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More On 'Ender' Film From Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game Movie
The movie is, as OSC said, the same place it was five years ago: Looking for money. Well, maybe not exactly the same place -- they're still working and re-working the script. In short, OSC said that Ender's Game is a scary movie -- not for filmgoers, but for filmmakers. Because its stars are all children, and young children at that, it's a real challenge for anyone to make well enough to be financially successful, and that scares the heck out of the studios. So, OSC's challenge is to come up with a script that keeps the emotion and "truth" of the story intact, while also reducing the fear that studio execs feel while considering how to make a movie out of it.
Despite what you might think, OSC said Ender's Game is tough to make into a movie -- as most of the important stuff happens inside Ender's head. Hard to go there in a film. Card's brought in Richard LaGravense, who wrote The Fisher King, to help with some of the problems, and one of the first things he suggested was that Card should combine Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The idea there would be to help remove the need to have Peter and Valentine in the movie, eliminating some complications, and to help add some story elements surrounding the "bonds of brotherhood" between Ender and Bean, and also some more of the rivalry between them. Card loved the idea, and he's working with that in mind now. He also wanted us to remember that "I have absolute power over the film. Why? Because I've taken no money." So, any major change that you don't like, he said, is probably his idea. He's very aware of how important keeping the film as close as possible to the published stories is to his fans, but he's also very much more aware of how difficult it is to get a film made, and how much more difficult it is to make a great film. So he's willing to make some sacrifices in order to get the story told, and told well. But he's not going to hurt the story itself -- some changes will happen (for example, he's considering revealing halfway through the film that Gaff is really Mazar Rackham), but they won't hurt the story as a whole. And, since he's still in control, they'll be done "right."
Anyway, he's still looking for money, still looking for a director, still looking for an actor. The right actor for Ender is probably about 6 years old right now, so it won't be anyone we know -- not Jake Lloyd, not Haley Joel Osmond. Both would have been great if they could have made the film 3 or 4 years ago, but now they're both too old.
Other Film ProjectsWhen I last saw OSC (for the Ender's Shadow book tour), he spoke of some other film projects. I asked him yesterday what was up with those. A TV pilot, Bordertown, that he'd been getting filmed in Mexico, just didn't work. Apparently, the crews they had simply weren't that good, and they didn't get enough usable film to make any good cut of the pilot. He hopes to go back to Mexico with a U.S. crew, rather than Mexican, and try again. He hopes to start this fall on Homebody, an adaptation of his 1998 novel. He's hoping to work soon on a script for Enchantment, which he described as his "favorite novel." The animated mini-series adaptation of Treason is still waiting for a good script, which Card hasn't been able to get to yet. And, finally, his "most anthologized short story," a cyberpunk attempt called "Dogwalker," is in the scripting stage, and he hopes to shoot that in New Orleans.
The Shadow SeriesOriginally, Card had hoped to have three books in the "Shadow" series (for which he still doesn't have a good overall name to reference it by). But somewhere while writing Shadow of the Hegemon, he realized that he needed to write another (like that's ever happened to a Card series before!) So, there will be an additional two novels in the series. In the afterward of SoH, Card talks about possible titles for the next one, centering on the 23rd Psalm ("The valley of the shadow of death") But his publisher told him that books with "death" in the title sell half what their predecessor sold, so he's changing the title. Currently, his favorite title is Shadow Puppets. After that will come Shadow of the Giant, referring primarily to Bean, but he's considering whether to connect, in some way, to the Giant's Drink from Ender's videogame in Battle School. He was also asked why he changed from "Buggers" to "Formics," and Card had a two-word answer: "Starship Troopers." Actually, it was far longer than two words, but centered around wanting to make sure that nobody who saw a preview for Ender's Game thought of Starship Troopers. And, in retrospect, he says he likes "Formics" much better, anyway.
Also, the copy of SoH currently on the market is, in Card's words, "defective." They printed the wrong draft. Someone pointed out that Ender didn't actually grow up in Greensboro, but that his parents moved there after Ender went to battle school. So an entire scene got rewritten. There'll be a second edition coming out soon, but until then, you can get the "patches" from OSCs web site. Other Forthcoming BooksHe still has to write Crystal City, the next (#6) book in the Alvin Maker series. He said that from the beginning, Alvin Maker was meant to be an allegorical retelling of the story of Joseph Smith, but partway through he realized, "I?m adding magic to America. American history couldn't possibly come out the same." So, it became a sort of alternate history series as well, and grew from the original envisioned 3-volume set into a 7-volume series.
Rasputin (the next book in the Mayflower series, where a sentient cat is sent to kill Lovelock) is still exactly where it was two years ago -- stuck on Chapter 7. Card and Kathy Kidd are alternating chapters, like on the last book, and guess who's assigned #7? Actually, he said that there's "something just not right" about the book, and he hasn't been able to figure that one out yet.
He still has two Pastwatch books he wants to write -- the Flood (of Noah), and Eden (about Adam and Eve), and two books in the Women of Genesis series -- Rebecca, and Rachel and Leah.
Finally, Card is working on a project called Slow Leak, about magic "erupting" in Baldwin Hills. He's been hounded by a friend about not having a credible black hero in any of his stories, and Card's stumbling block has been that he's been deathly afraid of venturing into depicting a culture of which he knows nothing. So this will be an attempt at such a novel, and, just as Enchantment was vetted by experts in Russian folk literature, he'll have all kinds of help making sure that this story is true to the community he's trying to depict.
Other InformationAs always, the talk before the signing was interesting and informative. It was amazing to see how many people were there (the cafe was packed, standing room only), and great to see so many young people there, as well. There's a lot more to be seen on Card's Web site, and I urge anyone interested in further information to check it out. You might also want to check out a transcript of an online chat with Barnes and Noble.
I'm not sure what OSC's plans are for the future, with no further big tours on the horizon, but hopefully he'll stay in touch through the web site. Maybe we can get him for a /. interview sometime ...
Note: That interview sounds like a good idea, we'll see what we can do :)
Kathy Kidd's Paradise Vue books are well written and inciteful
I bet you like User Friendly too.
--Shoeboy
He's very aware of how important keeping the film as close as possible to the published stories is to his fans, but he's also very much more aware of how difficult it is to get a film made
Well, don't. Nobody says every good book will be a good movie.
With his books getting worse for years now, I wonder how he will trash his Masterpiece.
Censorship on Slashdot
Haven't yet read any Card so I can't say what I think about it.
I agree that early Niven is way better than late Niven, but that's not to say that early Niven is good. Just bearable. Ringworld had no plot, it was just a series of "wonders". Some of his short stories are good, though.
I agree that Teranesia is no "Permutation City" (one of the best books ever, IMHO) but I wouldn't call it trash. I think he should have made it a short story--the idea was good, but there was too much unrelated junk at the beginning and the actual sci-fi aspect wasn't really introduced until near the end. BTW, if you liked "Luminous" (that's the one about the aquatic culture, isn't it?) then you should run out right now and buy his short story collection "Axiomatic".
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Nope, not that google could find. But I did find a great quote.
"as when the Ender novels are rejected as neo-Hitlerian, male-oriented power-fantasies perpetrated by a misogynistic, myopic, militaristic anti-feminist (Radford);"
Wow, *slam*.
If you have this article, please scan it and post it. I doubt the magazine would care, being out of business and all.
And your friend would probably like it, reaching a wider audience.
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, even if it's wrong. ;)
I loved Ender's Game, and I didn't read it until I was about 26-27. Mind you, I thought the next two books were just crap; I didn't even buy the 4th one.
