As DocP Pointed out over in the standard Ender’s Game discussion, we need a place for people to discuss the book AFTER they’ve finished it. Any of you reading this thread will know why. So here 'tis.
I know I linked to this before, but no discussion of Ender’s Game would be complete without this xkcd comic. (As with all xkcd strips, be sure to check the alt text in the image too.)
Yeah, this is a much better idea than I had.
It’s funny we chose this book because I just read it about two month ago, great minds think alike I guess:) Great book… great ending. I had a clue how it was going to end but was still surprised. I picked up the sequel right after reading it but just couldn’t get into it half as much as the first. Anyone else have the same problem?
Yeah I’m right there with you… I ended up reading a couple of the following books, but I never really got into them and they definately didn’t stick, all I can remember is a few vague plot points.
However if you haven’t already, I’d recommend giving Ender’s Shadow a read. It’s Ender’s Game told from Bean’s perspective. Provides some insight into his character and some interesting background information, I enjoyed that one alot, albeit not quite so much as the original.
concerning the book, Valentine rocks, as does Jailor Rackman, although not quite as much as his nickname =)
Loved the story and the twist at the end. Even more so, I loved the characters
By the way, I have a question. I see that people often mention that they saw an ending coming or some such thing concerning stories(in all formats) with a twist at the end or a mystery sustained throughout. However when I watch or read a story such as Ender’s Game, I don’t like to try and predict things, I instead enjoy simply going along with the story wherever it may take me. Am I the only one? And also, for those of you who do figure out twists or mysteries before they happen in the story, do you consciously dwell on it and try to figure it out? or do you just sort of realise where its going without trying
For me, I don’t try to guess the ending/twist. The only thing that I did seem to get hung up on was the game with the Giant…the whole time reading the book up until the “final exam” I assumed that this is what “Ender’s Game” referred to… post exam, I assumed the other way around. When Card brought it back at the end though, I felt that it was a nice touch and a relatively good twist.
Back to your original question though, I try not to guess the twist. I definitely try to enjoy the story as the author would have it…otherwise it seems like I would be harming the integrity of the story/place myself above the author. Does this sound weird, or does someone else see it that way? Kinda like a book as artwork type argument, I realize, but that’s how I try to read books.
I felt the same. I bought the Ender’s sequel immediately after I finished the book and I quite couldn’t get into the story. At the end of Ender’s Game, Ender was a totally devastated young man (teenager?) and he went off to other planets to… preach the galactic gospel-? The story was much more introspective and philosophical than the actual sci-fi that Ender’s Game was.
However if you haven’t already, I’d recommend giving Ender’s Shadow a read. It’s Ender’s Game told from Bean’s perspective. Provides some insight into his character and some interesting background information, I enjoyed that one alot, albeit not quite so much as the original.
I guess the Shadow series was much easier for me to follow because the story stayed on Earth. Card stuck with characters who were very much human, with real problems in a futuristic setting.
Now, back to the book itself:
The Wiggin kids! Wow. Family of geniuses with diametrically different personalities: sadistic Peter, empathic Valentine, and Ender somewhere in the middle of both. I wonder if Card meant that by putting Ender as the ‘middle ground’ between Val and Peter’s tendencies, he wanted to illustrate the perfect military leader-? A person who feels utmost compassion but can be cold and calculating at the same time in times of conflict?
And what does it say that Ender, having won the war, becomes so destroyed by remorse that he exiles himself from mankind? He was removed from his family as a kid that he has no one to come back to when it was done. Even if his parents were still alive, he chose to go with Valentine to space.
The kid-genius academy storyline isn’t really anything new. What I liked about Ender’s Game was that instead of the cutesy special kids prep-school storyline (how many versions of wizard-school, master’s apprentice, super-secret genius agency, DNA-replication story have I read?) is that it was military training (well at least it was a first for me). For kids. Gradeschoolers with exceptional military strategy skills set in the future. How do you reconcile that? Soldiers are trained to do battle and, if necessary, kill.
