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Ender's Shadow
Like most geeks of my age, I greatly enjoyed the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. This book describes the story of a child (named Ender) who is selected at the age of six for special training to lead an army against an alien species. Ender, like most geeks, experienced profound isolation from most of his contemporaries -- in part because of his exceptional intelligence.
Ender's Game was followed by three sequels. None of the sequels were as good as the original; in them, Ender lost his edge and became a relatively moderate man rather than a brilliant child. Because of this, I was frankly not expecting much from Card's latest attempt. Especially Since Ender's Shadow does something that is almost unprecedented in fiction: it re-tells the events of Ender's Game from the perspective of a relatively minor character in Ender's Game.
My first thought when I heard the premise of this book was "Oh no... Card has turned into another Piers Anthony". I thought that Card was probably beating a great story and a good fictional "universe" to death by trying to go to the bank with it too many times.
I was pleasently surprised. While Ender's Shadow recounts the same basic events reported in Ender's Game, it does them in a genuinely fresh manner; from a fresh point of view. When Robert Heinlein tried to retell stories in his later books, the result was always horrible, hackneyed plots. Card has succesfully avoided this pitfall, mainly by adding substantial original material not found in Ender's Game. This book doesn't just try to connect with Ender's Game. It has its own story to tell.
Most importantly, this book is not about Ender Wiggin: it is about Bean. It starts with Bean, as a child of around four ("he thinks") on the streets of Rotterdam. The first section of the book gives us a glimpse of Bean's life as a child, without parents, on the streets of Rotterdam. It is not long before Bean is under mortal danger from an older child on the streets, and is fortunate enought to make his way into Battle School through little more than good luck.
In Battle School, Bean is like a second Ender. He is as bright as Ender. However, unlike Ender, Bean is isolated from the students and in league with the teachers. It is made clear throughout that Bean is the second string; that he is there in case Ender fails and his primary task is often to make sure that Ender does not fail.
This arrangement brings out Card's peculiar genius as writer: writing about brilliant children in a way that is actually reminiscient of what brilliant children have actually experienced. Bean, like most geeks, experiences profound isolation. Yet, somehow he thrives on this. Some of his abilities (for example a remarkable ability for logical induction) remind me of the things which isolated me in my youth.
The bottom line is that I enjoyed Ender's Shadow for the same reasons that I enjoyed Ender's Game: great writing, good plot, and excellent characters. Most of all, like its predecessor, Ender's Shadowreminds me that I am not in fact alone in the memories of my school years; that at least one writer must have experienced the isolation that I felt because he can write about it so well.
Dave Hauser (boog3r)'s Review
I think the hardest part about writing a review on a good SciFi book is that you can't candidly discuss details on the subject matter. You end up with a nice paradox: How to convince the reader the book was actually good without telling much about the subject matter. You must instead rely upon the delivery and tale-weaving skill of the author while glossing over the details of the first twenty pages of the book for bait.
My experience with Card's writing is not complete, but what stories of his I have managed to read have sent my imagination places few other authors have managed. Heinlein and Card both take my mind and heart for great roller coaster rides through a menagerie of worlds. Ender's Shadow is what you might call a 'synquel' to Ender's Game. It takes the life of Bean and tells the same tale through his eyes. An interesting and very daunting task considering the magnitude of Ender's game. I believe Card delivered with a full platter, maybe out-doing Ender's Game a little too much.
Bean is a small child living in poverty on the streets of a futuristic Rotterdam. He is a boy with an interesting history and an even more interesting future. Facing certain starvation he joins a 'family' comprised of other maligned children formed on the street and rides the wave to a spot in Battle School. While there he learns about, studies and eventually meets and befriends the star of Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin. They unite in a quest to tame Battle School and prepare for a war against the 'Buggers' or Formics, a species of insectoids governed by a hive mind. Throughout the book there are numerous intertwinings, embellishments and explanations of events from Ender's Game; but told from a different viewpoint so as to be completely new. If it has been a while since you have read Ender's Game, much of it will be new and you will find yourself looking for that old, beat up copy you have lying around.
