So I finally read Ender's Game (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

While I liked the book, I don’t think I’m going to be reading any of the sequels.

The personalities of the main characters bugged me. While I forgive Ender’s whininess due to his age, I kept waiting for him to go back and do something about Peter, which he never did. If the sequels do touch upon him, I’ll bet that they’ll have the final duel/batte/meeting to finally settle the score, even though the ending of the book kind of hints that Peter’s going to die soon and Ender and Valentine has gotten rid of that thorn for good.

I liked the whole description of the games, Battle School, and the setup between the collapse of the Warsaw Pact between the North American and the Russian Hegemony. I have to forgive the author a little, since the book was written in the 70’s and Russia today’s probably not seen as a big of a threat as China, or the Middle East. A more modern version would probably taken into account several spheres of influence other than the very Cold War-ish America vs. Russia subplot.

Normally, I prefer a book to actually explain the terms its using very liberally to clarify the setting, however terms like getting ‘iced’ and using the net (which I’m guessing Card meant as an abbreviation for some kind of network) has kind of been part of the vernacular for a while, so I didn’t mind that he never clarified the terms. By the way, did anyone imagine the desks that the students were using as some kind of iPad? That’s all I could think about whenever it was mentioned, spooky how well fiction and reality meets.

One thing that did take my enjoyment out of the book a little was the ages of the characters. Even though these are genetically enhanced kids (I think that was inferred, but never mentioned specifically. I remember them talking about how the parents were ‘allowed’ to have another child and that earlier, they made sure that the 2nd child was a girl), it was really really hard for me to buy that Ender was 6 when the book started and a mere 11 when he beat the Buggers. That took too much suspension of disbelief for me to overlook and I had to constantly remind myself that these were little kids in elementary school when they saved mankind.

Would it have killed the book to have the author maybe aged them a little bit? Lets say Ender was 10 when he started and 15 when he made Commander, the book would have still remained relatively untouched. And what’s with all the nudity? I know kids are less ashamed at that age, but everyone from 6 year olds to teenagers casually walked around naked at Battle School without an adult in sight. As one of the few girls, Petra would have been much more of a target for violence than simply ignored by Bonzo and all the boys. Unless they genetically removed all hormones from these kids, a naked girl in a boys barracks would not have been ignored for one second no matter how much the leaders threatened them.

And it was probably good that Card wrote the book in the 70’s because starting a revolution, becoming basically president of half the Earth by simply writing on internet message boards strikes me as a really big stretch, among the other stretches we’re asked to believe. Not that genetically engineering children to fight a war using proxies is more believable, but at least that hasn’t happened yet. We have the internet now. We know that most people who matter still probably don’t know what a message board is. The power’s always going to be concentrated in the wealthy. Its too hard for a populist message from an anonymous source on the internet to gain too much influence because sooner or later, you’ll have to reveal your identities. Valentine mentioned having a lawyer collect all the money that was being funneled to Demosthenes, but I don’t know any lawyers who would work for an anonymous source on the internet.

Finally, the reveal of the Buggers was the best part of the book. For like 13 chapters we were simply referred to Them but never given anything concrete to go on. Then we find out they’re giant ants. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the name. Still, part of me wishes we found out more about them than Ender and Battle School. Especially the whole instant communications thing was more interesting than yet another description of battles and how Ender was always on the breaking point.

One thing I felt was unanswered was the whole game beyond the Giant and into Fairyland and that room with Peter in the mirror. Had the computer really pulled that from nowhere? What was the lesson Ender was supposed to learn? I find myself questioning the premise that Ender had to be isolated and abused and learn to depend on only himself for him to be able to be a successful commander. Especially prior to the last battle, where he asked Graff if the Dr. Device would work on planets and he essentially told him yes, but that would be genocide. Wasn’t that the opposite of what he wanted Ender to do? Why not use his genius by telling him they are studying him for tactics? I know things worked out at the end, and of course that was the point of the book, but the adults, especially Graff, took too many risks to get Ender the way he was. One wrong move in the shower fight with Bonzo and their savior would have been dead. That part annoyed me, that we are just supposed to accept that Ender would have only gotten where he was by isolation. Hell, use Peter, he’d have been glad to wipe out the Buggers and given the adulation of mankind.

2

It’s been a while since I read it, but those two points annoyed me. Having the kids sneak around naked or in a towel so they couldn’t be followed seemed almost like porn to me.

3

Just let me offer that the first sequel, “Speaker for the Dead”, is one of the best books anyone wrote during that time period. It builds on what happened in a logical and entirely unexpected direction. I highly recommend it to you.

