The Apolyton Science Fiction Book Club: Ender's Game

[chequita guevara]

I have to disagree. It isn't that adults don't know how to fight or strategize. It's that they don't have the cohesiveness that Ender and his crew has, the instanteous reactions and ability to act as a single unit. That is what makes him different. Despite Ender's rather advanced tactical thinking, what he really has is the ability to lead, and create around him a group of loyal followers who know his mind, and vice versa.

This, then, is the reason they use children. By the time an adult goes to basic training, they have an individuality to crush. You can't simply mold adults into a unit, you have to smash their independence first, but it's still there, waiting to break out. With kids raised from a young age to be a unit, that individuality isn't there. This is one of the reasons why child soldiers are often the most vicious.

But I wonder what major point Card was trying to make. Is Ender's Game an allagory? Remember when it was published, 1985, the height of Reagan's renewed Cold War. Is humanity the USA and the Buggers the USSR?

[CyberGnu]

Hmm, but why waste generation after generation of kids by letting them use the inferior formation style fighting?

Or are you saying that maybe the officers were only waiting for someone like Ender who would break out of the pattern, and that any kid who would see what we as adults see as obvious must be a prodigy? There is a point to that... Especially since all the captains they sent already sent out should be mindless automatons who take order from Ender in his final game...

Well, that certainly puts a lot better spin on the book, but I still wish Card had written it himself, rather than us having to postulate it...


Allegory... Not sure. I can't really fit it with anything...

[Static Universe]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

But I wonder what major point Card was trying to make. Is Ender's Game an allagory? Remember when it was published, 1985, the height of Reagan's renewed Cold War. Is humanity the USA and the Buggers the USSR?

Not sure if I can buy into the cold war allegory idea, as the CW mentality is clearly represented in the book already as the Polemarch and the Hegemon, regardless of any alien involvement.

A more likely scenario here is that the buggers represent a allegorical variant of Morman theology, where the queen is god and the mindless drones represent humanity.

Or at least that's my take on Mormanism.

[Menlas]

I recently bought, and read, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon .

Great books, thanks guys !

P.S : Bean is a r0XX0r indeed