Ender's Game (the book) - Thoughts? [Spoilers]

[soren7550]

Ok, so I just finished Ender's Game this morning, and came out thoroughly underwhelmed. Ender came off as a rather flat character, many instances of people's motives and rational are idiotic (We need a killer who can love, a child is a superior soldier to an adult.), some of the logic is likewise dumb (the aliens can somehow read Ender's mind, fly around in space for 50 years and you won't age for some reason), it gets quite boring (watch as Ender's siblings write political commentary articles!, Ender plays a video game), and so on.

I don't get it though. This and its sequels have been so thoroughly praised, but I can't get why. Did I just completely miss something?

For more discussion, what did you guys think of the book? Think this was worth being adapted into a movie?

 

[shrekfan246]

fly around in space for 50 years and you won't age for some reason)

I can't comment on the logic as it exists in the book, as I haven't read it, but there is actually scientific basis for traveling through space and returning at a much younger age than everyone around you would've changed.

Granted, the person doing the traveling would still age, but theoretically someone could travel a few weeks through space and would return a few years later in Earth time.

...

I haven't read the book though, so I'm not sure I can really contribute. :/

I imagine it became popular for a similar reason something like Harry Potter did? EDIT: That's based on the fact that I always see it in the "What young adults are reading" section in the local bookstore when I go down there.

 

[Axolotl]

They don't train Ender as a child soldier because superior to adults. They do it because he's less likely to work out what's going on.

The whole story (as I read it) was about the military wanting to commit genocide but not having the actual stomach to pull the trigger themselves. So instead they train Ender to be capable of wiping out the aliens while at the same time keeping him ignorant and disorientated enough that they can trick him into doing it.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Disgusting book made by a bigot! Burn all copies! /sarcasm

No seriously I felt it was alright. I'm going to go see the film when it comes out, I'm really hoping its not just a crapfest.

 

[TehCookie]

For some parts, it's not that Ender was superior to adults but he was clueless about what was really happening. That's why he was playing the videogame (which was too predictable). When you play a game do you care about the pawns you sacrifice? They wanted that kind of thinking which is why they used Ender.

The thing I hated most about it was the predictable twist, but I wouldn't say the book was bad. However it wasn't a great as people say. My dad and brother loved it for the ending but neither of them guessed it.

As for the space time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

 

[Dangit2019]

Ender came off as a rather flat character,

He was a child genius being trained to slaughter a an entire species, what did you expect, Tony Stark?

many instances of people's motives and rational are idiotic (We need a killer who can love, a child is a superior soldier to an adult.)

I don't remember the loving killer part, but I'm pretty sure the reasoning behind child training is for indoctrination and manipulation purposes. In that respect, children are better soldiers because they can more easilly be twisted into what the generals want them to.

some of the logic is likewise dumb (the aliens can somehow read Ender's mind,

It's sci-fi, as long as they abide by their own rules, aliens reading minds is completely plausible.

fly around in space for 50 years and you won't age for some reason),

You do understand the implications of traveling faster than the speed of light in relation to time, right?

it gets quite boring (watch as Ender's siblings write political commentary articles!

...and use the influence of those points to control world politics, but whatever it's not like that's important...

Ender plays a video game), and so on.

Yeah, he played a game meant to psychoanalyze and traumatize him using information of his past experiences. He didn't stop the story to play fucking Minecraft.

I don't get it though. This and its sequels have been so thoroughly praised, but I can't get why. Did I just completely miss something?

Yeah, you did, you didn't read Speaker for the Dead.

 

[InfinityCubed]

Honestly, I can't quite defend my opinion of Ender's Game, its awesomeness is very much undefinable, at least to Average Joes like me. I can no more tell you in depth why it is good than I can the Mona Lisa.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

You don't read Ender's Game for the story in the same way you wouldn't read 1984 for the story -- it's a book about a batch of ideas with a rather good story showing you those ideals in action. Other than that, Ender's Game is probably my favorite sci-fi novel because of the slow pacing and the attention paid to keeping it realistic. (Particularly all the logic and thought that goes into zero-gravity fights and the actual spaceship they train on.) Granted, the game was written before the USSR disbanded, so some of the politics are laughable and outdated.