Yeah right. Shinki was screwed up, and I can imagine Ender. And a video game, I'm thinking Xenogears. I remember myself "What the heck? The ID? THE ID? Does my Fei-y have DID? AHH!!!! WHAT'S GOING ON!!!!"
Card gets cut a lot of slack
Remember that Card wrote Ender's Game in bits and pieces during his spare time when he was a 19 year old missionary. Oh, and LDS missionaries have about three hours per week of spare time (well, he got a bit more when he worked in the mission offices).
He's a much, much better writer these days, and I've hear him talk at length about how he wishes that he could revisit EG now that he knows what he's doing. IIRC, he even started on a rewrite but came to the conclusion that he had changed too much and couldn't replicate the feel of the book, because much of the tone and feel was a direct result of his own youth and naivete.
The reason that you see a huge contrast between fans' opinions of the book and your own reading of it is that EG is best read as an adolescent. Adults who fell in love with it as teenagers still love it. Those who see it for the first time as adults are puzzled by the adulation.
I'd love to see a movie made of Ender's Game, but I'm glad Card is taking his time and being careful. I'd really hate to see another Starship Troopers (ST and EG were my two favorite books in Junior High and I was downright angry when I walked out of ST the movie -- don't screw with my memories!).
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Yeah, the ending was pretty bad. What exactly was the probability of that happening? Must be almost 0. Sure, good books depend on improbable things, but that was just stupid.
Regional unity does not correlate to idealogical or creative unity. In other words, there is no "monopoly": "Hollywood" movies are not produced by a single writer, director, producer, or even company. Furthermore, the consumer has the power of the dollar to check the so-called "glitzy, no-quality crap movies year-in year-out", and the last time I checked, box-office revenues were just dandy. Save your capatalist rants for the communists.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
Elaine's problem with Ender wasn't just that he was parallelled with Hitler. There were two objections, both of which I pretty much agreed with though I wasn't P.O.ed enough to write an article about it as she did:
1. While Ender did parallel hitler, he was slyly distorted. Hitler also was a third child of a third child, also had a quasi-incestuous relationship with his sister, also dozens of other things, but Hitler was not a distracted little boy who thought he was playing a video game when he hit the "final solution" button. Hitler thought himself an instrument of destiny and, had he escaped to Brazil, rather than turning into a "speaker for the Jews" I am 100% sure he would have continued pursuing his destiny with more fervor than ever.
This distortion is necessary to make Ender/Hitler palatable to the victim who is beign persuaded to take a more tolerant view of him. There is also the contrast with the brother figure, "Ender without a conscience," who takes the place of a part of Hitler that was not Hitler's brother but a proudly held part of himself. In real life, Hitler's sibs did not share his "gifts," whatever those were. (The ham-handed acceptance of eugenic principles irked me personally, as Ender came out not long after Cyril Burt was discredited and it was shown that every twin study ever done had been faked.)
2. It is very unlikely that Card would have been rewarded with 2 consecutive Nebula and Hugo sweeps (nor anybody expecting a third) had it been known that the series was a big fat shaggy dog story about forgiving Hitler. Radford's theory -- and I'm inclined to agree with her -- is that he planned to pull the rug out from under everybody after sweeping the Nebulas third time running, announcing that the SF community had endorsed his philosophy while in fact his philosophy had been slyly concealed inside something that looked very different from what it was.
I personally also believe it is impossible (given the ignorance of his own work displayed in Card's rebuttal) that Card actually wrote either Ender's Game or Speaker. I suspect it was a committee effort of some group from his church. Whether Card is a writer or not his success in the awards can be attributed to his skill as a politician more than anything else. While it is certainly not illegal to use ghost writers this is hardly the ordinary case.
In the end there is no more damning comment on Card's motives than his own half-decade delay before skulking out with the third book of the series. If he'd been proud of the metaphor he was drawing he would not have called Radford on the phone long-distance and spent an hour trying to browbeat her into withdrawing the article. (I heard her half of that conversation, and she could have used a sampling machine preprogrammed with the phrase "I can only judge what I read, not you personally or your beliefs.")
Oh, and that guy with the "mythos" article that is online that footnotes her -- he dissed everyone that didn't support his pet theory of mythic whatchamacallit. I'm sure he skimmed Elaine's article without understanding what she was so bothered about.
Anyway. My $0.02 for this episode...
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Did you notice any Mormon bias's in the book. (I personally didn't, but wondered if anyone else saw anything)
The reason that you see a huge contrast between fans' opinions of the book and your own reading of it is that EG is best read as an adolescent. Adults who fell in love with it as teenagers still love it. Those who see it for the first time as adults are puzzled by the adulation.
That's a good point (and very consistent with the discussion involved). I read it when I was 23. Maybe it's a book whose time I missed.
Card has said he uses his fiction to take a hard look at personality flaws "such as drug adiction and homosexuality."
So I don't think I'm trying too hard. I didn't look 'till I found out how extreme his beliefs were. And if you reread the passages with this in mind, I'm certain that you'll come to the same conclusion that I did.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I want a second Treason book also. I've always imagined what the universe would be like/how they would react after Treason was able to develop space travel. :)
So climate's changing. So what? It has always changed. The big news would be if it wasn't changing. - Dr. Philip Stone
I imagine that filming the battle scenes will be very complicated, but let's see how Columbus manages the quidditch scenes in the upcoming Harry Potter movie. If those are successful, EG's battle game may be possible to do similarly.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
<disclaimer> I'm an ex-Mormon... </disclaimer>
Gasp!
I wasn't aware that he used to edit Sunstone. I did think it was odd, though, when I read _Songmaster_ and found that the title character was gay, and that Card didn't particularly moralize that point. Is that one of the ones he apologized for?
Small correction -- Anset's only sexual experience was homosexual, but he really didn't have a sexual aspect to his life, so it's hard to reasonably label him as a homosexual. And many Mormons have been uncomfortable with his inclusion of homosexual characters and actions in his stories -- enough so that he wrote an essay on the matter years back to clarify his position on the matter. It might be available somewhere on hatrack.com.
I didn't see a quote in which he was apologizing for any of his work, so I can't comment on whether this was one or not. I found it a very beautiful story, personally.
In general, I think the severe cognitive dissonance experienced by "liberal" Mormons tends to cause them to either become more conservative or drop out of the church. At least, that's been my experience. So it's not surprising that Card would shrink back into the official bounds of behavior for a good LDS man.
I don't think he's ever really been outside the official bounds of behavior for a good LDS man. Not that I'm aware of. He has been well outside the unofficial and cultural bounds of what a good Mormon should be doing on many occasions, and I don't see those stopping. And I think that's a good thing. Shaking people up is a good thing in that regard.
Ah, that aquatic culture.
http://www.amazon.co.uk is where I got both of 'em.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I'm an ex-Mormon...
I wasn't aware that he used to edit Sunstone. I did think it was odd, though, when I read _Songmaster_ and found that the title character was gay, and that Card didn't particularly moralize that point. Is that one of the ones he apologized for?
In general, I think the severe cognitive dissonance experienced by "liberal" Mormons tends to cause them to either become more conservative or drop out of the church. At least, that's been my experience. So it's not surprising that Card would shrink back into the official bounds of behavior for a good LDS man.
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get your war on
20 years ago.
I read Ender's Game a few months ago, and although like most readers, I could see the climactic moment of the novel a LONG time in advance, I still thought it was a very good novel, particularly for its time. The subplot with Peter and Valentine, which involved using pseudonyms on a word-wide computer network to gain real political influence, must have been extremely novel at the time.
