Slashdot Mirror
Ender's Shadow
wtpooh writes "CNN has a review of Ender's Shadow, an upcoming book by Orson Scott Card which retells the events of Ender's Game from the perspective of Bean, one of the children under Ender's command. I always liked Bean, so I'm really looking forward to this. According to Amazon, it will be available on August 31. You can also read the first four chapters of the book at Card's web site". Despite all the recommendations, I've never bothered to read Ender's Game. I think that will have to change very soon.
Well, I've only read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, but I found the latter to be better than the former. The first book was very interesting, but was rather simple conceptually. I found the second book much more interesting, at least at my age now. Perhaps if I had read it when I was 18, which was the heavy sci-fi reading period of my life, I would see things differently.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
Funny, I feel exactly the same. I liked "Speaker for the Dead" much better. It covered the problem of communication between species much better. Most SF books gloss over this rather fundamendal problem with universal translators and such...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
its been a long long time since i've read them but i had to read all three in a row.
so what threadz do you start talking on to become ruler of the world, .
-jg
"Ender's Game" was cool. "Speaker For The Dead" was a disaster. It was like the two books were written by two completely different people. Seems to me like "Ender's Shadow" should've been the sequel instead.
I must disagree. I loved Ender's Game, I loved Speaker. I thought Xenocide sucked, and I wasn't that impressed by Children either.
I can't wait for the new one, though.
If anyone cares, I consider Maps in a Mirror to be one of the finest short story collections ever.
I read Ender's Shadow in prepub copy, (it's good to have friends in bookstores) and in it, OSC said he intended to write yet another parallel novel based on Peter. I just hope it's better than this one - Shadow had way too much parallelism between Bean's story and Ender's, far beyond what was necessary to unify it with Ender's Game. I really liked the first bit, with Bean on the streets, but once they got to Battle School it kinda fell flat.
"Sometimes David kills Goliath, and people never forget. But there were a lot of little guys Goliath had already mashed into the ground."
--Orson Scott Card, _Ender's Shadow_
Unfortunately, Card's got too many little guys beating Goliaths at once now. If CNN is right and this thing wins the Hugo & Nebula, I'll be disappointed, cause there are much better books out there.
"The only difference between a writer and a con-man is the writer has better hours, works at home, and can use his real
Sure, other characters may have been more personable, but what made the story accessible to most everyone on /. and all of our peers is that Ender was so fucked up.
I dunno about others here, but I really indentified with Ender. I don't think I ever learned anything from school that they were trying to teach me. I aced all of the tests that I took with no marks lower than 98%, yet talked to very few people at school. Math contests and stuff were trivial, multiplayer games were easy because I could see patterns in other people behaviour and act upon these.
Not that I'm *the* most brilliant kid in the world, or even was at the time, but given that my world wasn't (until I discovered the net) much bigger than my neighborhood and school, I was.
I think we've all felt the loneliness of Ender's situation.
If he was better adjusted, well. It'd be an interesting story, but it wouldn't be the same. He'd be more like a young Lazarus Long.
Well it definately couldn't be done like a normal Hollywood film, to do the story true justice it would need to be in the Indy style. But you could definately have children acting like adults in that type of movie... look at the movie Kids... but most definately would not want big name kid stars, they would not be willing to take a role that would tarnish their image as a upstanding, formulaic star, and the film would probably get a high rating, what with the graphic violence and at least partial nudity needed to be true to the story... well probably not the nudity, who wants to see kids naked? although you would think that the mass genocide of a sentient race would be enough for a R rating, but that would be the least from any critics minds most likely...
I think you are touching onto something that plagues most of Western science fiction - that it sucks. I happen to believe that there is more to science fiction as a genre then setting it a few centuries ahead in time and giving the characters blasters/phasers. Science Fiction is there to inspire plots and thoughts that were NOT explored in traditional literature. Ender's Game is 85% an average adventure book, 10% pure drivel about superintelligent children that are just like adults only smarter, stronger and more vicious. The remaining 5%,IMHO ,is very good stuff - the chapters in which Ender doesn't appear altogether. I thought that his' siblings characters and actions were the best parts of the book. Yes, they are still the same supersmart kids designed to make us (readers) feel humiliated at our own inability to fool and manipulate millions of intelligent people, but, at least, they don't try and solve all their problems with violence and intimidation (at least Valentine doesn't)
My biggest problem with OSC is that his writing is not science fiction in its pure sense. For me, to compare OSC with, say, Stanislaw Lem, is like comparing Robert Jordan with Tolkien (note: I am not looking to start a flame war on that). Tolkien was the visionary in the field, one who turned his extensive knowledge of Nordic mythology into a masterpiece of fantasy that created and consequently headed the field for many years since. Jordan, a professional writer, on the other hand, used the genre of fantasy to set his story which is much closer to his own Conan the Barbarian then Tolkien's LOTR. There is nothing wrong with that, I've gone through 7 books of Jordan's Wheel of Time and am awaiting for the 8th to come out in paperback. However I don't belive that Jordan's genre is quite the same as Tolkien's, and I equally don't think that OSC's writing belongs in the same classification as Stanislaw Lem's, Isaak Asimov's or Philip K. Dick's. He is much closer to a group of writers like Robert Heinlein (actually, I would classify one of his books as pure science fiction work worthy of highest honors - Starship Troopers), Larry Niven, Ande Norton et al.
I found the original novella to be much better, and to the point. It's not the first case where the oauthor should have left well enough alone (Though, unlike "Flowers for Algernon," he didn't utterly destroy the original work).
Okay, I'm a confirmed Card fan -- I've read and loved nearly everything he's produced, even short stories; except Hart's Hope, which I read and hated. That said: I think all of the books in the Ender Saga stand up well. Xenocide is probably the best of the four books, with Ender's Game a close second.
