Ender's Game: Why? (SPOILERS GALORE)

Cafe Society
1

I was at the bookstore the other day and happened to notice a display for "The Next Chapter of Orson Scott Card’s Award-Winning “Ender Saga!” Evidently there’s now five or eight books in the series. Now I had read Ender’s Game back when it first came out, but the memory was hazy; so I dredged the old Tor paperback out of storage and gave it another read. Doing so confirmed my earlier impression:

Ender’s Game is a really, really bad book.

But apparently I’m the only one who thinks so. A quick search of the board (orson scott card ender’s game) turns up about three pages of threads with titles like, “Top Ten Sci-Fi Must-Reads,” “Top 100 Favorite Fictional Characters,” “Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century”(!), etc. So I may be sticking my face in the fan, so to speak, when I ask: What is it about this book? For crying out loud, the goofiness starts on the freaking title page! I mean, consider:

**1. In the story, humanity is involved in interstellar war, which we are trying to bring to an end.

  1. The main character’s name is “Ender.”**

Now, honestly, what kind of crap is that? If I were to write a story about a world ravaged by plague, and the plot centered around the search for a miracle cure, I would expect to be justly mocked if I named my protagonist “Miraculous J. Cureall.” How does Card get away with it?

Some other immediately apparent flaws:

The Enemy. They’re called “Buggers,” because, you see, they’re bugs. In fact, an insect species with a telepathic hive-mind; a startlingly original concept, provided you ignore every other sci-fi story ever written.

Inconsistent Use of Established Technology. As, for example: Ender’s training is supervised and guided by computer, including the manipulation of complex symbolic imagery, so we can assume that the program has an extraordinary grasp of the human mind. In other words, it can think like a human, only faster and better. So, what do they need Ender for in the first place? Couldn’t the computer fight their war for them? Or would this be cheating somehow?

The Ending. …And what an ending. Granted, there was probably a time when “It wasn’t just a game” wasn’t a horrible sci-fi cliche. For all I know, this could be the first story to ever use this device, although I would tend to doubt it. Regardless, it’s still a pretty lousy ending. He defeats the enemy and wins the war…without even realizing it! Bet all those dead Space Marines from the First Invasion are feeling pretty stupid right about now.

I could go on; the oddly self-contradictory future social system, the ludicrous improbabilities…and throughout it all, the author never really manages to sell the notion that Ender Wiggin is somehow the last, best hope for mankind. On some level, Card seems to realize this, and so throws in a lot of intercut dialogue of the Powers That Be, discussing how dreadfully, direly important this one kid is. It doesn’t help.

Granted, the book is not uniformly awful, and it does have its prescient moments. I would venture to say that Card was the first science fiction author to predict that advanced computer technology would be used by children to draw images of comically large genitalia, and he deserves credit for that, if for nothing else. Also, some of the actual training scenes are vaguely interesting, in that they seem to describe the problems of zero-g combat in a fairly convincing manner.

So it’s not the worst book ever written, but it’s not really very good either. What, then, is its appeal? How did this three-legged dog of a novel manage to walk off with both the Nebula and the Hugo award? Did every other author take that year off, or what?

Seriously, though, I would like to know what it is about this book that makes it worth reading for other people. I suspect that there’s more here than meets my eye, but darned if I can figure out what it is.

2

I liked the first three books, including Ender’s Game.

The recent ones are just irritating.

3

Well crap, where do I start?

For me this book has a lot of depth.

It’s not just an interstellar war which humanity is trying to end- it’s the first contact with an alien species, it’s the tenuous peace that binds humanity together against an outside threat, it’s the rush to find someone capable of taking on an incomprehensible and alien army- thereby also destroying thousands of human lives in the process. And they are a threat, as the book details they tore through the human forces like butter. When Earth regrouped it was only through a fluke that one person (Mazer Rackam) understood what was up AND was in a position to strike against them. From that moment until Ender there was no contact or skirmishes with the aliens- but humanity was geared up to fight a terrific battle all at once on dozens of worlds against them when a person capable of doing so was found (engineered).

So what if he’s called Ender?

They’re called Buggers because they resemble insects. Humanity does have a tendency to anthropomorphize, especially in this case when the aliens are so far beyond humanity’s understanding. It is never actually stated as far as I recall that they are insects.
Also it wasn’t widely known that they had a hive mind- Ender figured some of it out by watching the vids of Mazers victory over and over again, although they had been cut and edited so as not to reveal much to the casual viewer.

Ender’s training is NOT supervised and guided by a computer- the computer game is just a way for the military heads to keep tabs on the kids psychologically.

