFu · · Score: 2

    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.)

    1. Re:Orson Scott Card's politics... by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 2

      I don't know. He comes across as pretty level headed in his views (for example, marriage has always been associated with procreation and raising a family, so it's understandable that he doesn't see the same term being applicable to gay couples). It's very politicially incorrect these days to say anything negative about homosexuality. Doing so doesn't mean someone is a gay basher or a homophobe, but not being out and out pro-gay certainly wasn't the in thing in the 1990s. I think the interviewee was pushing an irrelevant agenda.

  9. More of O.S. Card by Squeeze+Truck · · Score: 2

    Interestingly enough, he's a regular "columnist" on the Mormon section of the religious website www.belief.net.

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    "Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao

  10. Get the book in PDF and PS by Starselbrg · · Score: 2
    Well, if you want a dead tree version, but you don't want to print out a bunch of wasteful HTML, try these pdfs or these files in postscript.

    Do you want to know how I made these files from HTML? Well, take a look at html2latex.

    --
    Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
  11. Lost Boys by zCyl · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. Ender's Game by RickHunter · · Score: 2

    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
  13. Re:Card alwasy has to write about the super-smart by rangek · · Score: 2

    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...

  14. Re:I'm Not a Fan of Sequels, Trilogys and That Sor by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 3

    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.

  15. The other books ain't so bad. by oozer · · Score: 2

    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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  16. Re:Ender's Shadow not bad by volsung · · Score: 3
    I really enjoyed reading about the same scenes from a different perspective. I was impressed by how well OSC pulled it off.

    It reminds you every great drama in real life also has dozens of plots and subplots that cross over each other. For every big story you hear about in history there were certainly many others that went on in the background. Fiction doesn't usually capture that, however.

    I think I would like to see a few more parallel books attempted by various authors.

    As for the other books in the series, they were not as intense as the first one. They ventured further into strangely philisophical land, but I enjoyed them just the same. That sort of thing appeals to me. But yes, those looking for more of the same kind of literary power in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind that OSC put into Ender's Game will be disappointed. They take a different approach.

  17. Re:Can Someone Tell Me... by volsung · · Score: 2
    I would put Ender's Game up there with the Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and Robot Novels. They were some of the best books I've ever read.

    (However, my opinion doesn't count because I also liked _Siddhartha_ by Hermann Hesse. Or at least that's what they tell me.)

  18. Card alwasy has to write about the super-smart by eries · · Score: 2
    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 guess that's just his style - he does a really good job of describing the "I'm too smart for everyone" perspective. I guess I lot of us feel that way, which is why we like the books so much ;)

    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?

  19. Re:damn slashdot headlines... by singularity · · Score: 2

    I read the first chapter and I am going to read the other four eventually. It starts out pretty well (concerning Petra returning).

    I read the series through _Children of the Mind_ and generally reccomend to friends that they read _Game_, _Shadow_, and probably _Speaker_ (probably in that order). _Speaker_ is not quite as good, but wraps stuff up enough.

    I also really liked _The Worthing Saga_, a collection of stories. If you like Card's work, I would pick it up. It is different from the Ender series, but is still a very good read.

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    - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
  20. At the end of Ender's Shadow..... by JudgePagLIVR · · Score: 2
    Bean was determined to lead an earth army, and determined to learn more about Peter Wiggin. Achilles had been seized by the russians, presumably put at the head of an army bent on raining fire and destruction down upon the earth. Valentine and Wiggin are in interstellar travel, meaning that they can have little effect on the story line (except that over the next 50 years, Val will publish several histories of the bugger wars).

    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.

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    Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
  21. Re:Sequels worth reading? by legoboy · · Score: 3

    I've only read Ender's Game. I figured that after a book this good, no sequel could ever live up to it, so I didn't take the risk. Are any of the sequels as good as the first?

    It depends on what you're looking for.

    The later books, _Speaker (of/for) the Dead_, _Xenocide_, and _Children of the Mind_ (is there another one? It's been a while) are more about relationships than action. This seems to turn some people off, somehow. If you can get over the fact that Ender is not attempting to exterminate a species any longer, they're enjoyable reading. There are books I would prefer that I had never read. These are not among them.

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    If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
  22. My two cents by syrinx · · Score: 2
    Ender's Game is, IMO, one of the best SF books ever. Obviously no sequel could live up to that. But I read all the rest of them anyway.

    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.
  23. What about the Mayflower Trilogy? by Sethb · · Score: 2
    I like most of Card's work, I eagerly anticipated each volume in the Homecoming series. While I enjoy the Ender series a great deal, I'd MUCH rather see a sequel to Lovelock (The Mayflower Trilogy, Part I) than YAEB (Yet Another Ender Book).

    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
  24. Re:Can Someone Tell Me... by volsung · · Score: 2

    That's a fairly random comment. What are you talking about?

  25. Re:Can Someone Tell Me... by Camelot · · Score: 2
    It is rather interesting that you managed to brand Red Mars as "juveline" based on your own opinion, that is, the fact that you find it boring.

    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.