- Read “Ender’s Game” during lunch and after dinner tonight. Not bad. It’s a well written book, but I’m not sure I liked it.
- With the attack on the mall in Nairobi, Kenya, how long will it be before gecko45 and his band of commerce conquistadors gain new life as quick reaction forces for places like Mall of America?
- I’m only half joking.
- Today, I used the term “psychic area network” to describe the communications pathways that allow me to not only intuitively know what someone needs, but also know before they do.
- Girlie Bear has now officially had more cell phones than I have.
Musings
Posted by daddybear71 on October 21, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/10/21/musings-18/
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11 Comments
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 
Odysseus
/ October 22, 2013I don’t think “Ender’s Game” is supposed to be a book that people are sure they like.
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3boxesofbs
/ October 22, 2013I agree with Odysseus. I don’t think we are supposed to like Ender’s Game but it definitely prompts us to think deeply about many things.
I need to dig out my copy and re-read it before seeing the movie.
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phssthpok
/ October 22, 2013I’d reccomend folloeing up ‘Ender’s Game’ with ‘Ender’s Shadow’ before moving on to the other books in the series. Same timeline, same story (more or less) but from Bean’s perspective (as it’s Bean’s story, not Ender’s).
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daddybear71
/ October 22, 2013Thanks. If I read the rest if the series, I’ll check it out.
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Old NFO
/ October 22, 2013+1 on Odysseus… One of the reasons it’s required reading for Navy personnel… And that last one HURTS, especially if you are paying the bill.
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daddybear71
/ October 23, 2013No worries on the cell phones. I’ve been buying her cheap disposable phones and putting in her SIM for a while. And now, she’s paying for them herself!
It’s too bad she messed the last one up. It had been almost two years since she destroyed a cell phone, and I was considering getting her an iPhone or Android for Christmas.
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LabRat
/ October 23, 2013I think the only people who like Ender’s Game uncritically are socially isolated gifted children.
Which I was. Then I went back as an adult and wondered whether Card intended for the impression given to be a loving portrait of a brilliant, martyred child who is admirable despite the fact that he thinks the only solution to persistent conflict is murder, and has committed his first one by the age of seven. I honestly can’t tell.
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daddybear71
/ October 23, 2013Hi LabRat! Welcome back!
That’s kind of how I look at it. The basic message seems to be “Anything can be forgiven, so long as you’re smart enough or valuable enough”. Murder, genocide, whatever. Now I understand why my oldest son liked it so much.
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LabRat
/ October 24, 2013I actually find the book really interesting now, not least because I legitimately can’t tell which contrasts and questions are intentional.
Peter is set up as a monster, the beast Ender must not become and the Wiggins boy too savage for the all-powerful military to use, but the interesting thing there is he’s a bully, but he’s never killed anyone- whereas Ender has BEFORE the military got hold of him and deliberately set him up to do it again, and then again on a really, really large scale. For Bonzo’s death you can see it as the military force-molding him to the idea that sometimes you have no choice but to kill- even though in Bonzo’s case that’s really not true; most people don’t resort to murder to deal with a guy who’s interested in hurting and shaming, but doesn’t represent an immediate threat to their life.
But before anyone’s gotten hold of him beyond the monitor chip, Ender kicks a seven-year-old child to death in the schoolyard. Granted, he’s not aware he’s killed Stilson (or Bonzo for that matter), but it’s not like he accidentally poisoned him or something. And the adults who are monitoring him every second of the day quite deliberately let him do it.
Is that a brilliant and subtle comment on the fucked up priorities of the adults and government of the book, through whose eyes we’re seeing Ender and who ultimately are seeking a ruthless killer more than a savior? Or is Card genuinely unaware of how psychopathic his “ultimate empath” actually comes off? I have no idea.
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daddybear71
/ October 24, 2013I read the entire thing as being a very naive story. Card tries to discuss some very complex and subtle issues in terms that work for teenagers, and it rarely comes out right.
Oh, and thank Stingray for being my muse this morning.
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Jack
/ October 24, 2013I haven’t read the book in detail; I read the original novella when it was published in 1977 in Analogue. The version you’d enjoy is the original, which is truly a work of art.
Card is one of my noteworthy, respected writers and is generally worth reading. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of producing crap, and some dead tree money machine isn’t equally capable of shoving said crap through an editor who is incapable of recognizing good literature if she were masturbating with it, then slapping a garish cover on it, pricing it at 50% over the market cost while simultaneously marking it down by 30% so we can all feel good about ourselves when we succumb to commercial mind control and buy a copy.
The book proves that if you tinker with something long and often enough, it will break. OSC knows this, but if some dinosaur called you and offered you a hundred grand to pad a short story to 75,000 words or more and let them hawk it for you, what would you say?
Me, I’d be booking a sex tour in Thailand followed by a beer drinking tour of Germany.
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