Some questions about Ender's Game *spoilers*

Cafe Society
1

Finally got around to reading this book and I can definitely see why it’s a classic but a couple of questions sprung to mind:

I’m not sure I quite understood the nature of the alien society, effectively the alien queens were the only truly sentient members of their species with all the rest being mobile extensions of themselves? How many queens are/were there? One for each world under their control or only one for their entire ‘empire’? Or were there many alien queens and their relationship to each other was pretty much the same as any human individual? I’m not explaining that very well…

I think the saddest aspect of the story was that the war between the species came about because of a misunderstanding and neither side being able to communicate with the other rather than maliciousness on either part.

I also had an eyebrow raising moment when it was revealed that Ender killed the bully in his first fight, surely that raises psychological questions regarding a complete lack of proportional response? I could look through him accidently killing his opponent in the second fight because that was a different set of circumstances but to find he also killed the first bully didn’t ring true for me.

How did the aliens know to build the monument to attract Ender’s attention not only on the world he eventually chose to settle on but close to his settlement? Just coincedence?

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movie made of this story yet, unlike many science fiction stories I can see it fairly easily transferring to the big screen. A problem may be getting enough decent child actors for the roles, especially for the early scenes. It may be possible to shift the timeframe forward a couple of years (eg: have Ender enter the battle school at ten and fight the war at about fifteen) without a major impact on the story. They’d definitely have to leave out the scenes of pre-teens lounging around naked in the barracks though!!!

In a coincedence I just finished watching the HBO series Generation Kill before starting Ender’s Game, in one of the last scenes the characters are mulling over their experiences in the conflict when one of the states, “Those who can’t kill will always be subject to those who can”, a sentiment Ender also espouses at one point in the story. Was that a reference to Ender’s Game?

Good book though!

2

Well, yeah - that’s the whole point of the story. They were trying to create the perfect soldier, and the perfect soldier is the one most capable of defeating his enemies. Whether or not he was a psychologically healthy human being was besides the point, as far as they were concerned. Ender was supposed to be unique - a uniquely efficient killer ever since he was a young child.

Besides, from a purely logical point of view, a proportional response makes no sense. The point of fighting is winning, and winning means taking away your enemy’s ability to fight. That’s how soldiers are supposed to think.

3

Sure, but if an enemy shoots one of your troops you don’t respond by nuking one of his cities (unless your John Travolta in Swordfish anyway). A sense of proportionality is also necessary for a good soldier.

They were trying to create someone capable of defeating their enemies and the capacity to kill is certainly part of that but their means of moulding him to that ends didn’t quite ring true for me. For example in both fights Ender didn’t intend to kill his opponent and the fact he did so indicates a lack of self-knowledge and self-control.

I recall once reading in a study that some military psychologists believed people could be classified into one of three broad categories, Sheep (not intended to be perjorative) - people who can’t or won’t kill in any situation, Wolves - people who enjoy killing and will do it without qualms and Sheepdogs - people who are capable of killing in self-defence or defence of others. The first category was rejected for obvious reasons, but so was the second because ‘Wolves’ are unpredicable and difficult to control. So military and police forces looked for the Sheepdogs, capable of killing but reluctant to do so.

Didn’t Sun Tzu say that the epitome of skill is to defeat your enemy without fighting, or using the least amount of force in any event.

4

Ender’s skills were innate and untrained. His skill was to attack and attack swiftly without mercy. It was then he was taken for training to learn to refine those innate skills.

5

No. What is necessary is a sense of justice, not proportionality. The reason you should not nuke one of their cities because one of their soldiers shot one of yours is because they didn’t do anything wrong. If the soldier shot and wounded one of yours, killing him in response might not be a proportional response, but it is hardly unjust.

6

My reading of the first fight was that Ender knew he needed to prevent an *escalation *of the fighting. The bully’s friends would have joined in or retaliated if he hadn’t shut down the bully completely.

If he’d shown mercy (weakness in his view) the other kids would have joined in the fight, either then or ganged up on him later on. They had no fear of consequences because they believed he wasn’t under observation any more.

Ender had to show them that fighting him was not worth their effort - he would provide consequences even if the grown ups wouldn’t.

7

The queens are supposed to be the only sentient members of the species, although there are some hints in later books that the workers could operate somewhat independently if the queens ever released their control. This is not expanded on in any meaningful way, though, so for all intents and purposes, you can treat the queens as the only “people” in bugger society.

The implication throughout the novel is that there are multiple queens, including one per fleet. IIRC, later books also suggest that

the buggers realized early on in the war with Ender that they were going to lose, so they retreated all their remaining queens to the heavily fortified homeworld, where the Little Doctor could obligingly slaughter them.

A bit OT, but this is why Card is a fascinating figure to me. In his youth, he seemed to be pretty much the most overtly liberal writer in science fiction this side of Roddenberry (at least, as much of a liberal as a Mormon could be). His early stories champion liberal ideals of tolerance, diplomacy, and understanding of differing perspectives. At some point, though, he started to veer hard to the right. The books he’s written over the past 10-15 years have become increasingly pro-militaristic, pro-war, and extremely homophobic, reflecting his ever increasingly outspoken stance on political issues.

It’s amazing to me that this single man, whose works introduced a generation of young readers to aspects of social liberalism, has reached the point where his name is justifiably synonymous with frothing right-wing hate.