However, today, with video games and computer networks prevelant throughout society, Ender's Game simply doesn't look so fresh anymore. If one went to see a movie based on it, and didn't know it was originally written in 1977, one would probably end up thinking it was an unsuccessful attempt by a Hollywood hack writer to combine Columbine, Playstation 2, and the WWW into a single plot...
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
You have, obviously, never read Dune. The Lynch film was honest to the book and beautifully filmed. The Sci-Fi mini was a brutal farce. OSC shouldn't bother trying to squeeze Ender into a film. Another arrogant grab at the bucks. He's a hack anyway...
No...it's okay...I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway
I saw it when I was a kid before I ever read the books, and the actors in the series are how I'll always imagine the characters - it will be hard to beat. But I heard a rumour that Hugh Laurie was up for the Arthur Dent role - he would be a perfect dim-witted English twit.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
Let me add a second voice of dissent.
While I actually enjoyed Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, the series lost it for me from Xenocide onwards (actually I only read as far as Children of the Mind)
Most of my discontent with Xenocide focussed around the method of faster than light travel. Up until that point Card had presented a somewhat fantastic but at least marginally believable scientific framework for his novels.
Then he lost it. What convinced him that his idea of a person's mental abberations causing strange things to happen as a side effect of faster than light travel was a good idea?
Imagine that Xenocide had been a movie (and that was your first exposure to the story). Which of you from the /. crowd could honestly tell me that if a young Peter and Valentine suddenly appeared on screen that you wouldn't have thought "What a lame way to add a bit of drama to the series."?
To top it all off he bases an entire book on this mental abberation of Ender's. There were other problems with Children of the Mind. The sequence where the ansibles are shut down and Jane has to migrate somewhere else is also quite weak. I wasn't convinced at all that she shouldn't have died.
A thing I have noticed about my self is that if the first book in a series is good one tends to become more forgiving as they progress in the series. I don't believe there is any justification for this.
To summarise, I enjoyed Card's novels when I was younger. Even then I believed they had problems. He has some skill as a writer, certainly more than I will ever have. However, I would not rate his books as classics.
I remember going to see the DUNE movie with my sister when it came out. As we left the movie theater she asked "what happened there? I have no idea." These inside-the-head books can make sense to a fan (or the author) had make absolutely no sense to the uninitiated.
Ender's Game probably does not have as big a problem as Dune did with length or the extent of the story being inside people's heads. (Rumors at the time were that the rough cut for Dune was 30 hours long and nicknamed "June.") I'm encouraged that so much time is being put into thinking through the problems, rather than a pile of money pushing a bad product out fast. No doubt, Ender's game should be a long, if worthwhile, project.
I always thought that Niven's best work was the stuff he did with Mr. Pournelle. You don't even want to know what I would do for a new Falkenberg book :). In any case go to your nearest used book shop and pick up a copy of 'Treason' it is a *very* good introduction to Card.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Jackie Chan was right when he said that with the passing of the Chinese opera schools, you won't see his like again. The hardships he and the other children endured, the unforgiving training, the harsh discipline -- combined with the force of their own will, and the grace of their bodies -- is what enabled them to do these fantastic things that stretch the limits of human possibility. Few children these days would have the patience and fortitude for such training, even if they had the opportunity to pursue it. Which they don't, because we've made it illegal for kids to do anything other than gobble Ritalin and twiddle their thumbs (hell, we hate it when grownups make money, when a child shows any initiative and tries to do something productive people scream like the kid's being raped in front of their eyes).
Fuck Slashdot
So many problems here:
In the days when he editted Sunstone, it was very different from what Sunstone became (which is why he left it). He still speaks with essentially the same voice he did then -- willing to explore the truths of his religion with honest eyes, and without losing his faith.
2 questions:
1. If Sunstone changed rather than Card, why does he refer to his "Sunstone phase"?
2. What exactly has Sunstone become? Since the excommunication of the September 6, it's been more conservative and mainstream than it was in the Card years.
Kathy Kidd's Paradise Vue books are well written and inciteful
Do yourself a favor and read Levi S. Peterson's "The Backslider". Actually, read anything by him. Your taste in Mormon fiction needs help.
--Shoeboy
Why doesn't anyone seem to know that 2001 was a colaboration between Clarke and Kubrick on a screenplay...which then Clarke turned into a novel? This is elementary kids!
Orange Whip? Orange Whip? Three orange whips!
No...it's okay...I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway
Did you notice any Mormon bias's in the book. (I personally didn't, but wondered if anyone else saw anything)
Yes, I find subtle Mormon "biases" in all of Card's books. Generally they're not things that a non-Mormon would even recognize, because they're not overt nor even intentional, IMO. They're related to Card's view of the world, of ethics and morality and of the truth about how people act and why they do it, and his worldview has its roots in Mormonism. To another person who was raised in the same environment, it's pretty obvious. To "outsiders" I wouldn't think it's noticeably Mormon at all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The first impression a person is likely to get from much of card's early work is that he is either a lax mormon or a very liberal "free love" christian in the style of the oneida perfectionists. Card not only manages to sneak homosexuality into almost *every* novel without submitting it to much moral scrutiny either direct or indirect, but also tends to frame same-sex relationships in terms of a highly poeticized eroticism. reading his books in high school, i never once got the impression that Card might not approve of homosexuality. now that i look back on the earlier novels, i can see where you might locate some anti-gay moralizing, but any pretense on card's part to take a moral tone against the homosexual relationships he frequently creates pales beside his eagerness to indulge in elaborate poetic renderings of the very thing he claims to condemn as an abomination.
No, I'm not thinking of Wang's Carpets. The story I'm thinking of was on Egan's website. The story is called "Oceanic" as someone else pointed out.
I might have read the story called "Luminous", but I can't find a collection called "Luminous" on Amazon.com. Another odd thing is that Egan's biblio on his website lists "Reasons to be Cheerful" (which I'm sure I've read) as being in "Luminous" (which I know I haven't read) and NOT in "Axiomatic" (which I own). It also lists "Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies" (which I don't recognize the title of) as being in Axiomatic.
Maybe I'll have to write directly to him to find out where I can get these books...
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that might be true, but just imagine what sort of material spielberg would be dealing with. are their approaches toward sf at all compatible? card crafts his "piggies" and "buggers" with self-conscious avoidance of anthropomorphism that renders them truly nonhuman-- inscrutable, essentially foreign to human values. spielberg, on the other hand, concerns himself chiefly with familiarizing the strange, especially when dealing with alien intelligence-- even better if that sentient goes well on a T-shirt. would he be willing-- or even able-- to take hold of Card's ideas without drawing them into the warm-and-fuzzy spielbergian universe? I seriously doubt it.
Just thought I'd come back and post a follow up. That's all.
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Read A Mote In God's Eye someday. It's one of the best first contact novels. And The Gripping Hand, it's sequel, is equally good. Lucifers' Hammer has not aged well, however.
Best Slashdot Co
The whole series (overgrown trilogy) is quite good. I can't wait...
I'm not shocked that Card would model him after Card, at least subconsiously since he reports in this salon article that "My reading of 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' -- when I was 10 -- probably has more to do with my returning to issues of violence [in my books]."