THE ENDING- I don’t think you realize the depth of the tragedy that the ending is. In order to defeat the Buggers, Ender had to understand them, but once he understood them he loved them, and that ability (the ability to comprehend and connect with them) enabled him to destroy them utterly. He was genetically a pefect mix between his jackal brother Peter, and his softie sister Valentine- but the price- they knew he could not have knowingly killed something he loved and understood, so they manipulated and tricked him into doing it. The ultimate mindf*ck, and he agreed to it and hated himself for it the whole time- he always knew it wasn’t just a game- Battle School was petty politics, but he rose above it because he knew that was what they wanted. That was the part of Valentine in him, IMO.

On a purely psychological level this book is the Mariana Trench.

That’s my opinion, I hope it helped. :slight_smile:

4

Oh yeah, and Ender’s game and the Bean/Shadow books are the only ones I like out of the series.

I hated all the others with a passion.

You really should read Ender’s Shadow if you’re honestly looking for more and/or deeper perspective into Ender’s Game. It’s the same timeline, but from the perspective of Bean, the short kid from Battle School.

5

Well, thank you, Fairblue; I appreciate the response.

I understand that the book has meaning for a lot of people; that’s probably why it’s so frustrating that I don’t see any of it. I certainly percieved that the ending was supposed to be a tragedy, but I couldn’t really buy into it for several reasons. Surely you don’t have to love someone in order to destroy them effectively, if human history is any indication. Certainly you may regret having to do so, or come to regret it after the fact, but that’s an entirely different sort of tragedy. And again, why should Ender be the only one with this capacity? What about Rackham? Because he’s

6

I think the ending is so tragic, because (at least in my mind) the reader gets the idea that he’s doing some of the reckless attacks just to prove his instructor wrong. Then he realizes how many people (buggers and humans) he’s actually killed. How’s that for trauma? Especially the end, when he basically says “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” and ends up having the vast majority of his taskforce killed.

7

Freaky. Well, anyway…

(cont. from above) too old and cautious? This makes no sense. The book attempts to persuade you that Ender is somehow unique in his ability by having a lot of people assert the fact, but you never really see any evidence of this. Sure, he has a ruthless and calculating side, but so do a lot of people. Ender’s good at what he does, but we never really find out by what standards he is being judged.

And surely the computer was providing autonomous feedback? The Powers That Be had no idea why or how it produced the images that it did. This alone seems to indicate that they trusted it to perform at a level superior to themselves. You wouldn’t want to permanently scramble the psyche of your Kwisatz Haderach.

I wish my computer worked like that, instead of cutting my posts in half…

8

Later in the series it is revealed that the computer program was actually in the process of becoming sentient, and that is how it was able to keep up with Ender. This was something the programmers did not foresee or intend. The game was designed as just that, a game, albeit one that would allow observers insight into the psychology of the players. As I recall, the high-ups in Ender’s Game were a little upset and frightened that the game was providing Ender with images and scenarios they had not seen before, but decided to let him keep on with it.

9

I’m still kind of amazed at how accurate card was with his predictions of computer technology. In a book written in the 70’s he forsaw:

1.) The internet (and he actually called it “the net”)

2.) laptops (although he called them “desks”)

3.) Hacking, and the defenses against it

4.) A very accurate vision of how computer games might develop in a time when Pong was the height of gaming technology.

He deserves a lot of credit for being far more in the ball park on his computer speculations than most SF writers were in that decade.

10

Terrifel, ever read Snow Crash? The good guy’s name is Hiro Protagonist. I mean…come on! But it works. It works in this book too. A number of the names in the book are, or seem to be, taken from major characteristics.
Valentine = love
Petra = petrified
Alai = ally
Bean = short

Even those that didn’t have an “unusual” name had nicknames. Han Tzu was Hot Soup. It goes on, but I don’t believe any of this takes away from the impact of the of the story.

As others have pointed out, the program Ender uses was a psychological tester. It had no ability to conduct war games and there was nothing to indicate that it did have that ability, so I don’t see this as inconsitant use of technology. If you read further, you’ll see why the program acted the way that it did.

Ender’s Game isn’t about the Buggers. It isn’t really even about the final battle. It’s about the psychological turmoil that Ender goes through as he tries to struggle through Battle School when everything and nearly everyone is against him. It’s about trying to be a leader, trying to trust yourself in a position of power, when you can barely trust yourself. Everything about the war is just an attempt to build the stakes and put that much more drama into the story. But that isn’t the story. Ender is the story. It’s Ender’s Game.
To be fair, Diogenes the Cynic, the internet has been around since the '50s. 1954 I believe. The book itself was published in 1985 and while the Novella was published in '77, it was mainly a condensed version dealing only with the war games aspect.