The ‘guilt’ is less since the enemy isn’t human. That’s what we like to think so it’s “easier” to shoot them up. So if we were faced with a similar situation now, will the human race just rejoice-? Was Ender’s reaction (to leave) too extreme? In the BSG universe, if the Colonials were successful in wiping out the Cylons (the re-imagined universe has both the robot and humanoid versions) a second time around, the writers will have this same scenario. Will the Colonials have a collective guilt over winning against an alien race, or will humans just plain rejoice over the survival of their race?
On the first Cylon War, the Colonials just moved on (the humans almost having been wiped out). The only real change that happened after the toaster-Cylons were the yearly armistice meetings and a very healthy fear of the robots coming back.
The idea of the story was great. The battle action was fantastic. But aside from the setting, the technical stuff, what makes the book so open to discussion are the conflicts. Soldier Kids, Child abandonment, kids being forced to grow up too fast out of necessity.
Whew! Sorry for the long post - I’ve never met anyone else who’s read the book and I was excited that the book won as this month’s read. 
The ‘guilt’ is less since the enemy isn’t human. That’s what we like to think so it’s “easier” to shoot them up. So if we were faced with a similar situation now, will the human race just rejoice-? Was Ender’s reaction (to leave) too extreme?
It was definitely Ender’s time to leave. His guilt was too great and he needed purpose. Had he stayed on Earth, he would have been in danger of being kidnapped and used for war purposes. It was best for him to leave. What more could anyone accomplish after saving the world? People who accomplish great things are meant for bigger destinies.
What I appreciated most about this storyline was Ender’s love and appreciation for all forms of life. He faced down guilt throughout the story. It was one of the biggest themes in the book, and it continues to be in the following books.
I’ve read all the books in the Ender series. Both Bean’s storyline and Ender’s storyline. My favorite character, aside from Ender and Bean is Jane. Jane is pure scifi. She’s hardcore and fulfills every teenage boys dream of finding a fembot girlfriend.
Since we are on the topic of Ender, I highly recommend the book: First Meetings in Ender’s Universe
http://www.amazon.com/First-Meetings-Enders-Universe-Orson/dp/0765347989/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195055137&sr=8-1
It is a collection of short stories that deal with when the major characters meet across all the Ender books. The book is written more for the teen/adolescent level, but it is still a good read for any Ender fan.
I kind of wished the book had dealt a little more with what it means/does to a kid to be forced to grow up like that. It kind of does with how the whole experience crushes Ender in the end, but what about all the other kids who didn’t make it or the other teachers who are forced to basically torture these kids.
None of the teachers really seems all that torn with the fact that they have to torture these kids to save mankind. Its just presented as some abstract talking point, but never really explored.
That being said, I do like how Ender keeps his childlike challenge of authority all the way through. He decides to beat the game not because he is told to, but because he knows his finding ways to win will piss off the commander (especially the trick with the frozen kids helmets triggering the door/win, that was great).
The instructors turn his challenge of authority around on itself by making him feel his only way out is to beat them. He keeps going not because he is supposed to, but because he doesn’t want them to win (even though he doesn’t realize who the “them” is).
I think I’d enjoy a book written from the teacher’s/commander’s view. What it is like to try and outsmart the smartest kids in the world and then try to turn them into the tools they have to be without letting them really know what they are doing. Ender’s Game kind of glosses over this a bit too much.
I had a very small inkling of what was going to happen, but I was still surprised. Awesome ending. The shock value of finding out the simulation was real was about as cool, at least to me, as finding out in Knights of the old republic that…
[spoiler]You are actually the amnesia having, worst of the worst-Sith Lord Darth Revan! [/spoiler]
……cool stuff, I like getting surprised.
My favorite thing about the character of Ender is how unique he is, usually when someone is so analtyical about everything as we can see Ender is the author picks them as a baddy, they are cold and sterile, but here is a character who will look at a situation, do what needs to be done but will feel guilt over what hes done. Usually these characters are presented as someone who, if not for the circumstances they find themselves in, would have wildly successful politicians or lawyers, but with Ender you get the feeling that if it wasn’t for the military training he would have found a small community of people, perhaps a new colony, married and worked there and been a pillar of the community, he certainly never strikes me as someone who wanted power or would have taken it if hed had control of his life.