Downs
If anything might be wrong with this book it is the power Card bestows upon Bean. From what you get out of the first book it seems Ender is the main man running the show, he is the commander and the others are subordinates (not to mention good friends). I can't be sure if it was indeed Card's plan to elaborate on Ender's story and place Bean as the glue-holding-everyone-together. In many ways Bean eclipses Ender in certain skills but they both have their own independent strong points.
One thing Card should have incorporated was hyperlinks to corresponding passages between the two books. I'll be looking eagerly for this...
Ups
This book rocks! It paints a whole new picture of a world many of us love and cleans up a canvas that was already subjected to the brush. Card deftly intertwines a new story into an old and meshes them together into a new entity. A lot of work went into cross-referencing the two story lines and then individual quotes. Card even went to the trouble of adding new insight on characters that appear later in the series as having had contact with Bean during his stint on the streets of Rotterdam.
Slants
I admire Card himself through his writings, it warms me to think there are people who try to write without bias on a certain subject when advantage can be taken. If Card is guilty of this commonality I see it mainly as altruism on his part, trying to improve humanity in his small part through his books. One undertone does surface through most of his books: faith or religion. Parts of his stories will almost always have a thought on faith or theology. Sometimes it is educational in nature, rarely is it preachy. More often it enhances and adds to the story where other authors might use it to thump the proverbial soapbox.
In the Future
If Card is willing and imparts upon us a new volume in the Ender Saga, I would love a telling of the political intrigue Demosthenes and Locke play and how Achilles becomes a weak link in the Russian play for power.
Purchase this book at Amazon
I don't know about the rest of you.... But I don't agree with J. Narkinsky's comment about R. A. Heinlein's later books being horrible. I think that is just plain crap. RAH never wrote anything that was even near being horrible in his unfortunately short life. If we didn't get a second opinion from Dave (who I agree with), I don't think that I would have bothered taking a look at Shadow..... Me :P
by Beverly Clearly. It tells the same story as one of the Henry Huggins books, but from the "bully"'s perspective--including the taunting from the "victim" in the other book.
by Beverly Clearly. It tells the same story as one of the Henry Huggins books, but from the "bully"'s perspective--including the taunting from the "victim" in the other book.
:)
It ends up as a different story, for some reason
I read the novella years before the novell. It just focused on the school, not the family issues. The story is much more effective in that format.
:) The only one I can think of that improved is Katherine Kurtz first series.
If I ever write a famous short story, remind me not to turn it into a novel
Man, we must have the same tastes. I can't say that I like much of anything else Greg Bear wrote - but Eon just took my mind for a long, long trip away from anything remotely resembling reality.
Of course, Ender's Game was far from the first Sci Fi book I ever read.
I recently re-read it, and enjoyed it a lot, though I kind of cringe at the mental clarity given to a six year old boy - it almost seemed as if "ultra-genius" was a crutch used by an adult author to get into the mind of a supposed child. I'll be disappointed if the same treatment is used for Bean in Ender's Shadow.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Hmm... Y'know, I am 27 years old, happily married with a 2 year old son (who already loves computers), active in my church with more friends than I can possibly make time for, making an obscene amount of money ... NOW.
But that does not change the fact that I spent the first 18 years of my life being deliberately tormented and isolated. It cannot remove the instinctive "curl-up and hide" reflex that I have whenever I'm faced with a large group of people in a social environment. It can't change that whenever I go to a party I feel nervous and out-of-control because the first party I went to I got my ass kicked.
If my life were a failure, then that would be a whine, an excuse. My life has NOT been a failure -- so it is not whining to acknowledge the pain that I experienced.
In fact, it's probably healthy to acknowledge it. Oh yeah -- I've never been much into games, and one of my major pastimes in high school was long-distance backpacking. Hardly the stereo-typical "pasty geek" that you allude to.