11

It’s been a long time since I read the book, but wasn’t Ender so named because he was the last child in his family? It was illegal to have more than two kids, but the government had to break the rules because his genetically modified siblings didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped.

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That and his sister Valentine, as a toddler, had trouble pronouncing Andrew.

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Terrifel I believe it was Card’s intention for the reader to judge Ender based on ordinary children in everyday life. If you consider his abilities in comparision with how kids you know would act in the same situations it does become quite extraordinary.

Ender is unique in many of his abilities. The evidence of this for me, among other things, is:

HE NEVER LOST- childhood is filled with all kinds of small defeats and large failures, but he never failed any test put before him by the military heads, even when the deck was stacked against him. He also never once lost to the Buggers during the weeks of battle while (unknowingly) leading the human forces.

HE WAS A NATURAL LEADER- it usually takes years of experience and training for people to learn leadership skills, but he knew (without being taught) how to teach, train, and motivate his team into becoming an undefeated fighting force. He also taught his team how to be leaders themselves- an uncommon skill.

HE SAW THE BIG PICTURE- he didn’t get caught up in the petty hiararchy (sp?) struggles of the kids in Battle School. While the others had either completely lost sight of the Bugger threat, or had no conception of it to begin with, Ender understood that the end result of all the training and schooling was ONLY to be able to fight the Buggers. He even began studying them (the vids) on his own at one point in order to prepare himself.

HE WAS (for the most part) COMPLETELY ISOLATED- loneliness is a terrible burden for children, and the pressures of command are enough to make adults crack at times, but he handled both sucessfully as was expected and required of him. Also with that, he had no peer support or influence in his decisions.

Two things you should keep in mind are that Ender is a CHILD, and that the military heads WERE doing things that could permanently scramble his psyche, or GET HIM KILLED. It was a very fine line at times, and the uncertainty of is one of the things I enjoy about the book. He could have washed out at anytime with JUST ONE FAILURE, he could have lost it mentally, and/or he could have been seriously injured or killed on several occasions.

Ender himself killed two other children who were threats to him- and there is a bit of uncertainty as to whether he actually intended their deaths or not. He certainly intended to defeat them utterly, and prevent them from being any kind of threat to him again, but death? Perhaps he DID mean for them to die when there was no other way to win. That sort of ruthlessness in a child is bordering on psychopathic, but thats what the heads wanted- that’s what they mindf*cked him to achieve- and yet they walked a fine line between that and his love for his sister Valentine, the source of his compassion.

Also, we never do learn why the heads have decided that ruthlessness and compassion combined with leadership skills were the exact combination they were looking for. We also don’t know the details of the decision to destroy the Buggers completely- although it had been over fifty years by Enders time. Those two things are a bit compelling to me- did they KNOW precisely what they were doing when they were screwing with his head- or was it as risky and uncertain as psychology as we know it sometimes is? And the second- how did humanity decide on a single course of action, cooperate for decades peacefully, and achieve it BEFORE beginning to second-guess themselves?

As for Mazer Rackham- yes, I think they did consider him too old and cautious. Would he have been adept at the newer technologies? Would he be able to keep up with superintelligent prodigies? Would they respect and trust him enough to follow him? In any event- he wasn’t what they wanted in a leader.

Apologies if this is a bit long-winded to you. I hope I covered all the things you mentioned. (Except the computer part- I have nothing to add since it was answered quite well by others.)

I do still recommend you read Ender’s Shadow. :slight_smile:

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By the way, I am really enjoying this discussion. I love this book (as if you couldn’t tell). It was recommended to me by a friend who became an ex-friend right afterwards. I ran into him in public a few months later and I shook his hand and thanked him for introducing it to me. He was quite astonished. :slight_smile:

15

Since no one else has mentioned this yet, I thought I’d say that one reason for the popularity of Ender’s Game is that it is set at what is essentially a school for gifted children. It is very well liked by students in gifted programs, graduates of such programs, and teachers. This is not merely because it portrays gifted children as valued people who are trusted to save mankind from an alien threat (although that is surely a part of it), but because it also deals with the negative side of being in a privledged intellectual/academic situation as a child – the loneliness and pressure, the feeling of isolation from “normal” kids and even one’s own family. Despite the sci-fi setting, I know of no other book that deals so frankly and realistically with these issues.