4

I thought Ender’s Shadow was supposed to be a sequel?

5

I just finished this book today. Its one of my sisters favorites, but then she’s a big SF reader and I’m not, I have read some. Anyway, I really enjoyed the book and although I’m pretty sure I won’t be reading the whole series I definitely will read Speaker for the Dead.

6

The point made is that they couldn’t use Peter. He was (at least at that point in his life), too strong, too crazy and too violent. It may have been possible that Peter could have defeated the Buggers, but he never would have survived the rigidness and structure of the Military and he certainly wouldn’t have had a team completely loyal to him like Ender did by book’s end. It wasn’t just Ender that won the final battle.

There also was no need for a final battle between Peter and Ender. Ender “defeated” him by escaping him and then ensuring that his sister Valentine was safe. A lot of time was spent on the concepts of knowing one’s enemy. This includes when Ender had the opportunity at the end of Peter’s life to write “The Hive Queen and the Hegemon” as it gave Ender a chance to really understand who Peter was. So there’s no need for closure. The book was closure enough for both of them.

Oh, and nitpick. The book came out in 1985. There was a Novella from 1978; however, it doesn’t go into the Soviet Union subplot anyway.

Oh yeah, and the one unbelievable part? That Peter and Valentine could log on to an internet messageboard and actually change people’s opinions through well crafted words. Ha!

7

Obligatory XKCD

I also thought it was rather lame that the kids achieved this power by taking opposite stances from what they really believed. :rolleyes:

8

Note that “Speaker for the Dead” is only a kind-of sequel to “Ender’s Game”. Card was writing an unrelated novel, and eventually decided that it would be interesting to make the protagonist a grown-up Ender Wiggin. But it’s not a continuation of the story from the first book, and in fact takes place thousands of years later.

The reason they didn’t want Peter is that Peter didn’t have Ender’s empathy. The buggers were so superior militarily to humans that a straighforward “smash them until they’re all wiped out” strategy would mean human extinction. Only someone who could understand the buggers might find a weakness that would allow humans to survive. Peter had ruthlessness to fight the buggers but not the empathy, Valentine had the empathy but not the ruthlessness, while Ender had both.

9

Ender’s Shadow is NOT a sequel. Speaker for the Dead is, although if one expects sequels to be more of whatever it was you liked about the original, you will be disappointed. Speaker for the Dead has several sequels, which as I recall get increasingly bizarre.

Ender’s Shadow occurs more or less parallel to Ender’s Game, but from the point of view of one of the other children (Bean). I would describe it as a good book, but it isn’t as enjoyable to read as Ender’s Game. (At least for me). (Bean’s early life is, in my view, terrifying and seriously implausible).

Ender’s Shadow has several sequels. The first one is, in my opinion, the book many people were looking for when they read Speaker for the Dead, (and were often disappointed). It’s the true answer to the question of what happens NEXT. I liked it, mostly.

Then there’s one or two which I didn’t like, and I mostly enjoyed the conclusion, although I only read it because it was the conclusion.

10

But of course, this was written in 1985. So Card gets credit for realizing that there’s going to this internet-thingy, and that people are going to communicate on it, and that it’s going to be important.

11

Without going into spoilers or theories into Card’s personal life, I will say that a good deal of people’s disappointment with the later books (myself included) is that Mormonism starts creeping into Card’s writing more and more heavily until it seriously warps the characters as created and the decisions they make.

12

Ok, maybe I’ll check out Speaker for the Dead then. My local library doesn’t have much Larry Niven stuff so I can’t start Ringworld. Also couldn’t find the Forge of God by Greg Bear either. I was actually going to read Dune but that’s a bit daunting

You know, I never got the impression that the adults from Battle School really cared about what happened afterwards. It was always Peter and Valentine that I remember who were plotting the aftermath of the Bugger War ever since Peter discovered the troop movements. Graff seemed like a particularly sadistic dick who just had this one-track mind and goal to push Ender to the breaking point but never explained why that particular way of pushing him and making him self-sufficient was necessary. Self-sufficiency is great if you’re out in the woods alone. Its less so when you’re commanding pilots to attack other starships. Didn’t Ender need to depend on his 'toon leaders anyway? Hardly complete self-sufficiency there

Given Peter’s tendencies, I never got the impression that he had truly mellowed out in this old age. I still see him as a squirrel-torturing bully who simply kept his sister around unmurdered because it was easier for him. The fact that he didn’t get killed or die leaves it open that he may return, and that was one of the characters whose distastefulness turned me off on ready any of the sequels, but I might try Speaker for the Dead now that people have mentioned how good it is.

