Last week I re-read Ender’s Game. Excellent book, though I have trouble suspending my disbelief to the extent of buying in to the idea of kids under the age of 10 discussing such deep topics. I’m left assuming that Ender and his peers were the result of a program aimed at producing geniuses, but such is never actually stated. Despite this quibble, the book is all in all a most excellent read. (This would be a great opportunity to include a link to the extra copy I put on PaperBackSwap, but it was gone within 24 hours.)
The idea of Locke and Demosthenes makes some degree of sense within the context of the book, and I can sort of imagine a variation of Peter’s gambit playing out in the scope of today’s blogosphere. (There are after all a few “superstars” out there, but they’re mostly bloggers, not commenters.)
Through a fluke of excellent timing, I finished reading Ender’s Game on Monday and on Friday, XKCD had a strip based on one of Valentine’s and Peter’s discussions. (The squirrel in the strip fared much better than any of the ones in the book however.)
7 thoughts on “Ender's Game”
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I just gave that to my nephew for his 11th birthday. I’ve never read it myself, but I chose it because there were so many rave reviews from adults on Amazon.
You chose well.
The original Ender’s Game won both a Hugo award and a Nebula (Science Fiction awards, created by the fan community). I haven’t read them all, but I believe Orson Scott Card ended up writing five additional books in the Ender series.
If I remember correctly, families were only allowed 2 children, but the military was searching for geniuses. Ender’s older siblings were tested, but his brother was too ruthless and his sister didn’t pass either. They were very close to ideal, which is why his parents were allowed a 3rd child, which they then lost which sort of countered the social stigma but was emotionally difficult.
Yep, that’s a pretty fair assessment of it. But given the sheer number of kids being sent off to Battle School and then to serve in the fleet, all of them able to converse at the level of adults… I just can’t shake the idea of some sort of eugenics program.
I gotta say, I read “Ender’s Game,” “Speaker for the Dead” and the next book as well — was it “Xenocide?” — but none of the books really piqued my interest. As a recall, it was a long vacation with nothing to do in the car.
Maybe it’s just Card’s writing style. I’ve read one or two other pieces of fiction that he wrote, and they didn’t appeal much to me either.
Have you read “Ender’s Shadow”? I really ended up enjoying that one (and the following series of books) much more.
I’ve only read the first three: Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. I was quite surprised a few days ago to discover that there were now eight books in the series. That’s really impressive, plus Card has written other things as well.