The later books -- Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind -- are far more adult than Ender's Game (or, from the looks of the first chapters, Ender's Shadow). But Card is a master, and the books are worth reading, and rereading.
It's talking about Orson Scott Card's Ender Wiggin Saga, one of the great hallmarks of science fiction. If Star Wars is Slashdot fare, so should be Orson Scott Card.
Dozens of ~6 to ~14 year olds running around in a movie that probably can't help but turn itself into one aimed at children.
It doesn't necessarily have to be like this. Dead Poet's Society was mostly kids (although older than 6-14) and it was not a "kiddie" film. Searching for Bobby Fisher focused on a brilliant kid and it was not a "kiddie" film.
More generally there have been one or two films based on well known novels that didn't turn out to well (harhar). We pretty much have to rely on the creative minds behind the film to adapt the strengths of the medium to the strengths of the story.
The superstructure of the plot development in E.G. reminds me quite a bit of . . .
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.
Both E.G. and FMJ are conglomerations of two almost entirely separate stories -- a "boot camp" story and a "war" story (although E.G. ties its second act to its first one better than FMJ does, imho.) And another parallel I draw is that, in both works, I found the "boot camp" story more compelling and better written than the followup. The Battle School that Ender attends is a very involving piece of psychological drama. Not everybody will agree, merely stating my personal reaction to it.
Out of all of Mr. Card's works (and I've read nearly all of them) my personal favorite is "Worthing Saga." Now this is a GREAT book. IMHO I think Worthing Saga would make a better film or film series than the Ender storyline (and in fact I have a screenplay I'm working on heavily influenced by W.S.)
Worthing Saga takes tons of "typical" SF concepts and spins them in extremely interesting ways. For example, lots of SF lean on the "crygenic sleep" life-suspension device for space travel and other purposes. Card really explores this -- he creates an entire society around the impact such a technology would have on a culture, and the individuals within that culture. I haven't seen any other SF writers really think through the consequences of what is, on reflection, a form of limited immortality.
Another example is ESP powers -- surely nothing new by Card's time. But again he writes from a highly intriguing psychological standpoint of how such powers would affect individuals that had these powers, and how they might be viewed by others who didn't. And how such a collection of empowered people might evolve over a very long period of time. And interesting -- and of course intentional -- religious parallels (In this respect Julian May's Many-Colored Land series is a good exploration of a future society that revolves around esper-type abilities -- but let's not wander off the main point!)
Yet another example is mind-storage -- the ability to save your consciousness to a "deep freeze" for recall later. The protagonist reaches a very interesting moral crossroads with respect to a decision he must make engenered by this technology. You'll know what I mean when you read to that point.
Okay time to stop leaking at the mouth!
WaxOn
SlicedBread 2.0 -- the greatest thing since SlicedBread!
If you think that is a good alt history book you haven't read any good ones. Look up alternate history on the internet for book reviews regarding this excellent subject or join soc.history.what-if. Really, other authors can do much better then Orson Scott Cards hack job. All his books are that way. Oh, and Enders Game is a book that was mandatory reading in 7th grade at my school for some reason...
A program is a device used to convert data into error messages.
Mazer Rackham was my personal favorite "supporting cast." Here you have a man faced with the prospect of guiding a presumably brilliant child -- Ender -- who is also presumably mankind's last hope for survival -- to full fruition of Ender's potential.
Is that a job from hell or what? In a very real sense then, mankind's hope for survival REALLY rests with Mazer, because Mazer is the man who will make or break Ender. In other words, from a certain point of view Ender is the weapon that humanity has developed to defend themselves, but Mazer must "wield" that weapon properly.
That intense part-adversarial, part-mentor/father-figure psychological relationship between Mazer and Ender was highly intriguing and, imho, could have been more fully explored. Another book would have been a great vehicle for that . . . now Bean, it seems it's just like Ender all over again. With Mazer we get a TOTALLY different story.
After all, Mazer was certainly not in the dark about any part of the situation like Ender was. And yet he has to, in some way, subordinate his own brilliant ability to that of Ender. It would take a pretty remarkable individual to do that effectively. The whole situation is similar to the storyline in the film "Searching for Bobby Fisher."
SlicedBread 2.0 -- the greatest thing since SlicedBread!
I was also very skeptical about OSC as he's a mormon, but Ender's Game didn't seem tainted by Card's beliefs.
In what concerns other authors, I have a strong mistrust about Heinlein (because of his military past) and Hubard (obvious).
I read a few books by Heinlein and unlike many critics, I wouldn't dare to compare him to Asimov or Clarke who are strong peace advocates.
VanVogt (The world of null-A) has also a troubled past, he was a co-founder of scientology with Hubard although he quit after a few years. The null-A are based on General Semantic, a kind of alternate philosophy (akin to scientology without religious stuff) but it's still a worth reading.
I think the posters in this thread are missing a key point; OSC didn't write Ender's Game as a war sci-fi novel, it was much more character oriented story. OSC's point wasn't to tell a humanity vs. an alien race interstellar war story (if that were the case, the book would have ended right after Ender won the final battle), that was just the backdrop for the real story, which is the concept of Ender, a child, being isolated from everything except pain and struggle and the changes that take place within him, and to those around him (in a limited fashion). As for the Valentine and Peter subplot, why would that be BS? Because it's never happened before? By that reasoning almost every piece of literature should be BS. I think Mr. Card should be given some leeway to create the future as he sees it.
It's not a war story, just as War and Peace isn't a war story (that is to say, Tolstoy isn't just retelling a history of the invasion of Russia). Both novels deal with complex character issues and changes that occur over the backdrop of war. Tolstoy examines the effects upon society and individual by the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, and OSC examines the effects of the desperate attempts by a human government at war to produce a child progeny, that being Ender.