16

As for the names: His given name was Andrew. He’s called Ender in the book because that’s what he called himself. I mean, just because I call myself Chronos, I’m sure you don’t think I carry a big hourglass around with me all the time. And the aliens being called “Buggers” is also completely plausible. I mean, does it make any less sense to name one’s opponents based on their resemblence to insects, than it does to name them based on the way they prepare their cabbage? And yet, we fought against the “Krauts” in World War 2. Doubtless, the Buggers had some less perjorative official name, but the public didn’t actually use that name.

But the real reason that Ender’s Game is considered such a great book, is that the characters resonate. Most of the folks who read the book, we’ve been there before. Maybe not to the same degree, true, and most of us haven’t had the fate of humanity on our shoulders, but we recognize the emotions and the thought patterns.

17

Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow describe many of the same events from different perspectives. Enlightening and emotional.

Esp when Bean knew what he was doing when Ender… Well, read it yourself. It would be a MAJOR spoiler if I said it.

You have to read Ender’s Shadow. Skip all the others.

18

I haven’t read this book since 4th (I think) grade. I loved it then, I’ll have to read it again.

19

Terrifel also, you said:

Human history is not a good indication of being able to effectively destroy an unknown and alien threat.

Since the heads decided that compassion and empathy were essential to the leader they were seeking, it was automatic that it defeating the Buggers could have a great personal price. Apparently it was sufficent for them to have the child Ender pay that price. And that’s not even mentioning all the human lives that leader would have to sacrifice.

He was bred, engineered, and trained to empathize and then destroy. He was gentle enough and noble enough to believe that the fight was worth the price- that humanity was worth sacrificing himself for, but he was too gentle to knowingly sacrifice others. He never believed he had any choice in the matter, and he was too noble to wash out deliberately and leave the fight to someone else.

He was also intelligent enough to be aware of the whole process of the heads shaping him into a compassionate and ruthless leader/destroyer. He understood too well to hate, and he believed in the purpose of it too much to resist, but he knew.

That, to me, is the tragedy of it.

20

Hmm… I dunno. I see where you guys are coming from, kind of, but the details still grate on me. Maybe I could have viewed the book more favorably if its ambitions had been more modest or sensibly paced; Ender is singled out for Battle School training, perseveres against adversity, goes on to Command School and–eventually–becomes the war hero they need. All the elements more or less intact, but without the bizarrely improbable “this-kid-is-the-only-hope-for-humanity-because-we-know-beforehand-(somehow)-that-no-one-else-can-ever-take-his-place” premise. To say nothing of the added unlikeliness of his two siblings becoming the most important and second-most important people in the world, simultaneously. Sure, the Bush family can get away with this sort of thing, but they’ve got CIA and Mafia support.

Fairblue: Not long-winded at all; this is exactly what I was asking for, after all. Thanks for taking the time.

Ender is certainly depicted as an exceptional child, but he’s supposed to be more than that; he’s presented as absolutely unique. This is driven home constantly by the Powers That Be, and so kind of detracts from his “everyday child” status. I mean, it’s one thing to excel far beyond your peers, and it’s another to have no peers to begin with. The Battle School and the other kids are ultimately just window dressing for Ender to complete his training; if he weren’t there, we are told that humanity would just have to fold up and die. It annoys me when a writer has to tell me something rather than show it to me, but that’s exactly what Card does.

Chronos, LifeOnWry, WPL: Sorry, I just can’t get past the image of Orson Scott Card leaning over his IBM Selectric, congratulating himself smugly on coming up with such a clever, precious nickname for his main character. "“Ender’…because he ends the war! It’s so sly and meaningful!” No, it’s completely ridiculous. If it were meant to be funny, that would be a different story. But apparently we’re supposed to take this seriously. And really; “Ender” for “Andrew?” What happened to Andy, or Drew, or even Dan for crying out loud? I think it’s safe to say that no Andrew in the history of the name Andrew, even the ones that actually ended wars, has ever been called “Ender.” At least until this book came out.

My problem with the Buggers is not with their name… Okay, that’s part of it, but the main issue is that they’re such spectacularly unimaginative aliens. Even in 1985 (hell, even in 1965) psychic space insects had been done to death already; if you’re going to have them as your enemy, you’d better have some new twist on the idea. Card can’t be bothered.

Actually, there’s an outside chance that he was trying to make some sort of profound analogy between his sublimely generic aliens and the way that humans tend to demonize and generalize the enemy during war. But then he never actually gets around to establishing any sort of distinguishing identity for them, so I’m not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Enderw24: “Petra = petrified.” You know, I never noticed that before. Thanks for the added insight. Now I hate Card more than ever.