The one thematic element of “Ender’s Game” that exists apart from the whole “the destruction of the buggers was due to a horrible misunderstanding between two species that didn’t try hard enough to communicate” thing is Card’s philosophy of war. In his view, if you are going to fight, you should endeavor to attack swiftly and with maximum force, to win the war completely and instantly so that the enemy has no ability to respond at all. Card’s not interested in ideas like the proportional response. And the character of Ender is the paragon of his philosophy of war - a warrior whose fundamental strategy is the massive, overwhelming, unbeatable strike.

As you have probably noticed, Card is not a subtle writer. He makes his points with the delicacy of a chainsaw to the head. This is true whether he’s writing about how we should try to understand our enemies or how gays are going to DESTROY AMERICA.

They had invaded his dreams; they knew Ender Wiggin in a way that even his closest friends and family could not. They knew that once he destroyed them, he would seek to understand them, and so he would inevitably be among the first to colonize the bugger worlds. My assumption from there is that they simply set up the monument on the bugger world closest to our solar system, as that would almost certainly be the world to which Ender would go.

8

My understanding is that they had been trying proportionate response during the war and that’s part of why they were losing. As soon as they let up for a moment, the aliens would just crush them (since they didn’t realise they were fighting sentient beings).

9

I’d go so far as to say that all successful military leaders throughout history have shared this philosophy, even if they couldn’t always implement it.

10

If you face an existential threat as a species, you do. Proportional responses are there so diplomacy can take over after the war’s over. But the goal in the bugger war wasn’t to reach detente; it was to wipe them out entirely.

11

I was thinking about this last night.

Ender’s final destruction of the Hive Queen was a deliberate over reaction on his part. Just as he’d done with the bully at the beginning of the book, he was trying to stop any further fighting. He hopes that by committing an atrocity during the ‘practice’ fighting, they will remove him from the programme and he will never have to actually fight the war.

Unfortunately, just like with the original fight, that was exactly what the adults were hoping for. They knew he had too much empathy to commit what amounted to genocide, so they lied as they had lied about withdrawing observation so they could see how he reacted.

Also, his older siblings were examples of what the generals were wanting - his brother had the violence without the strategy, his sister had the strategy without the violence. While Ender was capabale of using violence strategically (the bully), he was also capable of talking his brother out of killing his sister and Ender.

12

Nah. He was just screwing around.

The book points out that as a “test”, the final battle was massively unfair and probably unwinnable. Ender himself wasn’t even sure if the “simulation” would even properly model the effects of the weapon on the planet. It was his way of giving up without giving the “testers” the satisfaction of having him break down in front of everybody. He was already exhausted and burned out after months of “simulated” battles and wasn’t actually thinking all that clearly.

13

He thought he was giving up by doing something outside the rules.

How does that differ from my theory?

14

I agree, and was thinking this just the other day at the library. I don’t recognize the Card of Maps in a Mirror (which is a very large volume of his short fiction) or works like Treason (either one), Wyrms, Hart’s Hope, the Alvin series, the first Ender series, or most of his other work from the 80s or early 90s. I’m not sure where to pin it down, but I’d say it’s obvious by Empire. It also seems like he’s trying to coast on Ender.

15

His modern style is showing up by Speaker for the Dead. Forgivable then because it was a good story; less forgivable by the time it got to Children of the Mind.

I had to abandon my library a few years back. As I’ve reassembled it, it’s been noticeable that I have no Card in it anymore.

16

To the OP: Keep reading more in the Ender series. I really enjoyed it, and it explains a little more about what you are asking about.

17

What is the virtue of a proportional response? (West wing clip)

I haven’t read Ender’s game in a long while but it is still one of my favourite books of all time.

With the last battle, when the planet is destroyed, he had given up and wanted to end this constant cycle of battle, review with (what’s his name, M?), battle and repeat. It wasn’t an over reaction, Ender thinks that if he pulls it off that nobody would give a command to the guy who is willing to destroy a planet and win completely.

I would also recommend reading the Bean books. Well, at least the first ‘Ender’s Shadow’. The first lets us see the battle school stuff from a different viewpoint and it works for me. The other’s involving the formation of the hegemony of Earth, has mostly left my memory.

18

Thanks, I’ll check them out.

That’s an interesting scene, I’ve been reading the response to this thread (thanks everyone!) and intended to comment regarding the topic of proportionality in war but couldn’t quite find the words for what I felt on the matter. I still think that even in armed conflict there’s no need to use a sledgehammer when a scalpel will do.

19

I’ve been reading Card (or tried to, sometimes I just didn’t like his books) since I read what is for me the best SF short story ever, “Unaccompanied sonata”.

Since I’ve read quite a lot of his books, and tend not to remember much of the stories after a while, I can’t pinpoint in which novel, but I’m pretty certain that in one of them, one of the main characters has an homosexual relationship that is depicted sensibly and positively. Does anybody remember that?

Assuming that I’m not mistaken, how to explain that he can depict positively such a relation as a writer, but be such an homophobe in real life? It totally puzzles me.

20

I’ve been hearing off and on for years (around 10 years now, I think) that an Ender’s Game movie is in the works. I’m not sure why it’s never happened, but I’ve heard Orson Scott Card wanted to write the script and the studios/directors attached wanted rewrites or another screenwriter.

A couple of months ago there was a post on the AV Club titled “Summit to finally, really, truly try to make Ender’s Game movie”, so maybe it will come to be. But again, I’ve been hearing similar things for years.