(And hold on, I am not by any means comparing the two novels as if they were equal. Sorry, War and Peace is several thousand planes above Ender's Game. I just wanted to show similarities).
If you want a good war story, read any history of World War Two. If you want a beautiful and complex examination of the very soul of humanity, read War and Peace. If you want a good read that deals with the same complex personal and psychological issues that War and Peace does, but on a much more limited basis (and about 800 pages shorter), read Ender's Game. And its sequals.
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion
It was actually "Ahoy!" I think you are thinking of, not "Compute!". (Lots of exclamation points!) Since I'm still a fan of the old C64, I have a stack of both magazines not five feet away. This is also how I got into reading Card.
Ender's Game was IMHO very good, but the quality started to go downhill from there, as it does in many series. The more I enjoy a book the faster I read - I've breezed through "Ender's Game" twice, but "Children of the Mind" was like slogging through mud for me.
Len
I guess it's because books are generally cheaper than music or videos, they're often available for free in libraries or really cheap in second hand book stores. Authors tend to get a bigger cut of sales than musicians and publishers tend to be less rabid about protecting their copyrights than the organized crime which calls itself the music industry.
However, the price of books is going up, libraries are underfunded and buy fewer books lately so I think we'll be seeing more net available copyrighted works. I look forward to having a hard drive filled with sci fi.
Formic acid is the stuff that ants use to find their paths. If you draw your name in formic acid on the sidewalk you can have your name written in ants pretty soon!
I don't understand.....while Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are great reads, I always felt his crowning work was songbird. The ability to triumph through pain and adversity and the depth of soul in this book have always(will always)stay with me.
when you're up to your arse in alligators, it is difficult to remember your original job was to drain the swamp!!!!!
I actually thought that but then reread them and after the second read really liked them. Speaker for the dead especially.
I just made the mistake of reading the first 4 chapters online. I just finished the 4th chapter, and was becoming totally immersed -- ready to stay up reading until I either finished the book or was no longer coherent. But now I'm stuck having to wait until August 31st. This sucks! _Ender's Game_ is still one of my favourite novels ever. I liked the sequels, but not as much as the original. It seems that with _Ender's Shadow_ Card has returned to the style that worked so well in the original.
One unfortunate thing is that -- as others have mentioned -- _Game_ seems to be somewhat simplistic, and I'm noticing the same thing about _Shadow_. This doesn't take away my enjoyment of the novels, but it doesn't leave me that much to think about when I stop reading, and gives me a sense of unfulfillment. I hope the rest of the book is a bit more thought-provoking like Speaker and Xenocide (I haven't even read Children yet, I'm ashamed to admit), but as entertaining as EG was. So far it seems to be only the latter, but I'm not going to complain that it's not boring.
One other thing: I have this suspicious feeling that many of the people who don't like EG are likely to be die-hard Star Trek fans. Either that, or not fans of any SciFi. I am not a fan of Star Trek at all -- I just find it incredibly boring. But I can imagine that the people who are nitpicking about the lack of details in EG, or the fact that parts of the plot have "been done before" being Star Trek fans. I don't care about those things because I'm most fascinated by the characters and storytelling in Card's novels (and to some extent the themes), and not the plot or the "war story" that some people seem to think it's supposed to be.
I thought Ender's Game was an incredible book, where I thought Speaker for the Dead seemed like a lame excuse to write another Ender novel. I guess it's all opinion, and I'm not a literary critic, but Ender's Game always seemed more innovative to me.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Ender's Game was great. Speaker for the Dead was great. Xenocide was OK. Children of the Mind was, alas, crap.
Card's earlier stuff was brilliant, but lately he's getting more and more self-indulgent, writing whatever the hell will fill up a page. His editor and publisher let him get away with it because they know that no matter how bad it is, enough people will buy it and they'll make money.
Card used to be on my 'unconditional buy' list - if I saw something by him that I didn't have, I bought it. I took him off of it several years ago.
Joe D
The name "Buggers" has been replaced with "Formics" to avoid confusion with the aliens in _Starship Troopers_ for the upcoming Ender's Game movie. Apparently Card is getting fans used to the switch in this book.
For better or for worse, there is a rumor that Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker) will be playing Ender in the movie, and that Card has even re-written the script with him in mind. Should be interesting...
Just for bragging's sake, I've read _Ender's_Shadow_. A friend of mine's mother was a book dealer, so she'd come back from conventions with lots of one-offs and "do not distribute" copies. Long story short, I borrowed _Ender's_Shadow_ and read it. *VERY* good book.
It's about Bean, the little kid in Ender's squadron. It's from his point of view, and where he came from, who he is, etc. Card calls this a "parallel novel." Anyways, I thought it was more like _Ender's_Game_ than any of the sequels, mainly because some of it takes place in Battle School.
Don't read _Shadow_ before _Game_, however. _Shadow_ gives a lot of stuff away about _Game_, but not visa versa.
Rah rah rah.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
You're gonna be disapointed, but the rumor is that Card re-wrote the screenplay specifically for Jake Lloyd after meeting him and being impressed with his ability to express himself and his feelings - the original script had most of the emotional burden on the adult character (Mazor Rackham, etc) rather than Ender.
To give Jake Lloyd credit, I think a lot of the problems in Star Wars were caused by poor direction rather than his own failure as an actor. Most of the things that bugged me about the character were obviously deliberately there - the off-camera "Yipee!" when he finds out that he's leaving home, for example. One does need to remember that Star Wars IS a kid's movie, first and foremost.
However, not all movies about kids are really FOR kids... some examples that come to mind immediately are The Client, The Good Son, The Cure, Radio Flyer, or even Searching for Bobby Fischer and Stand By Me. If this is done well, and part of that means having a low enough budget that it doesn't have to be targeted directly at the PG crowd to make money, it could work.
