Ender's Game

driedcatnip · May 8, 2013

perhaps ideally this would be read at a younger age but to not be able to enjoy it at any age makes me think that it has to do with one's ego: where overly scrutinizing/solving the plot goes to invalidate the book or that the popularity/easytoread of it serves to invalidate/demean it.

i mean, there must be a framework for expectations at play here. you see it being heralded as one of the popular sci fi books, you see that it is highly rated, you see that it recommended for teens, you see that it has tons of reviews -- even if you want to like the book going into it and just saw how it is rated on amazon, i don't think you'd be able to hedge your expectations.

not to say that this is applicable to you, but there seems to be so much pretentiousness for things that are popular and just recirculated opinions. just enjoy it. (blahblah different opinions/tastes)

OneofOne · May 8, 2013

That may be true in some cases, but I wouldn't try to apply that to too many people. It's not like this is the first book I ever read AFTER everyone said it was awesome. Same thing for movies. Sometimes you agree with the masses, sometimes you don't. Malazan series is generally loved here, I find it too dark and depressing to want to bother with. Game of Thrones I really enjoy. LotR books are a snoozefest to me, Dresdin Files are incredibly good. Sometimes is really is just a taste thing.

driedcatnip · May 8, 2013

yupyup. i guess for me it's annoying trying to get ppl take recommendations(moreso reading than anything); you have to sell it and just down play it and your experiences with it. moreover, how you sell/recommend that book will likely determine how they experience that book.

Leadsalad · May 8, 2013

Wombat_sl said:
Ben Kingsley is so not working for me. Totally should have gone with Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett).

Ben Kingsley is like 70. I'm mega impressed he's still being an acting badass.

Vardisk_sl · May 8, 2013

OneofOne_sl said:
Opinions vary. Some people, like myself, think it was a somewhat boring book with an "eh" payoff.

Yea, exactly. I thought Ender's Game was a great book, but I thought the second book was total garbage (never read any other books in the series after how bad the second one was) - which is a completely sacrilegious opinion to some people.

a_skeleton_03 · May 8, 2013

Vardisk_sl said:
Yea, exactly. I thought Ender's Game was a great book, but I thought the second book was total garbage (never read any other books in the series after how bad the second one was) - which is a completely sacrilegious opinion to some people.

I can be ok with you not reading the rest that come after it but you should try the ones that come before it and the Bean one.

Kirun · May 8, 2013

I actually loved Ender's Game until the end. I thought the "twist" was completely stupid and very rushed. Hated it.

Sulrn · May 8, 2013

Vardisk_sl said:
Yea, exactly. I thought Ender's Game was a great book, but I thought the second book was total garbage (never read any other books in the series after how bad the second one was) - which is a completely sacrilegious opinion to some people.

Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind all have a completely different tone and target audience from Ender's Game in my opinion.

If you like EG, the Shadow series makes up a much better prequel/sequel series as it targets the same audience that EG did.

The Master · May 8, 2013

Vardisk_sl said:
Yea, the aliens fighting against humans in F-16s on Earth? That's completely contrary to how everything works out in the books, and really undoes the sadness of the end of the book.

In the book, the humans were a fairly large galactic civilization already. The buggers were a neighboring civilization and on first contact attacked a human ship completely unprovoked, wiping out the entire crew, and triggering the war. From the buggers perspective, there are no individuals, only the collective mind of the swarm. By destroying that one ship, they were just trying to say, "Hey, this is our territory, please respect our borders." They had no idea about individuality, the sanctity of an individual life, or that the action would trigger a full on war between the two civilizations. The war was just a misunderstanding.

If in the movie, the first contact is the buggers trying to invade Earth and completely wipe out humans with their just present day technology, then that just turns the buggers into warmongering assholes that deserve to be wiped out, no misunderstanding at all.

Humans weren't a "Galactic" civilization in the book. We had military outposts in various parts of the solar system. That was it and in fact in Ender's game the strongest outpost we had was built entirely by buggers and we just took it over. Dismantling and analyzing the bugger ships is what gave us most of the technology for interstellar travel. The war did get to Earth, a huge portion of China was wiped out completely, because the buggers always exterminated native life that could harm them before colonizing a planet. The buggers didn't understand they were attacking a sentient species at first, it wasn't until after the Second Invasion and Mazer nailing the Queen that they had that revelation, originally they were just here to colonize the planet, because it suited them just like it suits us.