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
The more I learn about Mormonism, the more of it I see in OSC's books. I realize that it's his faith, but the themes seem to be getting more obvious. From the subtle elements of the Worthington Chronicles to the much more overt parts of Pastwatch and Lovelock. I'm sorry to say that I enjoyed the older works much more than the later ones.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
It's not that I didn't like ender's game - i absolutely despise and abhor it. If it wasn't this famous, I wouldn't care - just another crappy book, but the level of reverence is absolutely repugnant! It's worse than crappy - it's crappy and at the same time, you get this impression that author takes it very seriously, like he's writing war and peace or something. Bah! Go read some Heinlein, azimov, le guin, de camp, etc etc etc. Hell even neil stephenson is better than this! I'm not kidding. The book would be funny if it was not so ludicruously serious - two kids post their thoughts on usenet and become major political figures... the kid pretending he's shot down when he's not being an example of greatest tactical genius since Napoleon.. to all of you who think this book is great: boy do you have *alot* to learn! Although I gotta say if I read it when I was 13, I would probably like it.. I know I liked stainless steel and princes of amber at the time.. although either of them is far more sophisticated then
this piece of bird droppings.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
The sterile tone of the orgy was clearly intentional and crafted with excruciating care. Don't you wonder what the intended meaning of the scene was and how it fit into the themes of sexuality and fidelity present throughout the movie? No, you're just sorry you didn't get turned on by yet another hollywood rendition of an orgy. Maybe VIPs can be turned on by other things than just sensuality (hint: power, sacrafice, ritual, anonymity, cruelty, etc).
Feel free to dislike EWS, but at least dislike it for what it is, not what you think it is.
XML causes global warming.
I agree the tipical Niven style has no charactor devlopment (unless mind control or eating a plant counts). That makes his novels hard for some people to enjoy, while his short stories remain great.
However I'm not quite as negitave, I like his novels as well, just not as much as his short stories. I like his older work more then his newer, but I'm not sure how much of that is him, or me.
The one exception? Destinies Road. Decent plot and charactor devlopment, and decent wonders as well :-) It was a late 90s book, and IMHO his best novel.
Card is soo awesome!
I actually read _Ender's Game_ for my senior year English and I'm really not into books, so I started out thinking, Ohh great, another crappy book I have to read so I pass this class. But that book was the best! I'd recommend it to everyone, and I'm excited about the movie thats coming out! I'm sure it will be awesome like all the books!!!!!!!
-chelle
Major Graff != Mazer Rackham
Major Graff does not have a surprise identity in Ender's Game (the book).
David Brin's novel practically screamed movie script, and look how well it did in the theatres. Moving Sci-Fi novels to the screen is just plain hard, and the hardest ones to adapt are the ones centered around an unusual character in an unusual situation. The Bicentennial Man is another recent example of this phenomenon.
So yes, I agree: Leave Ender's Game as a great novel. OSC, if you want a screenplay, write an original screenplay. You certainly are capable of this, and the result is likely to be far superior to any adaptation of your print work.
It's so frustrating being an Orson Scott Card fan. You're following about 4 series of books he's writing, and it always seems that rather than write another book in any of them, he just starts another series.
It's one of the reasons I've tried to give up long series of books, and go for one-offs, or at worst trilogies that are already finished. Of course that doesn't help for the series that I started maybe 15 years ago, when I was a kid, and still aren't finished.
I would rather see Ender's game done as animation rather than not at all. When I read this novel I immediately realized it would make a wonderful movie if the problem of needing around 30 or so very young child stars could be worked out. The training scenes make for great special effects opportunities. I do NOT see that much of the story is in Ender's head.
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
"Latent homosexuality" in Ender's Game seems unlikely since osc is admittedly anti-gay. See the Salon article which says, among other things that he is "disgustingly outspoken homophobe." And where Card is quoted as saying "Gay rights is a collective delusion." Ouch.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
You're probably right, although Haley Joel Osmet(sixth sense) would probably be a great choice (yeah, but where do you find a dozen more like him?).
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Two kids (again super intelligent) dupe the world into thinking they are the new intelligensitia?
That's why it's science fiction.
Play time in the battle area is analgous to fighter planes and space craft how?
It's not the same in a direct physical aspect, but I'm sure you noticed that in the book, it wasn't an issue of how the parallel in a physcial sense, rather the purpose of the battle area was to build the bonds between Ender and the other students. Ender needed to understand the other kids, how they thought and what type of responsibility they could each handle. Also it built their trust of Ender as a leader and this became vital later on when Ender was fighting the buggers.
But the most interesting part of that was glossed over as Ender felt really bad. So he spent a long time talking about dead people and that made it better.
I agree, that is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. And I don't think it was glossed over, he was a psychological wreck at the end of the book. Also if you keep reading the other books in the series, he never really get's over the fact that he killed a whole race of sentient beings. He spends the rest of his life trying to save life to atone for his sins. In Speaker for the Dead, Ender says, "I'm not one to despise other people for their sins . . . I haven't found one yet, that I didn't say inside myself, I've done worse than this."
As I often try to tell people, Ender's Game itself is only a fun action book that Card wrote when he was young. He then later expanded on the idea and used Ender as the main character in a much more rich series of books. The Ender's Game series is more of a philosophical series where Card gets to talk about life, death, genocide, right, wrong, morality, etc, etc. I admit that he tends to deify Ender too much, but the debates he has between the various characters intrigued me greatly (much more than the action in Ender's Game).
I read it when I was about 19, as part of a sci-fi literature class at UC Santa Barbara. (That was a COOL class -- we read Watchmen and Dark Knight returns too!)
I am 29 now, and I just finished re-reading LOTR, and I also enjoyed it a lot more than when I was 10, or 12, or whenever I first found it.
What's so amazing? That we give emotion a role in selecting entertainment while we avoid it in writing code? Maybe because entertainment is in large part emotion, and code is only in tiny part emotion?
To me it wan't the best book in the world. It felt that way when I was 15 and reading it the first time. It doesn't make my personal top 100 anymore, but it still gets to be "worth the read".
In SF plausability isn't even that big of a deal as long as there is internal consistancy. If you read Asmov's robot tales they arn't very plauable (at least they don't seem so plusable anymore). But they are internally consistant.
Assuming you didn't totally miss the point and are, thereby, not referring to the books.. the animated version of the series Was fairly unpopular.. and as for the new live-action one, it's not even out, so you can't really say how well it will do. Yes, the anticipation buzz is huge, but hype does not a good movie make. And for this we have the huge, blazing, cg-animated-alien-filled example of episode 1.
See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
Unfortunatly, Ringworld was a fairly late novel in the "Known Space" series, and Niven seems to assume that you already know many of the characters involved, not to mention the slang.
tanj: There ain't no justice.
I think Niven considered a lot of characterization redundant for Ringworld given all of the material already available for the Known Space series, and left it out.
I read the internet for the articles.
3 years ago Card read and spoke at MIT. It might be interesting to compare this to what he said then.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N61/scifi.61n.html
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"I always thought that Niven's best work was the stuff he did with Mr. Pournelle."
*shudder* I've never gotten past page 15 of ANY Niven collaboration (or page 5 of anything with "Steven Barnes", scare quotes indicate my skepticism that this name refers to a human rather than an experiment in poor writing skills)
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Would OSC consider talking to one of the major Japanese animation firms? (Ghibli, Gainax, etc?) They have a tradition of insightful, amazing sci-fi with young characters driving the plot. (Princess Mononoke, Neon Genesis Evangelon, Gundam 0083, and on an on and on). -Nick (what's in a name?)
fortune: You die cold and alone
Hmmm, so which do you think will make it to movie screens first: and Ender's Game movie, or a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie? :-)
Both have been in limbo forever. They might be able to make a decent go of Ender's, but I'm thinking there's no way an American studio could pull off a HGTTG movie that captures the feel of the original. It's just too full of British humor and world-weary (universe-weary?) stiff upper-lippedness. And even if they could pull it off, they jsut wouldn't want to. Bastards. Damn this post got OT in a hurry OK I'm cutting myself off no----
http://www.bootyproject.org
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I have to agree with you on the "Steven Barnes" thing. Have you ever looked at his solo work? Trash no doubt.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Considering some of the poorly written stories Hollywood had turned into movies, I've been eagerly awaiting an Ender movie. However, the trilogy as a whole probably could never be made into a movie for the same reason attempts at Dune and The Lord of the Rings failed miserably, namely there's way too much story there!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I always find it interesting that Card is bashed by both sides of issues. The gay-rights groups hate him because of his moral stance he has taken against homosexual behavior. (See this article ) And then you get comments like these who think there is to much homosexuality in his books.