In other words, stop the stereo-type.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I can't address the topic of the possible movie, since I don't know anything about it, but I don't really think that a book like this is due to mercenary tendancies.
:)
Whenever you have a book that is as interesting as Ender's game was, there are all kinds of questions not only about the characters, but about the world that the author created in the book that don't get resolved. Hell, if they were resolved, then every fantasy/sci fi book that created itself a new universe would be extremely long.
With a shift in perspective, you get another look at the same universe, the same events within the book, and I find that type of thing extremely valuable. While I haven't read this new book yet, I think that I'll probably enjoy it quite a bit because I enjoyed Ender's Game and I remember wondering about many different aspects that weren't explained in the book.
Creativity and art has everything to do with looking at things from different perspectives, and I think that's what Card is probably doing. Or at least, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now - at least until I start seeing Ender beanie babies, ender t-shirts, and ender glow in the dark boxers in every store on the planet.
David
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
From what I have read of the Homecoming series (The Memory of Earth), I have determined that it is simply a paralell of the Book of Mormon in a futuristic setting. It startled me, formerly being a Mormon, and not expecting such a theme.
[]
I suggest that Card is a genuine Mormon.
There are many who (at times rightly) criticize the Utah Mormons for their oddities. Or rather, for the difficulty which some of us have understanding life in the "real" world (if I may use the phrase).
I suggest that this is due more to the Mormon culture than the Mormon religion. Many of us are only Mormon because our parents and grandparents were. This seems to be the same in any religion.
However, in the case of Orson Scott Card, and indeed even C.S. Lewis, these men know why they are religious. If more of us were that way, I'll bet there would be a lot less religious strife in the world.
Oh - and as for beer in Utah, you are right that it is not easy to come by at lunch time. However, I have a good friend who visits sometimes on business. The only souvinirs he has brought back with him have been tee-shirts from our various Utah breweries which, according to him, are not bad at all.
Orson Scott Card came to a local bookstore and did a book signing. Before he started signing everyones books, he got up and took questions from the gathered crowd. Some of the interesting things he mentioned are:
- He just finished a screen play of Ender's Game and is looking for a producer for it. If this movie is made, he hopes that Ender's Shadow will be filmed at the same time.
- There will be a follow on to Ender's Shadow.
- There will be a book about Petra's perspective on the events in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.
Those are the main points. I certainly hope that if he does a book on Petra, that he does a wonderful a job with it as he did with Ender's Shadow. As far as the movie(s), I can't wait to see them!
Note: I am a hardcore R.A.H.. fan from way back. My senior (high school) term paper was a comprehensive overview of the works of Heinlein. :^) Just because the man was a giant and a pioneer in SF doesn't mean that he couldn't write crap at times, though. My NSHO is that he got very self-indulgent in his last years.
Yah. The first 2/3 was fun, and I really liked the characters. [Spoiler alert] When I picked it up, I had the misfortune to flip it open, and saw the name "Jubal" mentioned, which raised my hopes too much for the book. Jubal Harshaw was one of my favorite characters from Stranger in a Strange Land. But by the time we got to him, the "all-universes-converge--all-stories-are-true--let -me-pull-in-characters-from-my-old-books " had lost its appeal.
I Will Fear No Evil . Not one of Heinlein's better books, I agree.
R.A.H. can claim somewhat of a medical excuse for some of his work -- for several years, he had partially blocked carotid arteries, which put him in a state of continual oxygen deprivation of the brain. I've heard a story that, after he got the operation to have his arteries cleaned out, he looked at some of his recent books and said "I wrote what?! But he can't claim that excuse for To Sail Beyond the Sunset .