Ender is a flat character? He fucking is, he very fucking well is. The most characterization he gets is when he beats up the guy in the beginning and feels bad for the spoiler thing at the end. I want to say the book was making statements about the sacrifices being a leader is--being incredibly unsympathetic and conflicted--but it doesn't work.

The characters being stupid, again, is undefended. But the book didn't come off to me as a book about the characters, it was more about the thinly-veiled allusion to militarism and the future. (However, the movie is forced to flesh out the characters and personal relationships -- either being between Ender and Petra or Ender and Bean.)

The aliens reading Ender's mind, if I recall, is that sort of "hivemind device" that the book creates to explain how Ender is able to truly fight the buggers, and how the buggers 'think'. I think the mental connection between Ender and the buggers is supposed to give a better light of the buggers, as intelligent beings instead of faceless enemies (kind of like the enemies in a lot of FPSs now).

Not aging when traveling to space? Look at this.


Ender's siblings writing political articles: This has nothing to do with the actual characters, again. This part blew my mind apart because the book predicted the power of anonymity and political influence the Internet has before the Internet was even widely used. Again, it can also be an allusion to hatemongering and militarism. Whatever.

The video game I don't quite understand. It was about Ender's personal advancements and Ender's characterization. Again, that sucks.

...

My favorite part was always about Valentine and Peter's political writings on Earth. One, because as stated above, Orson Scott Card predicted the power of anonymity and the speed of information spreading. Two, because it was simply a lot more interesting than the constant skirmishes and internal conflicts with Ender.

Also, explaining about the true 'hivemind thinking' that the buggers use and what it implies redefined how I think of storytelling. Seriously, but for reasons no one cares about.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

meh, for someone who doesn't like many books (I really don't like books...) I actually enjoyed ender's game a lot. I don't agree with some of your breakdowns of the book (as many have pointed out) but to each his/her own, i don't claim to be a book expert when i can barely read a book without falling asleep.

 

[BrassButtons]

I enjoyed Ender's Game well enough, but I felt pretty cheated at the end. I kept seeing things throughout the book that seemed kinda dumb and didn't make much sense, but I knew there was a twist ending and figured it would make everything fit together. Nope. The ending actually made the entire thing make even less sense.

What was the point of abusing Ender the way they did? What was the point of singling him out, of constantly changing the rules on him, and of basically making his life hell? The adults note constantly that what they're doing is going to fuck him up for life, but they make vague references to how "necessary" it is. Except it isn't. Ender doesn't know that he's committing genocide at the end--he doesn't need any kind of emotional detachment. All he needs is strategic knowledge, because he thinks he's playing a game. Nothing that happened to him previously mattered.

Heck, the reason they chose him--his kicking that one kid to death? That was also completely irrelevant. Since the entire plan revolved around him not knowing that he was commanding actual ships in an actual battle, there was no need to have a kid who saw that kind of fighting as a good thing. They just needed someone who was good at strategy. That's it. The idea that they needed someone who could emotionally connect with the bugs or whatever was complete idiocy. You don't need that to be able to be good at strategy--you just need to be good at strategy.

Also, that plan had to be one of the dumbest things I've ever come across. Take a kid, emotionally abuse him for years, then hand him a "game" that actually relays real orders to real ships on a real battlefield. Yeah, nothing could possibly go wrong there. Unless, thinking it's a game, Ender decides to just screw around (we've all done it--firing at friendly ships to see if they'll explode, flying into the sun/asteroids/planets, crashing ships into each other, etc). Or, because his teachers are total douchecanoes, he just decides not to play at all. Or decides to send all of his ships away from the battle, to see what happens. Or the pilots decide they don't trust the orders coming from a kid who doesn't even know he's commanding a real battle. The only reason the plan worked is because of author fiat.