I'm willing to give the movie a chance before writing it off completely.
xenocide is probably better than enders game..covered most of the stuff in enders game and expanded on it. the chinese "path" stuff is totally kewl.
I really really enjoyed Ender's Game, thought Speaker for the Dead was kind of weird but okay, found Xenocide interesting, but more weird than good, and haven't read past that. However, I'm looking forward to Shadow, though though I haven't read the preview chapters yet.
Leaving a bit of spoiler space for those who haven't read Xenocide here...
I suppose I couldn't get past the fact that the characters were prone to exhibit a bit of the Star Trekian "character stupidity for the sake of the plot" syndrome. I mean, they were going to turn Jane off, and she didn't even bother to try to contact people and appeal? She was the entire Internet, you know she could have pled her case to everybody in the entire network simultaneously, and perhaps gotten some grass-roots support that would have messed up the people planning to deactivate her. Instead, she just accepted it as an inevitability? They did this to one of the more interesting characters in the books...*sigh*
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I really enjoyed Ender's Game when I read it, but it was very disturbing to read this guy's non-SF views.
I've read Enders Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Ender's game was pure brilliance. The other three didn't quite work as whole books in themselves. They got really damn boring in some spots, but overall they were above average stories. After reading the first four chapters of Ender's Shadow avalible on OSC's web site, this book looks like it may add fresh life to the series.
.. I see there's going to be an Enders Game movie supposedly. Without a doubt, I get the bad feeling it's going to suck, and bad. Although I'm glad to see they've got Jake Lloyd fingered out as Ender. After seeing him in Star Wars you can tell he's got great ability, as long as he's not fed a crap script.
Personally after Speaker For The Dead, I got pretty damn bored with Ender, and enjoyed more th the characters Card went to build around him. Valentine and Peter proved much more interesting. Bean's a questionable subject to choose for a full length book, but so far it looks like it should work.
After skimming the thread here
This guy is really running out of ideas. Every time he writes a new book I read it and have less and less respect for him every time. I should have just stopped on Enders Game when I still thought he was a decent writer.
I agree with you. I read Ender's Game after it had been out for sometime, and I found that it wasn't all it was cut out to be. The characters were generally unlikeable i.e. smart but obnoxious kids, and the concept seemed a bit stale by the time I read it.
I thought Speaker for the Dead was a much stronger work; much more morally challenging.
I found the sequel to SFTD, Xenocide, with its pseudo-Chinese mysticism completely unreadable. I couldn't bear reading more than a few pages of that.
If you think that the "Hypocrites of Homosexuality" essay from Sunstone (reprinted in "A Storyteller in Zion") claims that gays should not be considered human, than you need to practice your reading comprehension, with a special note towards knowing the intended audience.
This has come up before both in alt.books.orson-scott-card and in rec.arts.sf.written before, you may wish to check deja, as I don't want to rehash this here if I can avoid it.
Well, in terms of its stature as a work of literature, an English prof I had seemed to think it is one of the best SciFi books ever written. (shrug) Now, I'm not much of an artsy person myself, and am not able to appreciate good literature the way some people are. But one thing that clearly stands out in Card's work is the strength of his characters. I have not read many books where the characters are as well developed as they are in the Ender series.
:)
Who cares if the factual details are not as accurate as they could be, or if there are some things you might consider "lame"? You can pick nits with just about any work of science fiction I've ever seen. Good SciFi just does a better job of suspending disbelief. When I was reading the Ender series, I was so immersed in the characters and themes in the novels that I didn't notice any subtle flaws that might have been there.
So yes, you are losing your mind.
Get a clue. This is exactly the type of story that Kubrick wouldn't touch. He carried Traumnovelle in his head for years, and who would have thought of making any Thackeray novel into a film? No offense to Card, whom I love, or Ender's Game, which I have read too many times to defend the time spent on this book, but Kubrick didn't go much for pop sci-fi. Hint: he probably wouldn't have wanted to film Starship Troopers, either.
Natalie Portman rules. Check her out in Beautiful Girls. Despite her performance in TPM, she can really act. Remember, even an acting God like Vincent D'Onofrio got stuck in movies like Mystic Pizza from time to time.
If you think that OSC is homophobic, then you ought to read his book, Treason. Or the Homecoming series. In reality, Card's SF works are very thought provoking and liberal considering that he is also quite a religious man.
Also, both Card and C.S. Lewis are far from fundamentalist in their faith, unless you have some other definition of "fundamentalist." Lewis himself was atheist until 1929, but later became a Christian apologist. Unlike fundamentalists, Lewis completely avoided sectarian disputes in favor of core doctrines.
As for Card's religion, Fundamentalist Christians openly ridicule, and ultimately reject it. Not to say that there is no element of "fundamental" Christian beliefs in these men, but it is one thing to disagree with, say, the practice of homosexuality; and another thing to be a homophobe.
Next to the Gunslinger Series by SK... and maybe the Stand. Ender's Game really messes with your head.
"Check yo self foo!"
-- Beastie Boys
Corndog
Xenocide sucked the farts out of dead cats. It was such a big step down from Speaker for the Dead or the first two Alvin Maker books that I stopped reading Card entirely...
Criticizing Ender's Game because you only like so-called "hard"--i.e. technology oriented--science fiction isn't valid. You might as well moan about all non-SF books that are clogging up bookstores. Down with everything except Star Trek novels! :P
If there's one think the geek world could use a bit of, it's humanity. Yes, computers/Linux/astronomy/Simpsons are cool. But certainly a little more well-roundedness would be beneficial, both for the obvious reason and because one tends to get skewed opinions when living on a diet of mass market pop culture. Perhaps this is where goofy ideas like "There's no need to make Linux easier to use" come from.