There are those who complain that his books are too "preachy" and also there are those (mostly "orthodox" Mormons) who complain that his books should bear a stronger witness of his faith. My guess is that the "anonymous coward" who placed this post is looking a little too hard for homosexual references. He can probably find them in the phonebook if he looks hard enough!
Well, I first read Ender's game as the original short story, when I was in high school or college, I forget which. It was perfect as a short story, very powerful and concise. It was especially powerful in its abrupt ending, very different from the angst and moralization in the novel that follows Ender's last ultimate victory against the Buggers. The story left the moral indecision and obvious rationalizations as an exercise for the reader.
Given its high quality as a short story, I was aghast the first time I saw that it was made into a full length novel. Usually, novelization of a good short story is as big a disaster as the transfer of a good novel to film. But I read it anyway, and was pleasanly surprised to find that the main flavor of the original short story was left predominantly intact. The short story was there with a lot of background and detail filled in, plus what was really another couple of stories about Ender's siblings and the Buggers.
Looking back now, I'm uncertain whether I would have liked the novel as much without first having loved the original short story. One thing is certain, though. All the rest of the Ender series, including Speaker for the Dead, is just plain drivel compared to the original story.
Ender's Game didn't justify Genocide. Ender, the hero, was the guy who 'spoke for the dead' at the end of the book.
And, so what if Ender's life parallels Hitler's? So what if the reader sympathizes with him? That just makes it all the more interesting.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Yes, I know what "tanj" means. It's just that i think it's so... stupid! Though I did not know that it "was a fairly late novel in the "Known Space" series." Perhaps I will look into some of the earlier ones.
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Graff exists in the book, Gaff does not. It's a Gaffe!
knee-jerk? check. post? check. okay, time to read the article.
He uses his novels to push his religious beliefs and his homophobia.
Personally, I'm vaguely opposed to most religions, but I find the Mormon church particularly frightening. His recent books are more overt in their proselytizing, and that (thankfully) is hurting their quality. Unfortunately, some of his older books were more subtle but very very extremist.
The most offensive example was in one of the "Call to Earth" books, a major hero was a homosexual. I remember thinking, "Gee, ain't that progressive," But I later realized that Card only put in the character so that he could do the right thing and marry a woman.
I read his short story collection, where you can *watch* his prose quality degrading, and he does the similar things in many of the stories. It's pretty horrifying.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The Lost Boys was very frustrating, in that every character that wasn't a Mormon had severe character flaws, or just plain evil.
I haven't read one of his books since, because I know that the enjoyment will be sucked out of reading it. I'll wind up looking for pro-Mormon messages in the text.
Obviously both have changed -- everybody has changed over that time. My point was rather that Sunstone has changed since he editted it, as the implication was that he was the one doing all the changing.
2. What exactly has Sunstone become? Since the excommunication of the September 6, it's been more conservative and mainstream than it was in the Card years.Sunstone's never particularly been my thing, and I've only read a handful of things from it, so I can respond primarily based on comments I recall Scott making about it (and some of those comments were referring to things at Signature Press, so they might not all apply to Sunstone per se). During his time, his interest was in making a place for an honest exploration of the gospel without a lot of the white-washing through traditional forums, rather than a place for attacking the Church which he saw it becoming. YMMV, of course, and my recollection my be faulty, but I think you can find his thoughts about this in A Storyteller in Zion, which has been re-released, apparently
As to whether it's more conservative or mainstream, I can't speak, but certainly those judgments can be as subjective as your opinion about my taste.
There's a pretty obvious reason the girls in the books have boyish figures: none of them have hit puberty yet. You notice the ages of the kids in the battle school?
if by the "sequel" you mean speaker, then i can see where you're coming from. the first book is very different from that second one, and incredibly different from the third (heh...). maybe you should try some of the worthing saga storyline (book by that name). but i wouldn't give up on card -- i hated 2001 until i read the book, for instance.
Or perhaps it's a product of concern for the morality of civilization as a whole, which some feel affects more than just individuals but all of us as a collective. No one lives in a vacuum.
Now what's really a spoiler? The incorrect "spoiler" from the article, or the above post stating that it's not true? :)
Totally agree. I mean, Frodo Baggins with an evil overlord's magic ring, is just your average run-of-the-mill realistic situation. Look how unpopular it is
I think you're thinking of "Wang's Carpets", which was incorporated in his novel Diaspora.
"Luminous" is a sort of cyberpunk meets distrubted.net meets Godel, Escher, and Bach type of story involving an optical computer. It is available in the collection titled Luminous.
Funny, I found the beginning of Teranesia much more enjoyable than the end. The last several chapters just seemed rushed, and didn't really explore the implications of the scientific "hook" at all.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
But i've noticed that geeks seem drawn to it. My theory is that it's the quintissential geek fable. Smart kid ridiculed, society beats him up, but he saves world by virtue of his intelligence. How many people in the audience dreamed about killing their childhood nemisis? If you can seperate the plot from the wet dream of zero g space combat where hard work and intelligence defeats athletic ability the book is full of holes. Two kids (again super intelligent) dupe the world into thinking they are the new intelligensitia? Am I the only one in the world who smacked himself in the forhead when you read that? I mean please...
Play time in the battle area is analgous to fighter planes and space craft how?
It was an interesting book, if you look at the idea of duping someone into genocide. But the most interesting part of that was glossed over as Ender felt really bad. So he spent a long time talking about dead people and that made it better.
I'm reading Crime and Punishment and the contrast in abilities (dostevsky and Card) is brutal. But because of the central , geek friendly, theme Card gets cut a lot of slack. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I wrong? Missing something?
Chu-Thuh Fat is going to be in a ringworld movie? what's he gonna do, pull out a gun every twenty seconds to mow down some sunflowers? gimmee a break. How the Hell did this happen? I think the problem is that Star Wars and ALIEN set the tone for space movies: either blow up a poop load of ships, or get a nasty monster running around eating and dismembering people.
Have you ever read Card's forward to later editions of Ender's Game? He basically says that all the critics who bashed Ender's Game are closed minded. I agree with you, there are tons of links that are missing in EG. It's an okay book, but it doesn't deserve the worship it gets. I think most people get blown away by the ending and therefore forget all the bits they were sitting there thinking "huh?" about. BTW, if you think that Card's writing in EG was horrible compared to Dostevsky, take a look at Ender's Shadow. Writers who put junk out there and call it a novel like Card does are one of the main reasons that sci fi gets less respect than romance novels from non-geeks.
The solution? Easy. Computer animation, my friend.
Anyone who's seen the trailers for Final Fantasy, or even that one computer-animated Saturday morning cartoon on the WB network, will tell you that CGI has come a long, long way, and is now more than capable of telling a story like Ender's Game.
A CGI movie would make things like the massive zero-g battle scenes very easy to do, and special effects would be simple. Furthermore, you don't have to worry about finding a good child actor, just a good voice actor who sounds like a kid. What's more, CGI opens up the potential for sequels -- with real child actors, by the time you got around to doing a sequel, the kid would be older and wrong for the part. With CGI, the actors are ageless.