I can understand why some people enjoyed it, but after that ending I don't think I'll be touching anything else by Card.

 

[KOMega]

~snip~

I think they kept pushing all the challenges at ender to see what he would do. The adults were very interested in how he handled things and the way he seemed to excel and achieve at most things better than many of the other children.

Didn't ender also have like a group of other kids with him who helped him command the other ships anyways?
I think they mentioned somewhere that the pilots who were sent were commanded to listen without question the commands they received from the boxes or whatever that were connected to the game, since they only thing they found that could move faster than light was the alien communication device. Seemed kinda stupid, but it was either attack the aliens or wait till they wiped out earth or something. Ah, I'm really starting to forget some details.

I don't think they needed anyone to emotionally connect with the bugs or anything. I don't think any of the adults really even thought about ender's connection to the bugs. Ender was pretty good at strategy, considering how he seemed to always pull through those zero grav. battle games with the other kids, even when the adults kept stacking the odds against him.

Anyways. Ender's Game was a good book.
Tried to read the other books, including the Shadow series as well.
They really suck in comparison imo.

 

[Heronblade]

Ok, so I just finished Ender's Game this morning, and came out thoroughly underwhelmed. Ender came off as a rather flat character, many instances of people's motives and rational are idiotic (We need a killer who can love, a child is a superior soldier to an adult.), some of the logic is likewise dumb (the aliens can somehow read Ender's mind, fly around in space for 50 years and you won't age for some reason), it gets quite boring (watch as Ender's siblings write political commentary articles!, Ender plays a video game), and so on.

I don't get it though. This and its sequels have been so thoroughly praised, but I can't get why. Did I just completely miss something?

For more discussion, what did you guys think of the book? Think this was worth being adapted into a movie?

Do bear in mind, Ender's Game was one of Orson Scott Card's very first books, as a result it is indeed fairly rough compared to his other works, including the sequels which were written much later in his career.

-A child is more malleable and adaptable than an adult. In a situation where the physical disadvantage does not matter, and moral considerations are cast aside, a child who is thoroughly trained for a singular purpose can indeed outperform adults in many fields. In this case, they were looking for intelligent nonlinear thinkers that had a chance to understand an enemy that defied all comparison to normal human behavior. Looking to recruit children for this purpose does make a twisted kind of sense, but whether or not it would actually pay out as it did here is another question entirely. It certainly worked for several military organizations in history, but they were looking for straight soldiers, not strategists.

-The buggers communicate from mind to mind instantaneously regardless of distance. This ability is based on a phenomenon that connects all life forms, (no, not the force) these connections are stronger between creatures that are close in some way. Ender was at the time learning to think like the buggers did, as part of preparing to fight them. So yes, a connection between him and them was established.

-Fly around in space at a high enough relative velocity, and yes, weird stuff with time does indeed happen. It is not that you do not age, it is that time passes more slowly for you by comparison to people not traveling with you. The phenomenon is known as time dilation. Take two clocks that are both perfectly accurate and set to exactly the same time. Keep one with you, and send the other onto the ISS for a year, when it comes back, the clock that went up there will be approximately 0.014 seconds behind the other one. Not all that impressive I know, this effect is very very minor when traveling at slow speeds , but it gets exponentially stronger the closer you get to the speed of light. For instance, if I spend one year in space traveling at 90% of the speed of light, two years will pass for you and the rest of Earth in the meantime. This is also where the idea that you can go backwards in time by going faster than light came from.

 

[Username Redacted]

I have a fond spot in my heart for Ender's Game because it was one of the only decent (not good, not great just decent) books that I was required to read in school. I also missed the part about it having good sequels as I thought aside from the Shadow books that the other sequels where preachy bullshit.

 

[BrassButtons]

Its a question of mentally preparing him to dedicate himself to the task ahead.