Ender's Game is a descent, fast-paced Young Adult SF novel, but little more. It really functions more as an exercise in adolescent button-pushing. Someone once said that reading Ender's Game was like reading Atlas Shrugged and listening to Rush, letting 14 year old boys everywhere go: "Everyone hates me because I'm a GENIUS!"
It's obvious that the Ender's world is not the far future, but 1983 in drag. There's NONE of the extropilation of technology into the fabric of everyday life that appeared in the works of cyberpunks like Gibson and Sterling. (You should read what Card wrote about the cyberpunks back in the 1980s. He missed the point then and he's still bitter about it now.) We see Ender's family, the battle school--and nothing else about the society he lives in. As far as inspiring computer developments, go back and read it: "hackers" in his future made embarassing messages scroll across their nemesis's screen. (Can you say TRS-80? I knew you could...) Not exactly cutting edge.
Ender's Game was a tremendously popular novel. However, in the long run it has not proven to be a terribly significant novel.
- Lawrence Person
http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
Since others have mentioned other of Card's works, here are my picks for his best:
Ender's Game of course, which is arguably his best work. The best parts, those that made me cry in rereading it this afternoon after reading the chapters of the new book, are straight from the original novella. The fleshing out into a novel to provide more motivation for Ender in the sequel doesn't make it any less powerful. It's one of the seminal works of modern science fiction.
Speaker for the Dead in many ways stands alone, despite being part of the Ender series. In addition to the very human subplot about a family torn apart in tragedy and reunited by the love of an outsider, it's fundamentally about humans trying to establish contact with an alien species. One of the key concepts from it, the Demosthenian Heirarchy of Exclusion, is a powerful tool for thinking about what separates us from aliens.
The Memory of Earth and Seventh Son are the first and best books of his Homecoming and Alvin Maker series. I like them both over the later entries because of the brilliantly realized settings (a city on another planet millions of years in the future and an alternate 18th century America where magic works, respectively).
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is one of the few books I've read that addresses the moral and ethical issues of time travel. It also serves as the fiction equivalent of Guns, Germs, and Steel in trying to answer the question of "Why did history turn out the way it did?"
The novella "The Originist" was written for Friends of Foundation, an anthology to celebrate Isaac Asimov's 50th anniversary of writing, and is set on Trantor during the time of Hari Seldon. It's a touching work that considers how storytelling provides a chain of continuity to history.
And, since this is a place where freely available source code is a favored topic of discussion, I should mention that I first encountered Card's writing in an old Commodore-64 magazine called Ahoy!, where he had a monthly programming column, usually with working code to type in. In particular, I fondly remember the Gypsy Starship game from the Dec. 1984 issue, which his storytelling even in making a computer game.
Colinwould love to, cut you some slack...
just put $3,125.00 in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. One of our Underground Agents will contact you shortly.
looking for more slack? try www.subgenus.com right NOW!
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
As a SF fan, I found Ender's game excellent, but the rest of the series boring. The other novels published (that I spent money on) were forgetable. That's why I quit wasting my time with his novels, maybe Card will move back to something I like.
When did Brian get an InterCap?
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
Enders game was about Vietnam .. OSC went to vietnam (correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty damm sure) .. so I'd say that he does understand war pretty well... :)
First post!
Deepak Saxena
Project Director, Linux Demo Day '99
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
Personally, I'm already queued to get Shadow. Loved the original's so much that I just had to get this. Got a local mob that flys out everything the day it is released and only cost A$1 more for the privilege. Hmmm... can't wait!
Just to add one more rambling point - I'd love to see another view of the universe that looks from Peter's and Valerie's perspectives. There's a big hole there about how Peter became Hegemon and Ender the Speaker for the Dead that I'm dying to find out what happened.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Actually, there are four books (well, five now with Ender's Shadow), and the third book, Xenocide, takes off right where Speaker for the Dead ends , and the same goes for the 4th book, Children of the Mind, which picks up where Xenocide leaves off. Don't just get half the story! Pick up a copy today!
Yes, I feel like a cheap salesman, but cut me some slack; this is the only chance we'll ever have of plugging these books and proclaiming publically with pride that we've read them, and then finding others who feel the same way. So, put a four pronged eating utensil into my physical manifestation, I am completed.
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion
Ender's Game was a good book but the following two seemed rather too psycologically twisted [boring]. I hope this one is better...
Wow! No one I have ever met in person has read (or even heard of) Ender's Game!
(as far as I know. I don't instantly ask people if they've read Ender's Game. "Dave, this is my boyfirend Fred." "Hi Fred. Have you read Ender's Game?")
ANYWAY, decent books, (2 of 'em), and I guess the first time I read 'em I didn't notice this (when was that? mid-late 80's I guess) but then I read 'em again in '93 and I was like "Hey! That's the newsgroups they are talking about!" but now, it really was the WWW, wasn't it? (maybe not.. that was 6 years ago last I read them)
Any way, here's this way future society, and the internet is basically still the same (except, of course, that it's instantanious transmission from one human-settled planet to another...)
DISCLAIMER:
It was a freakin' long time ago when I read these books, AND I am buzzin nicely, AND I just saw Blair Witch and I am still a little FREAKED OUT by it, so take my comments with that in mind. I may not be 100% accurate in my recall.
-geekd
Forgot to mention this; read this section of the CNN article and see if this sounds strange to anyone (you would have to have read the book before of course):
"...Ender's Game," the Hugo and Nebula winning book, is an amazing piece of science fiction. Earth had barely escaped being invaded by the Formics twice before. In mankind's darkest hour, Ender Wiggin, a reluctant 10-year-old hero, comes forward to lead humanity's space fleet against the Formics in a daring battle to save the Earth..."
