Ender: too much of a good thing?

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by Tim Bond

I saw nothing relating to genius or quality shaping of young minds - allot of it instead was dealing with relatively simple authority and group-pack dynamics and leadership. Monkeys have these issues within their groups - dogs do to - this is nothing. A genius is not threatened by any authority - if they want to disappear - they are gone (dumb can be 'invisible') and if they take action it will be beyond mammal territorial concerns - though, they can induce fear by the ramifications of what they 'could' do and may acknowledge this to themselves. Why would someone who has better concerns grapple with what a mob is doing?

Tim...you said a lot of interesting things in your analysis of Ender's Game, but what you said about authority and group dynamics really struck me. I think a key here is that Card belongs to a religion that, for better or worse, is very oriented towards obeying authority and fitting into the group, often at the expense of the development of the individual's uniqueness. It also has often not been very tolerant of the individual who is more intelligent than the norm. So, I think what Card wrote probably reflects what he accepts and what he has problems with within that structure that is very important to his own belief system.

Of course, I could be completely off base in this assessment, but this is how it has seemed to me in multiple readings of Ender's Game.

[Tim Bond]

LOL...

I think your assessment and depth of reflection is not one millimeter off. Like I said though, he seems nice and produces excellent work. I was not aware of a religion - but then, everyone believes in something. Even so-called disbelief requires a belief in the ability for untested/unverified denial of validity. Suspended judgment is however much different from disbelief. Knowing is superior to a belief. Some things absolutely do not exist in the format imagined that they do by some belief systems. If you Know and truely deny validity, you do so by not engaging with imaginings.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Tim Bond

...not felt motivated yet to read these sequels...

...so far, Speaker for the Dead is interesting—the first person shooter gameroom has been replaced by a colonized planet. The narration feels more mature than Ender's.

[Tim Bond]

I will look it up.

It sounds cool - Speaker for Dead.

LOL - thank you.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Tim Bond

Speaker for Dead.

...I'm about halfway done, and think, if you liked Ender's you will like Speaker more.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Tim Bond

Speaker for the Dead

...as characters, Speaker of the Dead has:

• a protagonist who has existed for 3000 years because he galaxy hops at the speed of light
• an unemerged hive queen who communicates telepathically from a cocoon
• a sentient AI who communicates with the protagonist through:

  1. holographic computer terminals
  2. a jewel in the protagonist's ear

• primitive alien creatures who learned to speak a form of English

[Jives]

Originally Posted by littlemissattitude

I have read all of these books, and I found the Ender thread of sequels much more satisfying than the "Bean" sequels.

lol. Great, just great. On my third post I get to disagree, (most respecfully) with the board's "power-that -is"

For some reason, I just can't get enough of the Ender's Game thread. We read this book in my reading classes and in my night school classes and it never gets old. I enjoyed "Ender's Shadow" just as much if not more than the original.

The "Xenocide" thread, however, left a bad taste in my mouth. Sorry, but I found it dry and confusing. I just couldn't get into it.

[alicebandassassin]

Well i have to say the first book i read was enders shadow and from there i then went sideways and backward but if i had not enjoyed that book that would have been as far as i went.Some itmes it can be easy to wont to pick a book apart but somtimes its just as simple as being a good story that hold your attention.

[CarlottaVonUberwald]

the different stories are immense..i win ...end of :P

[aslanbagginskywalker]

Ender's Game seemed like a "stand alone" to me. Similar to the Matrix, it was so well done that I could enjoy it over and over again. However, when I learned it was a series, I eagerly asked for the sequel for Christmas. Like with Matrix Reloaded, I was severely disappointed. "Speaker for the Dead" is sub-par and morbid at best, dogmatic and masochistic at worst. In particular, the Catholic bashing got old, and I put the book down, never wanting to look at another Orson Scott Card book again. Card should have quit while he was ahead...or at least not been so heavy-handed with the moral relativism and put a little sunshine among the clouds once in a while. At any rate, the first book was amazing.

[Leonardo]

Aslan - I think you should try reading the shadow series - They're much more similar to the original book in their construction. I've only just started on Speaker for the Dead, but I've read the shadow series and found them very entertaining, if nothing else. I wouldn't say they're shallow, but they're definately not that deep. They rely heavily on dialogue and character interaction. Action Sci-Fi, so to speak.

If you loved Enders Game and didn't like Speaker for the Dead, Enders Shadow is definitely worth giving a try.

[Marvolo]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

I didn't enjoy Ender's Game, but I was glad I read it (you'll know why if you've read it ).

However, there are a number of "sequels" to the novel.

From what I hear of the other novels, though, they continue certain arcs and threadlines raised in the original story.

My predicament is a certain cynicism - the story is told, the end. Therefore why erad the others?

Or, perhaps, more pointedly - the sequels as cash-ins on a theme. After all, if OSC really considers Ender's Game to have been so incomplete and so requiring the exploration of the other character viewpoints from such an extent, then why not simply rewrit the works into a single new version of Ender's Game?

Or is that too simplistic?

I can appreciate the familiarity of the world must provide an appealing stage for Orson Scott Card to live out his philosophies and ideologies. However, I can't help but wonder if perhaps he shouldn't be looking to do more expansive world building to explore these concepts, rather than focus so much on rehashing a tale that was properly told?

Thoughts invited...

Ender's game was good, maybe a little better than good. But honestly, the best thing about Ender's Game is that it set up Speaker for the Dead. Speaker is probably my favorite all time book. I LOVED it. After Speaker, it sort of lost my interest. Xenocide was good, not great. I never finished Children of the Mind.

As for the shadow series, who cares? Ender's story is what we cared about, and to a lesser extent Bean had a good story to tell. Bean was an interesting character in Ender's Game. But every time I tried to read some of the Shadow books, bleh blah gah.

Ender's Game = Good. Speaker for the Dead = Amazing. The rest... well... bleh blah gah, with a little ugh thrown in.