Card's novel "Lost Boys" (no relation to the vampire movie) is worth reading to gain a better insight towards his Mormon beliefs and how they affect his writing. The book is, at times, a little dense in its moral introspection, but is well written and an interesting change of pace from his other novels. The story concerns a Mormon family who moves to the east coast when the narrator (the father) gets a job as a computer game programmer. Much of the book is about the family trying to face the challenges of their new life, but there's also a fantasy/supernatural plot twist than lends an eerie edge to the whole thing. It's not my favorite of Card's books, but is well written and is worth reading just for the excellent depiction of the early 80's personal computer scene (Atari 800/C64/Apple ][).
Overall, I have a lot of respect for Card and the way he expresses his beliefs -- even when he is on the verge of being heavy-handed, he never proselytyzes or insults the reader's intelligence
Of course there are commercial motivations for any professional author - it's bread and butter as well as art. But Ender's Shadow is also the latest and most ambitious expression of a motif that runs through much of Card's work - that it isn't the words that are important, but the story. OSC has written is several places about how changing the words doesn't change the story, that reshaping a story through different perspectives can add a lot. The Ender's Game novel is simply an expansion of an Ender's Game short story. The Alvin Maker books have strong parallels to certain American/Mormon historical figures. Memories of Earth is a retelling of a family's exodus from a doomed city - the first version is found in the beginning chapters of the Book of Mormon. By retelling stories with new words, Card and others engage in much the same act as oral storytellers - building a mythos, a culture that has a rich and subtle variation of common themes. Layers on layers of narrative get down to Card's three principle forces driving stories - Love, Sex, and Death. Ender's Shadow just happens to be the latest addition to the ongoing development of this narrative mosaic.
Have any of you read the preface to "Speaker for the Dead". He explains very clearly how his faith influenced the Ender series. I found the preface quite moving actually. He explains how 95% of escapist fiction is about the wandering hero. He's usually young, always adolecent in nature. He breaks away from his community, travels, and adventures. But he never stays anywhere long enough to have to face the ramifications of his actions.
That's what OSC decided to change in Speaker for the dead. He wanted to tell a story of of an adolecent hero finally turned adult. After years of his restless travel, Ender finally became too lonely to continue. He decides to root himself somewhere... and build a community. OSC talked to some length of this full circle from leaving one's childhood community as an adolecent, to joining or forming one later as an adult (albeit, sometimes a very different one).
I personally don't find OSC's writings too preachy. While he is definately influenced by his faith, many of these influences manifest themselves in universal ideas like in SFtD. In fact I'm not even remotely Mormon, but they can still reach me. Cheers to Orson Scott Card!
I'm a gnu world man.
I first read Orson Scott Card when I was about 10 years old. My mother who is also a science fistion fan had bought Omni magazine's yearly science fiction issue. I was in my basement bedroom, alone reading Deep Breathing Exercizes by the light of my beside lamp. I did not sleep well for nights. This story sent a chill through my bones and had set fear in my heart. A week later I read Fat Farm, which was the first time which I had read a story which involved and ironic twist in the end. Quietus and St. Amy where next, but neither of these stories matched the thrill I got from the first two. From that moment on Orson Scott Card was among my favorite Science Fiction writers.
Science Fiction's mythical worlds, and grand escapade of the gifted and the isolated drew me to the genre, imagination held me there. I would sit in bed imagining sequels, prequels, and the side stories of lessser characters.
Although I do find Orson Scott Card to be a touch preachy, (Ever notice the parallels between the myth of Joeseph Smith, and Alvin Maker?), I also enjoy his writing style. His characters may not be as fleshed out as in some literary works of art, he does tend to drag a story on longer than neccessary (occassionally) - Yet still his tales captivate and intrigue.
The best description of Card is in that Omni where I first found his writing, I do not remember the exact words and I can't go out to the farm and rummage through the bookshelves in search of the magazine, so I will paraphrase.
As a child he never killed insects for enjoyment. He is an unassuming man, a devout mormon not the type who you would expect to write stories so filled with the dark elements of life and human nature, yet he does.