I think this is something OSC should give serious consideration to. Given the recent massive popularity of CGI movies, I think studios would be much more open to doing a CGI film than a film with a bunch of child actors.
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I think the nude scenes could be left out or modified pretty easily without really damaging the movie.
Actually, every character in that book (and all the rest of his) had character flaws -- some of them pretty major. The Mormon characters had just as many as anybody else -- Sister LeSuere, for example.
Lost Boys was as Mormon as it was because it was semi-autobiographical (the short-story version was told in the first person using the names of his actual family). People I know who live in his area actually know the people some of those characters (particularly the Mormon ones) are based on. There was nothing pushy about Mormonism in it, and it is far from a missionary tract. It happens to show the most realistic version of Mormon life of any piece of fiction I'd seen at the point it was written (and I'm not sure I've seen better since).
Scott makes no secret of his religious belief. He doesn't hide it. But that's not the same as attempting to push it down anybody's throat. Even his Mormon-oriented writing is not based in trying to persuade people that Mormonism is true. He expresses his beliefs, and invites people to explore and come to their own conclusions. I've seen people cram their beliefs down others throats -- I've seen it tried around here -- and that's not what he does.
Have you ever read Hart's Hope? There is very little moral preaching in that work. And what religion there is in the other works I've read hasn't offended me. He rights solid scifi about thoughtful characters. I like Ender, the Maker series, and the Earthborne series cause their cool and imaginitive senarios that are well played and well told. And for the record Hart's Hope was among the more disturbing books I've read which at no time aproached anything that could be considered Mormon, Christian, or Budhist morals. I like him I'll continue to read books he writes. Maybe your just picking up the wrong ones.
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I'd recommend picking up Ender's Shadow. I agreed with you on the deterioration of the series as it progressed, but I felt that Ender's Shadow was almost as good as Ender's Game itself and was a return to the spirit of the original book. Probably partly because it's also a return to the setting of the original, but there's something to the overall feel that made it much better than Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, or Children of the Mind.
When I read that the first edition of SoH was flawed I was tempted to take it back to the store and wait for the second edition. Then it occurred to me that it might be interesting to keep it around. First, is anything screwed up storywise by the flaws? I haven't read my first edition yet and don't want to lose anything from the experience by this. On the otherhand I am NOT a nitpicker. I wouldn't have remembered where Ender was born if I were asked, let alone spotted it in the book.
Does anyone think that these first editions could increase in value eventually? Moreso than the second edition? Should I hold onto my first and buy the second as well?
What are you going to do with your copies?
Mycroft-X
your definition of science fiction, honestly.
Science Fiction is a story that deals with the implications of advanced technology. This is things like first contact, faster than light travel, defending yourself against mindless agressors that you can't communicate with, etc, etc.
Star Wars is most definitely not Sci-Fi, in that definition. Star Wars (and many many Star Trek episodes, but not all) is more what I would call "Space Fantasy". It uses a futuristic, technological setting, but tells a story of heros and heroines, beating evil.
Now, I don't make any claim to have invented these definitions - I first ran across them in Realms of Fantasy (sorry, I don't know a link for them.)
In the sense that Xenocide and Children of the Mind deal with issues, they are still Sci-Fi. Children really drifted almost into another universe, and lost of lot of supporters there, but it still dealt with true Sci-Fi issues.
of the next two novels from the article:
...Bean, as his body grows beyond the capacity to sustain itself, even as he tries to make a
family with Petra. And their offspring, who become pawns in the struggle between Achilles and Peter, which continues throughout the whole series. In fact, the series outlasts Bean's own life, but Petra, Peter, and Achilles continue to the last book, along with Petra's and Bean's progeny."
Looks good for the next two books...
go cg, and the nightmares go away
Actually, I rather liked the adaptation of Dune that recently showed on the Sci-Fi Channel. Of course the theatrical release stank, but the recent one did it justice, I thought.
TANSTAAFL
OSC has stated that although he will no longer do full book tours, he still intends to do individual signings as well as attending the up-and-coming EnderCon's (first one in 2002). It's just that full multi-week book tours take too much out of him, and he's away from his family for too long. Plus, how many times would you want to be asked about when the Ender movie is coming out?
How old were you when you read it?
I finally read it for the first time last year after meaning to for a long time, and I can kind of agree with you on the quality of it, but if I'd read it at like 14 or 15 I think I'd be one of the rabid fans as well.
I think it's a worthwhile skill to still be able to read like a child. I'm just now (at 29) reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time, and it's far more enjoyable (although of course not necessary, I'm not comparing OSC and JRRT) if I read it from my 12-year-old mindset. I would have missed a lot of what I'm picking up now, so I'm not implying that it's a children's book either, but there's just something about a youthful imagination that enhances the experience of SF/Fantasy.
That said, I did enjoy Ender's Game, mainly because I read it from that point of view. It's a bit like reading SE Hinton as an adult -- it's still a good story, but the writing isn't as mature as an adult would hope for.
How old was OSC when he wrote Ender's Game?
Sorry, this is a reposting - I forgot to select "Plain old text" :-(
I just read this and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I was also left a bit disappointed for the following reasons:
1) We never really get to see Bean demonstrate his extraordinary intellect like we did in Ender's Shadow. I was hoping to see Bean strategically outthink Achilles in an open ground war, similar to how Ender outthinked his opponents in Battle School.
2) The same goes for Peter. We never really get clearer insight into why Peter is so extraordinarily gifted. Yes, he is Locke, but what did Peter do that makes him an "Ender without a conscience"? All he did was pull a string to get Bean a 'toon and sit on a proposal until Bean got angry. In EG/ES, we got to see Ender and Bean negotiate, analyze, and blackmail their way to social power while demonstrating their pure tactical brilliance in combat.
3) The same goes for Achilles. I was hoping to get more on the "how" of his operation rather than being suddenly told that he suddenly got power over some global power. How did he manage that? In EG/ES we came to understand *exactly* how Ender and Bean got theirs, and how Achilles got to Battle School. But SoH leaves us wondering what Achilles did to dupe the Russians and Indians. Who did he murder? Who did he cajole?
I'm not saying that SoH was a bad book, but I don't feel that it quite measures up to EG or ES. I'm still waiting for Bean to create ever-shifting patterns of hovercrafts and other such strategy....
Remember, the enemy HQ is south.
I dunno. I thought Dream Park (Barnes collaboration) rocked. Too bad it's out of print.
Then there's The Mote In God's Eye (Pournelle collaboration). It's one of the best books I've ever read. Sure, the start is a little slow, but it sets up the characters and their motivations later in the book.
We all remember how much Battlefield Earth sucked, even though the book was great. They tried to pack a 1000+ page book into a short movie and it just cannot be done. I'm afraid that Enders Game may follow the same route. What I'd like to see is the equivalent of another book done in movie form. A completely unique plot but using the same characters and setting. Call it a companion movie just like Ender's Shadow is :)
There's nothing worse than seeing a movie butcher your favorite books...
Travis
My local used book shop had about 4 copies of Dream Park about a week ago. Mail me maybe we can work something out. Also have you looked at Fallen Angels? Really good stuff.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Why not ask Studio Ghibli if they would be interested in making an anime of it ?