The Formics? The insecticoid alien race in Ender's Game that Ender and his comrades fought against were called the Buggers....so what's the deal?
Just a little General Confusion, nothing to be really worried about. I'd be more worried about General Chaos. He's a dick.
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion
How come OCR hasn't struck harder on sci-fi
literature? I mean if William Gibson came out with
a novel tomorrow, wouldn't lots of slashdotters
consider reading it on a screen.
Now, the only copy righted works I could find
is the complete Hitchhikers Guide and Neuromancer.
I figured there would be more interest, though
anyone trying to read a book on a computer
would probably go and buy the book instead
sooner or later.
This series of books is one of the greatest I have ever read (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind). In fact, I just finished reading the cycle again a few months ago, right in time for this new addition. Orson Scott Card is a great author, and although these books may be considered the crown jewel of his accomplishments thus far, he has many other fine works in publication (The Harmony series, The Worthing Saga, many more than I could name within a reasonable amount of space). A highly recommended author for anyone who is looking for a thought provoking/entertaining experience. But don't just take my word for it! (ba-da-bump!)
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion
No...but Rowan Atkinson was very good in Bean :-)
Somehow, I always identified with Alai more than any other character in Ender's Game. I just sat down and read the 4 new chapters, and the new book looks good (I'll probably uy it), but I wish it was about Alai instead.
The interesting thing I saw about Alai is a character that you simply don't see in fiction anywhere: a fully-functional kid who is nonetheless brilliant, yet is content to give the spotlight to someone else. If anything, I think Alai is more of the "mother" figure for Ender than even his sister.
I never really wanted to be Ender. He was too fucked up. Alai on the other hand, was brilliant, and both much more personable and functional as a human being.
While I'm sure the story about Bean is going to be good (based on the sample), I can't help wonder but if the story will end up much too similar to the original in tone and viewpoint. I think Card missed an opportunity to write about the topic from a completely different perspective, rather than one that was only incrementally different.
-Erik
PS - I find that Ender's Game and The Hobbit both suffer the same fate - the original book was so outstanding that it appealed (and was accessible) to both children and adults. The follow-on trilogies, while excellent in their own right, were much more complex pieces, and I think alot of kids got turned off to them because they weren't so accessible, and never returned to read them as an adult, much to their loss...
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I was at Media Play the other day and noticed that they have a sign up to reserve copies... It asks for Name, Address, Phone, and number of copies and also says that the book will be out Aug, 31. Woo-hoo!! I don't know why anyone would need to reserve copies in a smallish town in TN, guess they just ship the display to all stores. Has anyone else heard rumors about a movie? A friend of mine at an unamed (cough..regal) cinema mentioned something, but they said it was rumor.... I didn't wait in line for star wars, but if Enders Game came out in theaters, I would work at one again just to see it before everyone else.
I was reading about the film that's going to be made of Ender's Game, and they did a quick synopsis of the plot, and they casually gave away the final relevation as if it was an obvious plot point. Maybe in the film it will be, and it'll be given away much earlier, but I really hope not, and considering how powerful it is when you read it and are surprised by it, it was bastardly of them to do it.
Not simply "deeply religious", he's deeply homophobic. I've read his pieces for the Mormon magazine (Somerset? something like that) where he flat out claims that gays should not be considered human and should not be tolerated in society. Period.
I would be very intersted in seeing this piece. He has had gay characters in his book (Zdorab from the Homecoming series comes to mind), and I didn't see anything that would suggest this attitude. Have you read Ships of Earth?
I think Enders Game stood apart from the end of the series. Card said that he rewrote the book to be an intoduction for Speaker for the Dead, but I think the book stands out becasue Ender is forced to act without truly knowing what he is capable of at that point. The weight of responibility in later books leads to more philosophical discussion.
I really would like to read another book about the events taking place in the battleschool. I just hope Card can write them from a perspective that wouldn't repeat (or even worse invalidate) events taking place in Enders Game.
I first picked up Ender's Games in the library about eight years ago. I was looking for something to read and found something written by this guy who used to write some cool articles in COMPUTE! I've since read EVERY one of his books that I could get my hands on
That is because Card's strength is his characters. He gets in their heads and lets us know what is going on. Of SF authors, I think he is the best at that.
His worlds seem crafted more for their effect on the characters than for their own sake. I don't think you can do both. Not sure why.
--Last Exit To Babylon
I have read other Bender books more than once, and I'm sure I'll read this one again.
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
Way back in 8th grade i had won a copy of Ender's
Game from the school news paper and i have to say
it is by far my favorite sci-fi book. As many others have already
said the rest of the books were more grown up (i think
i should re-read them actually), but i'm uber-excited
for this new book!!!!!!!
There's also a fairly positive homosexual main character in Songmaster, as I recall. One of the older, more obscure works, anyway.
I can't believe my eyes as I read all the "ender's game is great" posts. I figure I've read thousands of sci-fi books and it's down there with the worst. How can anyone read any of Heinlein's 30 or so good books (yes, some of his late stuff is pathetic) or Asimov's Steel Caves trilogy and Foundation or.. Hell, it doesn't feel right to compare Ender's game to *these* books. Scifi genre is so full of shit BUT I still can't name a book that would be much worse than Ender's game. The post I'm replying to pointed out a few things; it's really hard for me to point out something because the book was all fuck*d up. Like, the way he "showed 'em" how much of a genius he is at one of the games where he pretended he's 'knocked out' and suddenly started shootin' out of the blue.. OH GOD, what a genius. Einstein should be jealous. Compare that with Heinlein's Starship Troopers for instance (not the movie, please, the book!). Sheesh. Now, the discussion groups.. he deserves some credit there, but as a work of literature,
the book is quite pathetic. Now, somebody please tell me.. Is there anybody here who read the books that I listed here and really really thinks ender's game is up there with them? Am I losing my mind?