Commander Vimeseh_sl · May 8, 2013

The books focused on Bean and the Ender's brother are much better then Ender's game or its direct sequels. Well aside from the reader having to deal with all of the main characters being geniuses just because Card says so. Then again that's a feature of Ender's game as well, so no biggie.

I'd check them out if you enjoyed the first Vardisk.

On topic:

if Ender is aware that he is directing a war and not just simulations then the movie is going to be pretty meh. They also gave away the ending more explicitly then I've seen a movie trailer do so to date. Not that many people don't know the ending already.

Spoiled because not sure if this tory can be spoiled or not on a board like this.

Sulrn · May 8, 2013

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:
The books focused on Bean and the Ender's brother are much better then Ender's game or its direct sequels. Well aside from the reader having to deal with all of the main characters being geniuses just because Card says so. Then again that's a feature of Ender's game as well, so no biggie..

If you look at it with the same eyes as Lord of the Flies it works. Doesn't matter how smart you are if civilization regresses like it does in a school social hierarchy.

The only glaring problem that comes out of all the geniuses running around is how idiotic they are when dealing with Bean's arch-rival at different points in the series.

Furry · May 8, 2013

Sulrn_sl said:
Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind all have a completely different tone and target audience from Ender's Game in my opinion.

If you like EG, the Shadow series makes up a much better prequel/sequel series as it targets the same audience that EG did.

Disagree entirely. I found the first book entertaining. I found the sequals to be mostly garbage. I found the shadow series to be entirely unbearable garbage to the point that I threw that piece of shit in the trash, and I've schlocked my way through some fucking awful books.

Commander Vimeseh_sl · May 8, 2013

Sulrn_sl said:
If you look at it with the same eyes as Lord of the Flies it works. Doesn't matter how smart you are if civilization regresses like it does in a school social hierarchy.

The only glaring problem that comes out of all the geniuses running around is how idiotic they are when dealing with Bean's arch-rival at different points in the series.

Oh I accepted it for what it was and enjoyed the books. I just think that Card did a lot of telling how intelligent that battle school grads were and not much showing. They just figured things out, because, and you never got to see how they came to the conclusions. Which is fine, because how do you write a genius as a point of view character when you don't have genius level intellect. Also, yes, how easily the antagonist hoodwinked everyone repeatedly was a bit absurd. Battle school brats are genius level intellects, and everyone else is seemingly just above functional retardation when it comes to national or international level politics.

Furry · May 9, 2013

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:
Oh I accepted it for what it was and enjoyed the books. I just think that Card did a lot of telling how intelligent that battle school grads were and not much showing. They just figured things out, because, and you never got to see how they came to the conclusions. Which is fine, because how do you write a genius as a point of view character when you don't have genius level intellect. Also, yes, how easily the antagonist hoodwinked everyone repeatedly was a bit absurd. Battle school brats are genius level intellects, and everyone else is seemingly just above functional retardation when it comes to national or international level politics.

This fairly echos my problems with the later books. All the kids being genius's worked in the first book because he didn't really rub it in our face, and they were more looking and trying to a create tactical genius than some sort of other genius. We can overlook the short-fallings of the characters because we expect some brainwashed general kid to lack certain qualities of common sense, and they do stuff during the book to show that that the kids are succeeding at their intended objective- becoming military minds.

What really irks me about the later books is that while this singular approach to the children's genius works, he decided to expand it and make characters into some sort of omni geniuses. When you have omni geniuses, everything a character does becomes subject of scrutiny. And when you scrutinize what happens in those books, its way to fucking stupid for the brain to rationally accept what its told to accept. You have to align whats happening in the books to what were told characters are, and this disconnect in the later books becomes painful. You cant just say their geniuses, you have to make them act that way.