So this is something that I found interesting, a while ago on the podcast there was discussion about what makes a man evil, and whether if you do good with the intent of evil, does that make you good, and vice versa if you do evil with the intent of good does that make you evil? Theres a part in the second ender novel (Speaker for the dead) where he’s asked why he did it and he replies “that I didn’t know I was actually killing buggers, I thought I was playing a game,” but then follows that up with “but that’s not an excuse, if I’d known I would have done the exact same thing.” I think I rambled more than I should have but what I’m trying to ask is whether or not you think
a) Morals are subjective (i.e. anything can be seen as good and evil)?
b) Does doing evil without realising it make you evil? but what if you would have committed the evil incident anyway? (a good example would be global warming, a lot of people didn’t know they were polluting causing enviromental change (if we’re to assume thats what happens, lets not get into global warming here) but even though most people accept global warming as humanities fault they continue to use fossil fuels at the same rate.)
Good stuff! Can I throw some of my thoughts in-?
I don’t think they’re completely subjective. Man lives in a community of other people. I think right/wrong or good/evil gets differentiated sooner rather than later while a person lives with others.
b) Does doing evil without realising it make you evil? but what if you would have committed the evil incident anyway? (a good example would be global warming, a lot of people didn’t know they were polluting causing environmental change (if we’re to assume thats what happens, lets not get into global warming here) but even though most people accept global warming as humanities fault they continue to use fossil fuels at the same rate.)
I think since the person didn’t fully grasp the import of what they’re doing, they’re not fully responsible for their action (somewhat responsible still, but not completely exonerated). More along these lines though… once you realize what you’ve done, will you continue doing it? In your example re Environmental abuse, now what you know the impact of irresponsible waste management, will one continue to throw trash just anywhere? Will the person still want to buy that gas guzzler car they’ve always wanted?
Just some thoughts.
Maybe it’s because I literally finished reading Ender’s Game moments before Razor started, but I could not help but see parallels between Ender and Kendra. Especially at the end of the episode when it was revealed that she started the shooting on the Cilia, and then she kinda blacked out or whatever.
It’s an interesting parallel, Jen. But I think the big difference is that Kendra saw the people and knew what she was doing. Ender didn’t. He thought he was playing a game.
Imagine, for example, that you’re playing Halo and all of a sudden you discover that you’re actually controlling a real MC off in some distant world and all those aliens you blasted were real. (And in Ender’s case, they really do mean all.)
That’d really mess one up, I’d guess.
True … but I felt that the reason why they kept Ender in his game was because he was SO young and he felt SO much for those he was fighting, they knew he wouldn’t do it if he knew it was real. I feel like Kendra was how Ender would have turned out if he’d been alowed to grow up first. Especially if he’d survived life with Peter.
I loved the ending of Ender’s Game I really don’t believe there was a better way for Card to close up that part of the story. I also quite enjoyed the Knights of the Old Republic ending as someone else in this thread mentioned, but I found the simulator being real portion a bit predictable, however Ender finding the egg and the Speaker for the Dead portion were truly pretty uplifting given everything else he had been through. It was a beautiful ending that he could finally redeem himself. I believe my favorite passage was
“We are like you … We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. We could live with you in peace. Believe us.”
That portion just truly struck me, that no matter how alien, the buggers still respected life, and the fact that humanity invaded their space and massacred them made me feel so disgusted it was ridiculous, yet at the same time the gulfs between us and them were so vast there was almost no other way it could have ended. I don’t believe a book has affected me that way for a very long time.
The concept of a Speaker for the Dead was just a brilliant thing as well, another favorite quote of mine, “…say what the dead would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues.” Orson Scott Card is truly now one of my favorite authors.
The Ender-to-respected-leader like status didn’t make much sense to me - but then again, it DOES happen in politics all the time doesn’t it ?!
When he’s on the planet and finds the egg, my heart was just breaking - again - it had originally broke in two while he was playing what he thought was the final simulation. When he found out it was real, it was like someone walked all over my broken heart pieces, like with soccer shoes with cleats. Then, I got it back together only to have it smashed again when he connects with the egg.
I started reading Speaker for the Dead - the follow-up, but it just doesn’t have the same feel as this book.
I want to thank all who voted/determined this book to be the one. I would NEVER have read this on my own, and I’m glad I did!
He is definitely not so respected in speaker for the dead! I have to agree though, the series lost strength*(INMO) after “Enders game”