- Rainy
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
That _isn't_ the primary theme in either Ender's Game or this new book (judging from the sample) so, if I may ask, what exactly is your point? The actual theme of Ender's Game is truly well done.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh, and this isn't directed at you specifically. I just don't see why, every time an author or book, or movie, comes up here on Slashdot, there's a bunch of people eager to say "I think it sucks" or "I don't like it" or "this is flawed because". It's as if they're trying to say, "I'm better than all you people who like it, because I'm smart enough to see that, in truth, it sucks." Can't you accept that it might really have some worth that you don't see? I just can't understand this attitude. It's easier to criticize, but truly enjoying a work of art is more fulfilling.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
None of the books following Ender's Game need to exist. They are all terribly boring.
I haven't read what he wrote for the Mormons, but the assertion that he's deeply homophobic is definitely not true. He has homosexual characters in his works that are portrayed very positively. Read The Ships of Earth for one example.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
This does not deserve to be -1. It is obviously not "Offtopic" and it's not written to be inflammatory so I can only conclude that it's been bumped down because someone doesn't agree with it. But it doesn't even say anything, so there isn't anything to disagree with, unless you're allergic to hypothetical questions. It is an interesting thought, and it isn't intended to suggest that Card is a pedophile. Think before you moderate, if at all possible.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Songmaster: "You're a mathemetician. Trends, statistics. I'm sixty percent attracted to men, thirty percent attracted to women, and ten percent attracted to sheep."
I read Ender's Game and the three sequels during the same month, and that was a mistake. Orson Scott Card repeats himself too much in the latter books, and you get the feeling, that he thinks you can't remember what happend 700 pages previously. THAT was the most anoying factor in the sequels.
...and it IS number 2 on the Internet top 100 SF/Fantacy list :-)
So I guess that there are a couple of people out there, who's read the book
You know, I feel exactly the same way about OSC... I read a few of his books and enjoyed them a lot, especially _Speaker for the Dead_. I don't know... when I find a good author I tend to think of him or her as a sort of friend, so learning about his his anti-gay article ("The Hypocrites of Homosexuality", published in some Mormon journal), it really made me feel betrayed in a way. Now I just don't have any motivation to pick up a book by him, new or old. So, this is partly an emotional reaction on my part, though I also like to say that I'm consciously boycotting him.
And yeah, I share your misgivings about whether or not his politics should affect my reaction to his work. But I sometimes think that the word "politics" is misused to justify homophobia... as if somehow being disgusted at someone's racism could also be described as a disapproval of their "politics".
As many people here noted, and as I explain in detail in my review of the series, Ender's series suffers from a problem of decreasing quality. The first book (Ender's Game) was fantastic, the sequels less so; the last one (Children of the Mind) was downright bad.
I can only hope Ender's Shadow will not suffer from the same problem, and prove to be a good book. The CNN reviewer forsees a Hugo/Nebula in its future... but is it just me, or do Hugo and Nebula awards don't stand for much lately?
- Tal Cohen
Personally, I really hope this is as excellent as Ender's Game (the novel, I have not yet read the original novella), but I'm not holding my breath. The problem is that Card has been wandering into a sort of "abuse the main character when plot fails" sort of mode that has made series like the Call of Earth books and *cough* the Alvin Maker books quite unreadable. Alvin Maker especially bothered me because it was such a briliantly simple idea that showed such promise. For those who haven't read the series, it's late 1800s US where many (if not everyone) have magical tallents that range from being able to make a better shoe than the technology should allow to healing the sick. Card begins the first book with a full head of steam and really brings the reader into the world. But, as the books drag on, all we get is more and more abuse of the main chraracter; this sort of "growth only comes through pain" melodrama that does not allow us to explore this facsinating world at all (in fact in one book he outright admits that he really only wants to explore one town, expounding on the contributiuons to the local citizenry that he got from the Internet).
Enough about Alvin, here's hoping that Card will return to his master-writer form, and give us a book that will wash away everything between Ender's Game and now!
Orson Scott Card is one of those authors that before I even finished reading the first book by him I knew he was going to be one of my all time favorites. He is right up there on my list with Frank Herbert, Neal Stephenson, Asimov, Heinlein, et. al.
It is a fine day indeed to hear the news that Card is going to revisit the milieu of Ender and his cohorts.
hasty la via on out of here
correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the
battle school in ender's game somewhat brutal?
wasn't ender forced to kill some of his classmates
with his bare hands? I think it is strange that
OSC and others seem to think that ender's game
is a children's book.
I was just reading the other comments here, and I started to wonder something: Am I the only person who feels that a movie based on Ender's Game would be extremely hard to watch?
All of the main characters are younger than 14 for pretty much the whole story, and unlike all the tv shows and movies where they throw twenty-something year old in as high schoolers, they would need to use fairy young actors and (2) actresses. Let's see.. Supporting characters who can't really be dropped from the movie... Petra, Bonzo, Alai, Bean, (the older guy who was friends with Petra), a few others who have names I cannot recall. Valentine/Peter -could- be ignored in the movie.
Movies like that tend to be somewhat hard to bear. Take the more recent of the two movies based on The Lord of the Flies. This -is- my opinion, but.. it was brutal. I'm somewhat afraid that a movie on Ender's Game would be much the same. As the movie "Dune" is to the book. Watchable in its own right at best, a mockery of the book at worse.
Dozens of ~6 to ~14 year olds running around in a movie that probably can't help but turn itself into one aimed at children. And in a children's movie, can Ender kill two people and remain the hero?
To sum it up.. I liked this book enough so that I would never have wished for a movie to be based on it.