Void · May 9, 2013

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:
if Ender is aware that he is directing a war and not just simulations then the movie is going to be pretty meh. They also gave away the ending more explicitly then I've seen a movie trailer do so to date. Not that many people don't know the ending already.

Spoiled because not sure if this tory can be spoiled or not on a board like this.

I've seen it discussed repeatedly in the open here already, so I don't think we are really spoilering it, but I will respond in a spoiler just in case.

I had this same discussion with a friend, and I felt it could still work in the movie if they did even a halfway decent job of it. I'm assuming you are referring to the scene where Ender "zooms in" on the planet (probably the homeworld). You and I know exactly what that is, but someone that hasn't read the book just watching the trailer sees him zooming in/attacking a planet in a holodeck-type setting. So if that same person is watching the movie, and they are continually showing all of their attacks as "training exercises," they could easily think to themselves, "Ah, those fuckers tricked me in the trailer, they made it look like they were attacking a planet, but it is just cool special effects for these training exercises. Bastards!"

I mean, I'm assuming that if they follow the book, Ender himself will just think it is a super cool simulation too, so it shouldn't be difficult to trick an unknowing viewer into thinking it is a simulation as well. Even if it was shown in a trailer. We've all seen trailers for next week's episode of a random TV show where the two main characters kiss, and it turns out to be someone's dream instead of actually happening. We're used to being fucked over by trailers, so I think I'm ok with what they showed here...IF they actually do the story properly in the movie, of course.

driedcatnip · May 16, 2013

wow so i didn't know the controversy about him. all indications point point to him being gay. doesn't seem to carry over to his writing... though, i remember vaguely there being a short injected antigay morale that seemed out of place (think it was one of the later books from the parallel series, near the end).

Arakkis · May 16, 2013

driedcatnip_sl said:
wow so i didn't know the controversy about him. all indications point point to him being gay. doesn't seem to carry over to his writing... though, i remember vaguely there being a short injected antigay morale that seemed out of place (think it was one of the later books from the parallel series, near the end).

What the fuck? He has a wife and 5 kids. People get married to hide their gay, but 5 kids is pretty deep cover.

Harshaw · May 17, 2013

Arakkis_sl said:
What the fuck? He has a wife and 5 kids. People get married to hide their gay, but 5 kids is pretty deep cover.

Balls deep you might say.

Antarius · May 17, 2013

driedcatnip_sl said:
wow so i didn't know the controversy about him. all indications point point to him being gay. doesn't seem to carry over to his writing... though, i remember vaguely there being a short injected antigay morale that seemed out of place (think it was one of the later books from the parallel series, near the end).

Err, pretty sure he's just a right-wing nutjob...

Siliconemelons · May 17, 2013

Vvoid_sl said:
I've seen it discussed repeatedly in the open here already, so I don't think we are really spoilering it, but I will respond in a spoiler just in case.

I had this same discussion with a friend, and I felt it could still work in the movie if they did even a halfway decent job of it. I'm assuming you are referring to the scene where Ender "zooms in" on the planet (probably the homeworld). You and I know exactly what that is, but someone that hasn't read the book just watching the trailer sees him zooming in/attacking a planet in a holodeck-type setting. So if that same person is watching the movie, and they are continually showing all of their attacks as "training exercises," they could easily think to themselves, "Ah, those fuckers tricked me in the trailer, they made it look like they were attacking a planet, but it is just cool special effects for these training exercises. Bastards!"

I mean, I'm assuming that if they follow the book, Ender himself will just think it is a super cool simulation too, so it shouldn't be difficult to trick an unknowing viewer into thinking it is a simulation as well. Even if it was shown in a trailer. We've all seen trailers for next week's episode of a random TV show where the two main characters kiss, and it turns out to be someone's dream instead of actually happening. We're used to being fucked over by trailers, so I think I'm ok with what they showed here...IF they actually do the story properly in the movie, of course.

not spoilering as it is in the damn trailer...

but the very end its him zooming in, yelling now, fireing some big blue beam gun thing at the planet and it explodeing...so yeah...hope they keep the "its a game" oh no its not! or well...wants left? other than all the QQ aliens QQ after then QQ for 10 more books of terribad QQness

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