What did the novella cover? The book I have has a copyright of 1977.

I suspect in the modern internet, a real-life Peter’s plan would have been derailed by an untimely LOLCat.

13

I had vaguely remembered something about Card when I picked up this book. Various times in the past, I had come across criticisms of Ender’s Game delving into the author. What’s up with him and what’s the whole story?

14

If I recall correctly, Card is a graduate of the University of Utah, one of the first four campuses to be part of the original ARPANET, which went online in 1969. So this wasn’t something he just pulled out of the ether.

15

I really liked Ender’s Game, but thought SftD was awful. I read it, but only because I like the first one. It was a chore to finish.

16

The Novella is a bare bones version of the novel. It tells the story of Ender Wiggins (note the s), and his trip through battle school and into the final battle with the Buggers. Nothing about his siblings or his family, nothing about the political structure back on Earth, nothing about the computer game Ender plays 0and very little about the other kids in battle school. It’s a good story and follows the novel’s structure, but it’s extremely limited in scope.
It was published by Analog. I picked up a copy about a decade ago and got Card to sign it when he was in town.

I don’t think I could give you a full story but here’s my somewhat short theory. Card’s always been a Mormon but in the past two decades it’s taken a radical turn towards ever and ever stricter Mormonism. If you’ve had the chance to read some of Card’s early works, short stories and the like, he comes up with topics he’d never ever touch today. Things like a guy drowning a flipper baby in a toilet, or a guy getting sexual gratification by running people off the highway.
So around the early '90s two things happened. First, one of his children was born with cerebal palsy in 1983 I think. He started getting worse in the '90s and died in 2000 at age 17. Obviously the entire process had a profound effect on Card. But from 1992 to 1996, Card wrote the Homecoming Saga. It’s basically a science fiction retelling of the Book of Mormon. Now, I happened to think it was a great series (in fact probably the best series of Card’s when taken as a whole). But my belief is that those two things swung Card’s religious beliefs so hard they bled into just about every piece of writing he wrote from then on out.

17

That sounds kind of terrible, I’m surprised the full book made it out after that. Its hard for me to understand the characters or their motivations without the background. Omitting it would just be like a reading of that 80’s movie where the kid wins a space war cause he was good at video games. How did they even address why he was at the school without the political background and the extremes in which he had to be pushed?

Based on your opinion, do you think his religion would have been noticeable in Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead? If I’m going to continue reading it, I want to at least read stories that’s as good as Ender’s Game but I’m personally very turned off by religion. Knowing that the Homecoming Saga is like that, I would probably be biased against it before I read it therefore making it difficult for me to enjoy the story.

I was reading some of the descriptions of the Buggers and it mentioned a spoiler for a later book in the series, one alluded to at the end of Ender’s Game, that he took a while to finally find a world to populate with the Queen’s larvae. Does any book go into that aftermath of humanity rediscovering the Buggers and probably the panic that ensues?

18

IIRC, Peter is barely even mentioned in Speaker for the Dead. As **Lemur866 **said, it’s set much, much later than Ender’s Game and Peter is long dead. Ender is still around because he’s been traveling from place to place at near light speed, so from his perspective it’s been a few years but for the rest of the universe it’s been hundreds/thousands of years.

A clone of Peter (well, not actually a clone, but the full explanation would be more complicated than it is interesting) is created near the end of the third book in the series, Xenocide, but doesn’t do much. He’s more important in the fourth book, Children of the Mind, and helps out on some sort of mission, but I found that book so stupid and frustrating that I don’t remember much about it. I think he does complain at one point about being judged for things Peter had done while growing up, things the clone of course only knows about secondhand.

I do recommend Speaker for the Dead, although it’s quite different from Ender’s Game. There’s little if any action/combat, and in some ways might be described as a mystery novel. Ender is called to a human-colonized planet to serve as a Speaker for the Dead, and winds up uncovering a lot of secrets and misunderstandings relating to one troubled family, the interactions between humans and the indigenous inhabitants of the planet, and the lethal virus that killed many of the planet’s early colonists.

Xenocide has some strong parts but leaves way too much unresolved – especially given how long it is. But you might as well stop there, because Children of the Mind was IMHO not very good, STILL doesn’t resolve everything from Xenocide, and in fact ends the series with a cliffhanger.

19

Religion is very significant in Speaker for the Dead, but I don’t think it’s presented in a way that would be a turn-off to an atheist. I’m not sure how much more than that I can say, without spoilers.

20

IMO, “more complicated than it is interesting” is a pretty accurate summary of both Xenocide and Children of the Mind.