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I, like many others, didn't find children of the mind to be incredibly gripping stuff. I remember when first reading Ender's Game, I couldn't put it down, but the sequels didn't live up to it.
But on another note entirely, OSC's short story collection "The Changed Man" will absolutely rivet you if you like reading, period. It includes some -very- dark stuff, which isn't something I expected from OSC.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
And now... the Ender's Game Movie CAST FROM HELL
Ender: Jake Lloyd
Valentine: Natalie Portman
Peter: Jim Carrey
Mazer Rackham: Pauly Shore
The Buggers: The Gungans (as in Jar Jar Binks)
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I read and enjoyed Ender's Game, but didn't love it so much that I had to run out and read Speaker for the Dead.
Then the fan press erupted into a hoo-hah. Card, a Mormon, had written a very homophobic article for the Church press. Others picked up on it and villified him. I have no idea what net effect, if any, this had on his sales.
There are some authors I avoid because I find their beliefs repugnant, and these beliefs infuse their work, making it unreadable to me. A pot of message, stirred too hard, makes a work unpalatable no matter what the message is (c.f. C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle, a dismal end to an otherwise delightful series), but even a light touch of fundamentalist beliefs will ruin a book for me.
Card doesn't do this. I haven't found his work offensive in that way. However, after reading his anti-gay article, I found that I just wasn't interested in anything else the man had to say. I haven't read one of his books since and don't intend to.
What about others? Any of you out there find yourselves unwilling to read otherwise good literature because the author holds beliefs you find repugnant?
Ender's game was one of my all-time favorite stories when I was in 5th grade. Orson Scott Card is one of those people that really get it when it comes to being a gifted kid. A lot of adults hated it because they insisted it was not at all like being a gifted kid, which struck me as ironic since it most certainly is. And it definately would not make a watchable movie.
If it were made into a movie, any attempt to aim it todard an audience the age of the characters would be a Bad Thing. It would ruin the whole point of the book. The actors would have to look like little kids, but talk and act at least twice their age. There would also have to be some very effective techniques of getting the audience into the mind of Ender so they can really see where he is coming from, otherwise he would be one very unlikable character. Parents and the mass media would not know what to think. The "moralists" would fear the movie because they would say it corrupts kids' "fragile little minds".
I can't even begin to describe how awesome that book was, though. I say leave it as a book. I don't know how the idea of a movie even came up, since the discussion started about a book from bean's POV. That would be a cool book, though not a whole lot different from Ender's Game, because Bean was basically the same as Ender, but a few years younger.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Like you, I really disliked Ender's Game.
The first rule a fiction writer learns is "show, don't tell." Instead of telling the reader "Al became very sad," you write, "Al's eyes welled up with tears." But throughout Ender's Game, I was constantly being told how brilliant and wonderful and heroic little Ender really was. (That was much easier on Card than for Ender to behave like a child genius.) I wanted to see how Ender's awesome strategy defeated the bugs, not just hear about his tremendous pattern-recognition skills. Was attacking feet-first and playing dead the best Card could do? Yawn.
The book had several problems beyond that. For one, lack of credibility. Ender's solution to every problem was to violently kill his aggressor then mope about it afterwards. That was genius? There was as much heroism in his victories as there is in a James Bond movie -- no opponent truly challenges him, no situation overpowers him, no limitations on ordinary human beings apply to him. The Karate Kid had more suspense than this book.
For a believable story of a genius military strategist in a little boy's body, read Harry Harrison's incredible "The Hammer and the Cross." For a James Bond-style pulp sci-fi adrenaline rush, read the same author's "Stainless Steel Rat" series. But please don't read this.
It is really too bad about Kubrick, because Ender's Game is just the type story that would make a GREAT Kubrick film. Since that's obviously not possible, what other filmmakers would be good for a story like that? Anyone know?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
The bright-kids-anonymously-controlling-the-world subplot was done before (and better) in Wilmar Shiras' "In Hiding" back in the fifties (the story is in the SF Hall of Fame series).
:-)
Of course, superkids had to communicate by snail mail in those days, no Slashdot
While Ender's game certainly gets the most publicity, I feel that the later books in the series are far better. It is quite evident that Ender's Game is a book that was expanded from a short story into a novel. 'Speaker for the Dead' on the other hand was a more complex book and certainly a more interesting read.
I mean, if you want to read about war and technology, and warriors under battle conditions - go read Tom Clancy, or even Robert Ludlum who (sarcastic mode on) writes good science fiction (sarcastic mode off). 'Speaker for the Dead' and the subsequent books have more of a story and are much more well written than 'Enders Game'.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I don't think Peter and Valentine could be removed... The whole Locke and Demosthenese thing aside, Peter and Valentine provide almost all the motivation for what Ender does. Ender constantly checks himself against Peter. And when Ender loses faith, it's a visit from Valentine that brings him back. And to a lesser extent, Peter becoming the Hegemony is part of the reason why Ender can't return Earth. And it needs to be explained how Peter comes to power somehow. I think the movie would have some pretty big holes in Ender's character if Peter + Valentine were removed.
In thinking that Enders Game was not that great a book? Seems to me that OSC really doesn't understand children and war enough to be writing books with them in it. I mean, the whole notion of him being a genius at "stategy" is dubious at best, and his brother and sister using the "internet" to start a revolution on earth is complete BS. It seemed to me he really struggled to make their combat games seem exciting...
Also, the beginning sequence where they had that implant which was used to judge if he was "the one"... phooey! Come on! "The chosen one!" Like that hasn't been done a billion times before and after.
I must give credit to OSC for a good ending though, he demonstrates something many sci-fi books often gloss over: to BOTH sides in war, the OTHER side is "evil" and out to destroy them, and of course, the winner writes the history books.