I mean I'm from Utah how could I not and Ender's Game is one of the best things I have ever read and Treason is great and he does rock *hard*. But I really do not think that they could ever do Ender justice in a movie that would come out of Hollywood. I just do not see a way they could pull this off. So this is on a very long list of books that I love and that I hope they never make into a movie. Now I think if anyone could prove me wrong that it is Card so if they make this I hope I'm wrong but after the last few years of seeing great books made into movies that suck, I'm not holding my breath. But some of the other books do sound very cool. Am I the only one that wants to see a second book in the Treason universe?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Orson Scott Card is getting old.
As he ages, he becomes more and more devout.
He used to edit Sunstone, but now he won't even attend the Sunstone symposium because they allow excommunicated members of the church to speak.
He's been proclaiming some horrible pieces of uplifting trash as "the best Mormon novels ever written" and he's apologized for some of his early works.
I don't think he could write a quality sentence these days much less a novel.
Such a pity.
--Shoeboy
Well, marching around with a fake rifle wasn't very analagous to turning valves in a submarine engineroom, but that didn't stop the Navy! ;)
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
For the first three-fourths of the book, I agree. Then, it fails. IMO, the ending was too pat, too syrupy and dull. Of course, I read EG, so I knew the ending already but was hoping for something more.
Sure, ES was better than anything that OSC has put out in recent years but it didn't have the impact of EG.
Defecation occurs.
Why do we assume Hollywood is the only way to get a film made? Independant filmmakers make great movies every year, and if the movie does well, the studio execs will fall all over themselves saying they thought it was a great idea in the first place, trying to get the rights.
;-)
How did we get into this situation, where we let Hollywood resign us to glitzy, no-quality crap movies year-in year-out? Why not start your own studio? With modern computing technology, filming this one isn't as much of a problem as it used to be. The reason Hollywood has such a stranglehold on entertainment is because no one has the get-up-and-go to make them competitive anymore. And when corporate groups become monopolistic and have no competition, they always cease providing quality good and services.
Some capitalist enterprise is what we need.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I hope I'm not the only one that feels that a movie on EG would be a BAD idea, however not just because we know exactly how Hollywood would mangle it for things like Ender's thoughts, etc, and would focus more on action scenes rather than plot and character. My more worrisome concern is that there's a certain mystique about the visuals in the book; beyond certain key descriptions such as how the academy looks and the zero-g room so that the plot works in flawlessly, we don't have much about what Ender's like, what Peter, Valentine, Bean, and other key characters are beyond 'they're kids'. We only have vague descriptions of the looks of the school from the inside, of how the computer systems work, etc. I want to kept that mystique, because Ender's Game works on the premise that you don't need to know this stuff, and knowing it would distract from the key elements of the book.
The other, somewhat important issue, is that you are going to need to find not only about a dozen *talented* child actors of the right ageset, but also about 50 to 100 more that are sufficiently serious to fill the rest of the school and do some of the stunts you'd need to adequetely do the zero-g room. And one thing with child actors that are keyed for certain parts is that they have a limited shelf life before they're too old. The 6th Sense kid, for example, or McCulley Culkin (sp) -- if you tried to film for more than a year, you'd have serious aging problems. It might not matter too much in EG, since you're looking about about a timeframe of 3 to 4 years for the bulk of the book, but it still can proof challenging.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Ah, thanks for the clarification.
I was thinking.. maybe CG would work well. Much like Final Fantasy the movie. However, the FF movie has been horibly expensive to make. (10 mil so far?) Animated however,.... hrm.. Could do something like Titan AE.
:)
Would be pretty interesting either way
Luke
I was at the Signing. I have to admit that Orsen Scott Card himself made a good argument against having an Ender's Game movie. What he said is that the third version of the script, which he is finishing now is not a Ender's Game movie, but a combination of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow and that it is from Bean's Point of View.
If you want to know more... The start of the script is online at http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/script. html
and Orsen Scott Card's Movie Update is at
http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/script. html
Am I missing anything...
Jason--Yorktown High School Linux Users Group-- http://yhslug.tux.org
I live not five minutes away from that Borders, at Bailey's Crossroads. Right down bloody King Street. If only I'd known. He's not by chance making any surprise stops? Lemme know if he is, any of you. Please. The day of. I'll check my mail. Believe me.
;)
On the other hand, I have a stepsister going to college in Greensboro. Maybe I could go...visit her.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
I think to really appreciate Ender's Game, you have to read it at the right time in your life. I am not going to try to guess what that time is for you or anyone else. Even then, maybe your personality is such that Ender's Game is just not your thing.
I first read Ender's Game when I was in college. A friend suggested it to me. I loved that book. I suspect I always will. However, if I first read it today, maybe I would not feel the same way. As an example, I tried reading Kerouak's On the Road a couple years ago (I am serveral years out of college now). I just could not get into it. But for many friends who read it when they were younger, it was a very formative novel. It resonated with whatever was going on in their life at that time. I think Ender's Game is the same way. It resonates with the events of our youth.
Now, anything after Ender's Game is a different story. No apologies here at all, but Speaker for the Dead was okay; Xenocide and Children of the Mind pretty much sucked. I was so disgusted by the time I finished Children, I did not even want to pick up Ender's Shadow. I had my fill of O.S. Card. I am not alone, either.
And here is why: Ender's game was excellent Science Fiction. Xenocide and Children of the Mind? Those were pulp SciFi. Most people don't make a distinction between the two, but Harlan Ellison (god bless his twisted little soul) and I do.
Science Fiction is fiction with some sort of scientifically intriguing setting and that is all. The real story comes from character and plot development. SciFi relies almost totally on the gimmicks of the universe the story is set in. Say, for example, philotes. (Of course, there is a spectum here, so not everything, including the things I mention, fall neatly into one category or the other.)
To draw a parallel: Babylon 5 was Science Fiction for the most part; StarTrek almost exclusively a SciFi franchise. Proof of point: in STNG, nearly any time the crew got in trouble, all they had to do was call on Gordi LaForge to pull their collective asses out of the fire some imaginative application of the HyperSpace Butt-winch. It was not until the later seasons that we got to see some deeper character development. Babylon 5 on the other hand was all about the characters and their interactions developed over 5 years.
Now, I am not saying that SciFi sucks. I like SciFi when that is what I want. Is there good SciFi? Hell, yeah: Stargate SG1. Or is that Science Fiction? Oh well. When I want Science Fiction, I seek that out and enjoy it too. I think what upset me about the Ender series was that good Science Fiction degenerated into bad SciFi. Philotes? Gimme a break. I found the transition from "Ender: destroyer of worlds" to "Philotes: our souls, our saviours" to be way too saccharine.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
and no i didn't mean that card wrote 2001 -- duh.
You're right about Tsu Miu. He was impressive in My Father is a Hero. Keep in mind that he was a martial arts champion before filming. I believe that's how they found him. I guess that they would need to find gymnasts/martial artists that are 6 years old to do this flick. Quite a few. Then do some training. May even need to find 4 or 5 year olds showing promise so they would be the right age when filming. At least for the principals. It's quite a problem. Especially in our modern culture with demands for quick results and our overprotective mindset.
Interesting how you bring up Ringworld, as I just finished reading it yesterday. And I do agree with you in the fact that Ringworld doesn't really have a plot (not a very strong one, anyways...) and now that I think about it, all it IS is just some technological marvels that are explored by a few (badly developed) characters. Sure, the entire Ringworld idea is very interesting and the novel explores some of the implications of such a world, but that seems to be all it does. It was not that great of a novel, and I don't understand how (as the cover states) Ringworld became a "legendary award-winning classic."
This was the first Niven novel that i've read. If you say that his earlier works are some of his best, I think I'll stay away from his altogether. My main qualm with Ringworld was that (IMO) it wasn't written as well as it could have been, and also the language used (What the tanj?) was extremely annoying. I don't know... it just left me with a sour taste in my mouth when I reached the end. The whole aspect of psychic luck being genetic was also, as I saw it, ridiculous. I would definitely not call Ringworld a "classic."