Except he didn't NEED that kind of mental preparation. He thought he was playing a video game. You don't need years of isolation from your peers and emotional trauma to play a game. Their mistreatment of him had a very high chance of permanently screwing him up and impeding his ability to work well, while having zero chance of actually accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Furthermore anyone who has played RISK can tell you that being able to 'emotionally connect ' with your allies and foes is an incredible boon, as it allows you to predict and provoke certain behaviors. As Sun Tzu noted; strategy requires an odd mix of empathy and emotional detachment.

Fair enough--a certain amount of empathy may be necessary in order to predict the enemy's moves. But they take it way farther than makes sense, I think. And if you DO need a kid with empathy, you probably shouldn't do everything you can to emotionally isolate him, because that can seriously harm his ability to emotionally connect with others.

Assuming both the Gentry and the Spartans were both some of the most potent military organizations of their time; I wouldn't be so quite to claim the plan as stupid.

You're going to need to explain this one to me.

I think they kept pushing all the challenges at ender to see what he would do. The adults were very interested in how he handled things and the way he seemed to excel and achieve at most things better than many of the other children.

So they were emotionally abusing him to see how he would handle it? That's even worse than doing it as part of some ill-conceived plan to prepare him for the not-a-game. What would have happened if they pushed him too far, and he just shut down? They spent years searching for a kid with Ender's exact qualities (because reasons), and then when they finally find him they risk ruining everything in order to "see what he would do"? Heck, there were instances where he could have DIED, and the adults deliberately allowed those situations to develop. They were playing Russian Roulette with humanity's last hope.

Didn't ender also have like a group of other kids with him who helped him command the other ships anyways?

At the end, yeah. And any one of THEM could have decided to screw around as well. There were multiple points of failure in that plan.

I think they mentioned somewhere that the pilots who were sent were commanded to listen without question the commands they received from the boxes or whatever that were connected to the game

That is mentioned. But just because someone is ordered to do something doesn't mean they always will. Soldiers get scared, or they notice something that command doesn't know, or they simply make mistakes. Maybe they weren't told the orders were coming from a kid (lying certainly wasn't an issue for the characters in the book) but if they were then it's entirely reasonable to me that at least a few of them would have said "bag this" and ignored Ender's commands.

I don't think they needed anyone to emotionally connect with the bugs or anything. I don't think any of the adults really even thought about ender's connection to the bugs. Ender was pretty good at strategy, considering how he seemed to always pull through those zero grav. battle games with the other kids, even when the adults kept stacking the odds against him.

Ender's emotional state was pretty central to the story, though connecting with the bugs wasn't mentioned until the end, when he claimed that was what made him such a good strategist.

 

[Fox12]

Ok, so I just finished Ender's Game this morning, and came out thoroughly underwhelmed. Ender came off as a rather flat character, many instances of people's motives and rational are idiotic (We need a killer who can love, a child is a superior soldier to an adult.), some of the logic is likewise dumb (the aliens can somehow read Ender's mind, fly around in space for 50 years and you won't age for some reason), it gets quite boring (watch as Ender's siblings write political commentary articles!, Ender plays a video game), and so on.

I don't get it though. This and its sequels have been so thoroughly praised, but I can't get why. Did I just completely miss something?

For more discussion, what did you guys think of the book? Think this was worth being adapted into a movie?

Well, keep in mind it's a kid/teenager book, so that's the primary reason children are the focus. It's mainly famous, to my understanding, because of the influence it had on other books. Like movie bob said, the original ideas the book had have been pilfered by so many other writers that we've all seen it before. A "chosen" kid (ender, harry potter, percy jackson, ect) is sent of to a special school (military base, hogwarts, don't care) where he learns skills that will help him save (earth, hogwarts, whatever).

I would have been fine with Ender being raised to adulthood as a general, and then he fights a war, but I agree that having your military controlled by toddlers is kind of stupid. Again though, a childrens book.

The space flight affecting age is accurate though. If you fly at a fast enough speed, then time moves slower for you, so that when you stop your younger than everyone else.