This devout mormon may insert his religion into his stories. Alvin Maker is the Mythical Joseph Smith; Is Jason in The Worthing Saga Jesus visiting his other sheep or is he the mormon missionary? Personally I am not judging his faith and the method in which it creeps into his fiction, simply I think it is good to be aware in the ways in which the Mythology one grew up with becomes a part of one's character. Other Science Fiction authors, even those who eskewed faith of all kind, have inserted Christian and Jewish mythology into thier fiction, Card is no different.
What shapes us, shapes our art. Card's faith is the colors he chooses. It does not make the art offensive to my eyes.
Side Note - if you haven't guessed - I am a second generation athiest, my use of the word mythology in reference to religion is intentional in all cases. For those I may have offended by the use of that word, one quote sums it up -
You eskew all other gods but your own, I only believe in one less god than you do.
--
This realization meant, instead, that I didn't take the social pressures of high school as seriously. So the popular cliques don't like me; I'll never see them again as they go on with their fulfilling-for-them-but-certainly-not-me lives. So someone's resentful that I got a higher score on a test; that's their issue, not mine. The friends I found didn't necessarily share my interests, but they did share my perspective.
Yet another ramble from Abigail
Especially Since Ender's Shadow does something that is almost unprecedented in fiction: it re-tells the events of Ender's Game from the perspective of a relatively minor character in Ender's Game.
Anyone intrigued by this idea -- telling a known story from the point of view of a minor character -- might also enjoy Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Well before writing the screenplay for last year's Shakespeare in Love, Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in which the events in Hamlet are viewed through the eyes of two minor characters (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, go figure).
I confess, I haven't seen the stage play, I've only seen the movie (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0100519). But the movie was pretty good.
(And this isn't supposed to be a dig against against Mormons; just from what I understand of the religion, missionary work/conversion work is a rather large part of it, and one would sort of expect a devout Mormon author to impart a lot of his belief system in his writing simply as a matter of fact.)
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
This comes from an article in a chain bookstore's (B. Dalton, I think) science fiction newsletter. Unfortunately, I threw it away last time I cleaned, so I'm relying on memory.
Card is planning two more novels in the "Ender" universe. The first (The Hegemon's Shadow, I believe) is a sequel to Ender's Shadow, again starring Bean. In this story, he is helping Ender's brother Peter (as Hegemon) unite Earth under a single government. I'm looking forward to this one, as it gives insight into some of the events Card "tacked on" to the novel version of Ender's Game to set the stage for Speaker for the Dead. The second is another Ender's Game "synquel" set at the Battle School, this time focusing on Petra, the most successful female student at the School.
For anyone who hasn't read the original novel, Ender's Game has been re-released at a special ($3.95?) price, and is well worth picking up. Does anyone know of any currently available source for "Ender's War", the original short story version? I think it was originally published in Analog, but I'd love to find an anthology that includes it.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I have to disagree with Mr. Narkinsky's opinion of the Card's previous books on the life of Ender Wiggin. Specifically, he says something to the effect that after Ender's Game, Ender lost his edge. What I got out of those books is that Ender was horrified by the way he had exterminated the buggers, and suffered from the guild of havinf removed an intelligent life form from the universe. Also, he discovered that he just wanted to lead a life of anonymity, rather than be constantly recognized as the boy who killed off the buggers. Ender simply becomes more human, and more spiritual. In my opinion, these books were not intended to portray Ender as a hero, but rather to portray him as a human being who posesses extraordinary intelligence, and also who develops a powerful moral conscience.
Let's not confuse Card with a writer of "action" fiction. In nearly all of Card's books, there is an underlying exposure of different aspects of humanity that is missing in the writings of most others. Not that Card has any special insight into humanity, he just has a unique approach to reminding us that we're all just human under whatever facade we have built up. Before reading Card, I had this idea that Mormons have oddball ideas about religion (I still think that) and should be ignored and avoided. Card has wrenched me out of that position a bit.
The first three to four chapters are online HERE.
ACK