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A friend of mine and I were discussing how to make Ender's Game into a movie about 9 years ago, at the time, we thought the only way the battle scene could be done was to make the movie in anime. Way too much 3D movement that would be too hard to do with real humans.
Now with the Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, perhaps it would be conceivable to do this in live action, but do you have time to train 6 year old kids to do those kinds of stunts before they grow up?
I'm sure any Ender's Game movie would be a letdown if done with today's tech. Let this one stew for another 20 years. It probably will be worth the wait.
I love SF and I have read all the classics, and as much modern stuff as I have time for. But man, I just could NOT get into Ender's Game. Mod me down, but there it is -- I didn't like the book. Couldn't even finish the sequel. I know this is high treason on
I don't think a movie adaptation is a good idea. It's rare enough to find one kid who can act, let alone a whole gaggle of them. It will probably be painful to watch if it's ever made. Imagine a dozen Anakin Skywalkers. Ack.
I think I'll go read some Larry Niven now. Some OLD Niven... his latest books haven't been so hot. (Speaking of movies that shouldn't be made... Ringworld. What a great book; what a terrible movie it will probably make. I hear Phil Tippet is the director, and Chow yun-Fat may play Louis Wu. They have a hard road ahead.)
Oh, off-topic public service message: Avoid "Teranesia" by Greg Egan. How could the guy who wrote "Quarantine," and that GREAT short story "Luminous" turn out this trash?
In closing, let me say, "... and I would have done it, too, if it weren't for you MEDDLING KIDS!"
Why don't we try getting the movie started by setting up a donation website? I'd be willing to put up $40. Anybody have extra webspace? Anyone with the tax background to get this thing rolling?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I am looking forward to the Ender's Game movie. I'm not ready yet to guess at how good it will be. The potential is there to produce something on par with Star Wars or 2001, but there is a big difference between potential and accomplishment. I am excited to see how well it turns out and how it affects the world. My secondary source of excitement in this case is the opportunity to enjoy watching the movie myself, if it turns out well.
Now on to the reason I posted in the first place. Has anyone heard any news on a video game version of Ender's Game. I talked to Card at a book signing a few years ago about it. The impression I got is that he is open to the idea, but that he is also being very cautious to make sure that the game is done right.
I've never understood why people object to characters in books having religious lives. It seems that the only tolerated portrayal of religious people is if it is treated as a character flaw or humorous element. Race, geography, social background, etc. are all valid character traits, but if the character is "casually" religious, then the author is accused of preaching.
While I'm not particularly religious myself, most of my family and many of my friends are and I consider their beliefs to be an important aspect of who they are and how they view the world and, with a few exceptions, I certainly don't see it is a character flaw.
When I read Lost Boys, I didn't see it as a pro-Mormon tract, I was intrigued at the portrayal of a Mormon family in a realistic manner. People who read SF and fantasy don't have a problem with magic and religion. Most readers don't have a problem with Catholic characters (The Sparrow comes to mind), or with pagans or new-agers. IMO, Protestants really get the shaft in literature.
I think Card is really interesting because most conservative religious writers would never touch the topics that Card does. I also think it is interesting that most of the conflicts in his books are based from morality and ethics -- another taboo subject.
I haven't read all of the Alvin Maker books (I'll wait til he's finished), but I was surprised that he portrayed Satan as the origin of the original Mormon notion that black people cannot be saved. I know the Mormon's dropped that part of their canon years ago, but I imagine that would still irk some Mormons.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
A 6 year old could reasonably be that innocent. Any 14 year old that stupid wouldn't survive long.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
A friend of mine hated Ender's game; she said it was the worst novel she'd ever read from its sappy tearjerking to its queasy morality to the blatant justification of genocide at the end. She refused to ever read another Card book. I didn't feel as strongly as she did, found the book readable, but I took her point.
At the time she was a SFWA member so she got a free copy of Speaker. Since she didn't want it, she gave it to me. When I read it I got back to her and said, "you're not going to believe this, he escapes to a planet copied from Brazil."
I gave her back the book, and next thing I know she is drawing up a tremendous list of coincidences, at least 75, between Ender's life and upbringing and that of one A. Hitler. This turned into a meticulously researched article -- I saw the doc package, which was an inch and a half thick -- which was published in the final issue of Science Fiction Review,. That article was titled Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman? by Elaine Radford.
SFR is no longer with us but the article and Card's rebuttal were republished by Literary Review, so it's probably there in your meatspace library if you're curious. I don't think the article is online anywhere.
While it was startling to see just how closely Ender parallels Hitler, even more startling was Card's reaction. He seemed to be completely unaware of many of the key passages in the book which Radford cited. This is clear from his rebuttal, which was amazingly lame and ignorant (several times stating bluntly that passages didn't exist which Radford had documented). It was obvious to me that he couldn't have written the book, at least not in anything finer than general outline.
At the time it was expected that Card would sweep the Hugos and Nebulas for a third time in a row with the sequel to Speaker. Instead it took him, what, four or five years to get around to writing it. I am convinced that Superman had a lot to do with it. He pulled a mammoth con job off on the SF community and almost got away with it. For the most part he still has, but he did blink.
Now, back to my copy of The Martians...
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Oh, wait...that was an confusing as all hell...I take that back.
I agree with this post. Card is a wonderful writer, BUT he has made me feel uncomfortable since The Lost Boys. I am not anti-mormon, but I do not appreciate ANY writer throwing religious recruitment into his subtext. This is more true when it becomes a distraction to an otherwise good story. I wouldn't mind so much if it was subtle, and I had the challenge of finding it in the story, but when it is SO overt, it's just plain ol'preachy. This does not mean that the Ender series is bad..I love those books warts and all, and the religious commentary is kept mainly to marriage and relationship. I will comment though, OSC can write whatever he wants, but he can't expect anyone to buy it but "Cheese and Rice and Rattling Chains" types. Market demand will fall. As long as he is kewl with that...so be it.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
What does homosexuality have to do with morality?
And what does someone else's morality have to do with me?
To sum it up: homosexual or moral, keep it to yourself.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Because chicks seem to dig gay men more.
.
It's totally unfair, just because we straight guys don't like shoe shopping. But the minute they need a big stiffie, they come running back to the straigh guys. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Does Dark Angel suck? Yes.
Does Dark Angel suck even more then that lame Soilder movie while still using most of the tired formulas? Yes.
Did you need to post it twice? No.
-kashani
- Why is the ninja... so deadly?
Thank god. I don't think I would have made it through 2001 if I had to hear, "I see dead ewoks."
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
(for example, he's considering revealing halfway through the film that Gaff is really Mazar Rackham
Oh great, thanks for giving that away. Not all of us have ready it already, sigh...
For those of you who have not picked this up, do so. I just finished it last night. Excellent book. More in the tradition of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow than the other books. One of his best.
The best news comes in the afterward. Two more books to follow Hegemon telling the story of Peter Wiggen and Bean.
When I first saw the price ($25.95) and looked at how small it was compared to some of his books, I thought it was overpriced. After reading it, I though it was worth every penny.
This is *exactly* the kind of attitude I was talking about.
Originally, Card had hoped to have three books in the "Shadow" series (for which he still doesn't have a good overall name to reference it by). But somewhere while writing Shadow of the Hegemon, he realized that he needed to write another (like that's ever happened to a Card series before!) So, there will be an additional two novels in the series.
Thanks,
Ideut
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