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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Ender's Game

17:19 / 20.07.01

Has anyboy here read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card? I was just re-reading the book and remembering how much fun it is and how much it meant to me at a certain point. Did a search on the web and came up with a very interesting discussion thread on Slashdot.
Found here.

17:47 / 20.07.01

I read it when I was a kid, and again more recently. It's a very good book indeed, although Card seems determined to ruin its reputation (Ender's Shadow was unmitigated toss).

The immediate sequel, Speaker For The Dead, is one of my absolute fave novels.

I'm dreading the film.

16:20 / 23.07.01

It *was* a good book, wasn't it?
I found it too late for it to shape the "outsider kid" in me, but it definitely had the appeal.

The movie will only work if they make the kids look like the kids in Village of the Damned.

13:07 / 24.07.01

I loved 'Ender's Game', and 'Speaker for the Dead', and 'Xenocide' - amazing, amazing books. Less good, though it pains me to admit it, were 'Ender's Shadow', and 'Children of the Mind'...and I barely managed to get through one book in the 'Earth' series. Still looking forward to 'Shadow of the Hegemon' though.

OSC has a website at www.hatrack.com
if anyone is interested in finding out how he likes his cottage cheese, and suchlike...

gentleman loser

01:53 / 25.07.01

Yes, I have read and I enjoyed it very much but I'm always been baffled that it's held in such extreme esteem. Don't get me wrong, it is an excellent book, but it didn't have nearly the impact on me as such other SF novels as Neuromancer, The Forever War, Startide Rising, Gateway, Voice of the Whirlwind, etc.

It's been so long since I've read it that perhaps it's time to give it a second skim.

reidcourchie

07:55 / 25.07.01

I've just read a few reviews of this, didn't really appeal to me much and I would have trouble taking a book where the bad guys ar called "buggers" seriously. However you guys seem to like it so what's so good about it?

10:02 / 25.07.01

When I was little I loved the James Bond movies on TV. The bit I loved best were the gadgets, and I remember being really let down when some films were shown that didn't have so many gadgets.
I love the gadgets in Ender's Game, and by that I mean the cool ideas. I love the idea of genius kids building up anonymous respect and influence through posting articles on the net. ( This was written well before the massive explosiuon of the internet.)
I love the idea of the battleroom. I love the idea of a saving the world through playing compuer games with friends. Maybe the attraction is similar to The Matrix. I'm not a computer geek spending too much time in my room. I have actually been chosen for a higher purpose.

The stroy also explores some interesting questions. Does might make right? The menaing of war.

10:22 / 25.07.01

It's very well written, for a start. Like all the best novels, the words on the page diappear and you actually see it all happening.

There's some startling imagery in there, too. Ender digging through the giant's eye has stuck with me for years. The training battles in zero-G work brilliantly - Card's descriptions are so clear that there's never any confusion as to what's going on.

Most importantly, though, the story is nigh-on perfect. The friendships between the kids feel real, and for a book about the relationships between children and adults there's never any cloying sentimentality.

12:49 / 31.07.01

I think in many ways, like Chesterton, that Card's religious conviction is his strength. Card writes with a deep understanding of the hatred, cruelties and violence that humans are capable of. That all of his characters are capable of. But also combines it with a strong sense of their complexity and fragility, their love and compassion, and the omnipresent possibility of redemption. In Card's world terrible, terrible things happen but nothing is ever completely lost and everything in some way has a meaning. I may not agree with him, but I can't help but like and respect him and his characters.

17:52 / 26.12.05

I just finished this the day before yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My only real addition to the thread is to mention Hideaki Anno's Gunbuster, a six part anime series that's both a misty-eyed homage to Ender's Game and a trial run for his later masterpiece Neon Genesis Evangelion.

I say homage... really it's a riff on the base components that make up EG. Sacrifice, relativity, friendship, isolation, punishing training, insectoid "menace" and all hope placed in the child hero. Don't expect it to be a blow for blow remake, the ending is very different and some of the moral questioning is absent (or at least toned down). Instead you get an ingenious lightspeed UFO chase that ends in trauma, a paranoid and harrowingly lonely space battle to rival The Wrath of Khan, probably the most insane Doomsday weapon I've ever heard of and a total tear-jerker of a black and white finale.

It'll probably be too stylised for some people, veering unexpectedly between trauma, cheesiness, bizarre and unnecessary exploitation, humour and off-the-wall cutesiness. Twenty quid to you sir.

--

11:06 / 20.01.06

Any appreciation I had for Card's work went out the window when I read some of his utterly moronic essays on homosexuality.

Locust No longer

03:02 / 23.01.06

"What is it with Scotch Tape?"
He sounds like a poor man's Jerry Seinfeld in that column he writes on his homepage. Horrible.

But anyway, yeah, I read Ender's Game for the first time six months ago. I really enjoyed it, the second and third in the series less so. I really wish he would have left it simply as a stand-alone novel. But what the hey. He even writes that he didn't envision it as a series of books but did it because it Ender's Game was so popular. Oh well.

09:17 / 23.01.06

"Any appreciation I had for Card's work went out the window when I read some of his utterly moronic essays on homosexuality."

You really mean that? First time I heard about those views but you'd probably better enjoying the book regardless. I wonder if re-reading it with that knowledge would reveal any subtext. Ha.

Professor Silly

15:26 / 23.01.06

Read this in college, in a Sci_Fi lit class. I found it very enjoyable, though in truth I enjoyed Dune and Snowcrash more.
Synchronicity abounds--I was just recommending this book to a co-worker last week. It came to mind because we were talking about vectors and such, and I am of the opinion that Ender's Game has the best description of zero-gravity conditions and the highly personal relativity of direction that results--there's no universal "up" out there. (there isn't one here on Earth either, but that's another issue)

00:42 / 25.01.06

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400403/

To be directed by Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm, Troy).