Ender's Game

[Elok]

In other news, there's an Ender's Game movie coming out in November. Any thoughts on that, gentlemen?

[Elok]

Starship Troopers is another popular one. I read it when I was 13, though.

I think you'll find EG a much more engrossing read, as it doesn't introduce a cool, elaborate sci-fi conceit before spending several dozen pages discussing the ethics and political implications of military service. Damn, ST was a boner-killer.

I would say "Speaker for the Dead" is just as good, if not better.

Spoiler:

Eh. Honestly, when I read it I could tell roughly how it was going to end as soon as the first chapter was over. Not WRT Ender's situation, but the whole "mystery" with the Piggies was pretty transparent. "Well, lessee...either this alien species is insane and murderous for some unfathomable reason--which would be rather boring, as they can't possibly threaten humanity, and make the ending rather anticlimactic--or the whole thing is the result of a serious misunderstanding due to innate differences between the races, JUST LIKE IN THE LAST BOOK. I wonder which it is?"

[Imran Siddiqui]

Spoiler:

But the misunderstanding was the jumping off point for the actual story. Everyone who read it, I'm sure realized that it was due to alien species not getting each other - the question was what was the intent, what can we glean from people with different cultures living with each other in close proximity, and what does all of this tell us about Ender. I mean its quite obvious that Ender doesn't think the piggies are mass murdering aliens and that there is another excuse - that's part of what he tries to find out to determine the life story he is to speak

[Elok]

Spoiler:

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but really, there was no tension there for me. In the first book, you kept wondering what would happen to Ender--would he be utterly broken by Battle School treatment, would he lead the fleet to victory, what was up with all those freaky dreams, etc. In SftD, there were mysteries to unravel--what was up with the Piggies, what was Ender going to say at the funeral--but real conflict was largely absent from the book. Yes, the Lusitanians despised him, but given Ender's past performance at bridging gaps between people, that never seemed like a serious obstacle. The book was interesting and a fun read, but it wasn't gripping like the original. It wasn't moving in the same way, either. Even the mysteries were minor--after that first chapter, I figured, okay, that dissection business was unlikely to be a gesture of hostility, so in some weird way it was meant as an honor--probably has to due with their biology or religion somehow. The only question was the exact details involved. I guess the bottom line is that they're two very different books.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

the bottom line is that they're two very different books.

Yes. One was good the other bad.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Elok:

Spoiler:

Your last line speaks it well. They are two very different books, but both wonderful and deserving of the Hugo & Nebula Awards they received. A testament to Orson Scott Card. I tend to enjoy the mystery to unravel story more than the tension story. Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" is my favorite sci-fi novel after all

[Elok]

I wouldn't call it bad. It just reads like he thought up a really cool lifecycle for this unique alien species, but couldn't find a dramatic exposition for it all. Ender's Game turns into Ender's Xenobiology Documentary. The problem is that it's only a really good read once. I keep going back to Ender's Game; with SftD there's no point.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

When it comes to the interaction of two distinctly different xenoforms and the social interactions "Speaker" pales in comparison to Nivens/Pournell "Mote in God's Eye". "Speaker" was utterly predictable as you previously mentioned.

[Hauldren Collider]

I wouldn't call it bad. It just reads like he thought up a really cool lifecycle for this unique alien species, but couldn't find a dramatic exposition for it all. Ender's Game turns into Ender's Xenobiology Documentary. The problem is that it's only a really good read once. I keep going back to Ender's Game; with SftD there's no point.

QFT. Also, Children of the Mind and Xenocide were incredibly ****ing stupid.

[Hauldren Collider]

Also, I didn't like Ender's Shadow because I felt like the book was written just so that Orson Scott Card could tell the audience exactly what they were supposed to be thinking at certain points in Ender's Game. It felt...masturbatory. And since I'd read Ender's Game already, there were no surprises. This was all compounded by the fact that Bean's role was relatively minor in Ender's Game--the whole purpose of his character was to contrast Ender now versus Ender at the beginning of his tenure at Battle School, so that we could directly see how Ender's character had developed. So having a book about Bean takes that away from the original, and also requires a lot of shoehorning and wackiness to fit it into the original plot.

[Tuberski]

So get crackin', biznatch. Then read Starship Troopers as penance for not doing it earlier.

No, Armor by John Steakley.

ACK!

[Elok]

No, Armor by John Steakley.

ACK!

I said penance. It's not penance if you get to read about actual powered-armor tactics in detail instead of Heinlein's juvenile poli-sci bull****.

(still not sure how he could endorse crypto-fascism in that book and the near-opposite in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress...)

Re: Ender's Shadow, I enjoyed it for the perspective on Bean's character. There's some overlap with the original story, of course, because they were compatriots. But the original elements were a blast for me. Re: Xenocide, I didn't think it was a good book by any means, but I will say that the Taoist colony was interesting. CotM...yeah, it's just hard to swallow "this hand-waving nonsense about a dimension you never heard of should work, so go ahead and work out the physics of it, without experimentation, by your lonesome." Or was that introduced in Xenocide and merely continued in CotM? I don't recall.

[Felch]

Yes, but all of your opinions are terrible and wrong, Imran, aka the person who thinks the Star Wars prequels were better than the original trilogy.

How could anyone prefer interstellar trade disputes to Han Solo?

[Hauldren Collider]

Ask Imran.

[Docfeelgood]

Yes, but all of your opinions are terrible and wrong, Imran, aka the person who thinks the Star Wars prequels were better than the original trilogy.

Really? ..........better than the original trilogy?