I thought his brother and sister were fascinating characters, and it was interesting to see how Valentine was growing closer to her psycho brother than Ender. I thought there was going to be a huge civil war with adult Ender on one side, and his brother and sister on the other. That would make for some really compelling drama, since Valentine was his whole reason for fighting in the first place. Then we could see Valentines crushing guilt, and how she would feel trapped in her situation. But then the whole thing got swept under the rug and... yeah, none of that really happened. It was okay, I may see the film, but it wasn't life changing.

 

[Fox12]

Its a question of mentally preparing him to dedicate himself to the task ahead.

Except he didn't NEED that kind of mental preparation. He thought he was playing a video game. You don't need years of isolation from your peers and emotional trauma to play a game. Their mistreatment of him had a very high chance of permanently screwing him up and impeding his ability to work well, while having zero chance of actually accomplishing anything worthwhile.

The treatment also had a very small chance of increasing his capabilities. Emotional trauma encourages escapism, escapism into a fantasy encourages one to excel at the said fantasy. Its so cliche its practically a trope; but true nonetheless. As I note below; the staff had plenty of time to find the best candidate; and plenty of candidates to choose from.

Furthermore anyone who has played RISK can tell you that being able to 'emotionally connect ' with your allies and foes is an incredible boon, as it allows you to predict and provoke certain behaviors. As Sun Tzu noted; strategy requires an odd mix of empathy and emotional detachment.

Fair enough--a certain amount of empathy may be necessary in order to predict the enemy's moves. But they take it way farther than makes sense, I think. And if you DO need a kid with empathy, you probably shouldn't do everything you can to emotionally isolate him, because that can seriously harm his ability to emotionally connect with others.

Your confusing empathy with sympathy; two related but ultimately different skills. Also bear in mind that by social isolating people; most people only become more desperate for emotional contact, rather than being annulled to it. Furthermore; as had already been stated they wanted to see how far he could excel. You noted this as a game of russian roulette, which while true you fail to take into account that there are millions of other potential candidates that the staff have to choose from; and potentially decades to find the perfect commander (as the fleet is in transit during his training, they could simply decelerate and extend their trip by a week or two to give the staff the decade or so needed to find the perfect child). If Ender failed there were plenty of others who could take his place

Assuming both the Gentry and the Spartans were both some of the most potent military organizations of their time; I wouldn't be so quite to claim the plan as stupid.

You're going to need to explain this one to me.

The Gentry refer to the class of professional soldiers in Europe who typically came from noble or 'upper middle-class' backgrounds. Most began their training in childhood, and entered formal training as pages/squires or an equivalent at 8-14 years old; children by our standards. Then they were subjected to harsh discipline, beatings, practice fights, mental conditioning, things that to a modern observer may very well qualify as child abuse. The result was some of the most potent fighting units on the battlefields of the old world; Knights, Hussars and Byzantium Cataphracts. Similar practices were done by the Spartans, albeit to much greater extremes; but all share common traits: harsh (borderline abusive in most cases) treatment of candidates and the use of 'games' to encourage the growth in strategic and tactical combat skills.

Well, keep in mind it's a kid/teenager book,

Don't assume that because a books narrative is centered around children that it is intended for children. His Dark Materials, Forever War, Starship Troopers, Enders Game, Catcher in the Rye and To Kill (A bloody) Mockingbird have narratives centered around children or adolescents. None of them were ever intended to be read by children. It still amuses me to this day why scholastic decided that the Golden Compass was a child's novel; a lot of cocaine must of been involved.

Make no mistake, Enders Game was never intended for the child market; the fact it was originally published in Analog magazine compounds this fact.[/quote]

The book is taught in middle school, and the author mentions in his foreword that children and teenagers have written him letters discussing how they could relate to his characters. "Because the book does ring true for children. The highest praise I ever received for a book of mine was when when the school librarian of Farrer Junior Highschool... told me, "you know, Enders game is our most lost book."