6 ms·

Ender's Game Review

46 points by markessien 18y ago

nihilocrat 18y ago
If the book is porn, and the book is full of children, wouldn't that make it... child porn? I don't entirely agree with the argument. The Battle School is supposedly full of overachievers, people who probably "excel at games" compared to their peers back home. They are all used to being top dog, so when you put a bunch of top dogs inside a competitive environment (or really just any long-term living/working situation), things get nasty.
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Many of the things said about Ender's Game could also be said about Harry Potter: "...the plot is contrived to make sure that other characters always hate Ender. There is no obvious reason for him to be so despised, at every turn, by his peers: he's a confident guy who excels at games, the kind of guy who would typically be well-liked at school." "Geek wish-fulfillment is not the only fetish on display in Ender's Game: the other is self-pity, the lonely self-pity of the truly gifted and persecuted." For the record, I like Ender's Game and the Harry Potter books. (But wouldn't claim they were anything more than an enjoyable read.)
  - markessien 18y ago
    On an unrelated note, someone should create some type of 'record' thing on the net, where we can actually record all the things that people say 'for the record'.
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      It's of no use. I've already decided against running for office.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    I don't get the self-pity thing off Potter, and I don't get the sense that the plot in the Potter books has been contorted to align most of the other characters in the book after him; there's a coherent set of adversaries for Potter, with understandable motives. It's harder to make that argument about all of Ender's adversaries.
    - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
      The rest of the books in the Enderverse flush them out nicely.
  - nihilocrat 18y ago
    I like Ender's Game as well (haven't read Harry Potter), but in retrospect, the characters are a little cartoony and unbelievable compared to what I've seen in "real" literature. We like to read about unreal characters, true, but it makes it hard for the reader to relate to these characters or to the plot they are going through. I'll say how I've always felt about sci-fi: the universe and the concepts in play are more important than any of the traditional literary mechanisms such as plot, character development, etc.. I feel that this guy is just comparing the character of Ender on the level of the "real" literature I mention above. By those standards, characters like King Arthur or Siegfried are ridiculous charicatures, devoid of any true humanity.
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      This could also be why Mr. Bonds doesn't like Anime. The hook is the sense of motion, tension, and action that can be conveyed. A lot of the other aspects of Anime shows are bad, however. Then again, you can say the same for any given genre of books or for cinema in general.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I think Harry Potter is on a level above Ender's Game in terms of ambition. Rowling does some pretty impressive things in her novels. But in both cases, it helps to look at why the authors make their heroes despised. Card does it to isolate Ender, to force him into being brilliant when he really doesn't want to be a hero. That's the theme that underscores the original four books. In Harry Potter, it's done because Rowling marks Harry as this object of perfect good. Not as a perfect character, mind you, but a character that serves as a metric against which the other characters are judged. And so Harry finds himself disliked by certain other groups throughout the series, and it's almost always used to illustrate a certain vicious aspect of personality (be it class/race warfare, or glory-seeking, or bureaucracy).
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
rcoder 18y ago
My response to Ender's Game upon a re-reading a few months ago, while not as strong as this reviewer's, were certainly not favorable. I am a much more sociable, confident person than I was at age 11 or 12, when I first read Card's writing. Even without knowing as much as I do now about his particularly distateful (to me, at least) political and social views, it was pretty apparent that Card and I disagree on many critical ethical issues: eugenics, whether the "ends justify the means," and when (if ever) armed conflict is a noble activity. However, the Ender's Game series (like Dune, Wizard of Earthsea, and other young adult Sci-Fi and fantasy I read as a child) still served a valuable role for me in that earlier, more difficult time in my social development. By providing role models that were not, in fact, the typical action hero, athlete, or rich businessman, they showed me a glimpse of a world (however unrealistic and disfunctional) in which a geek could get ahead. For that (and for teaching the ever-valuable lesson of questioning the motives of even respected authority figures) I still owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Card and his menagerie of characters.
- markessien 18y ago
  I just read his political views, and I guess this is why I never read about authors before reading their books. It's hard not to let personal differences in social views colour your perception of their work - which could be excellent when read without bias. A book should be irrelevant of its author.
  - davo11 18y ago
    agree totally, likewise for music, I try hard to avoid any knowledge about artists I like life, it invariably colors there work in my mind. I don't think it's possible to create something that is different without being a little unusual. Could anyone work a nine to five job be a good stable citizen and then come home and write a stephen king novel, or an enders game? Phillip K Dick is an example that always springs to mind, he wrote so many books, and was diagnosed with mental disease. I have read a quote that aliens dictated his books to him, can't track it down now. Where would Hollywood be without an endless supply of phillip K. Dick novels? Robin Williams has been diagnosed manic depressive, when he take his medication he is no longer funny he has said. The idea that creativity is neatly pigeon holed without spilling over into the rest of your life, for good or bad, is just as nonensical as that review (I always thought the book was a standard teenage angst sort of thing).
sharkfish 18y ago
I can't stand Card's political views. He hates gays and has expressed violent attitudes toward gays. Who knows, maybe his writing is a form of repressed homosexual relief for him. I still enjoyed Ender's Game very much, however. My problem with the review is that it can apply to any fiction that withholds gratification or attempts suspense and has a "super hero" type character. I think of Ender as a kind of super hero, in fact. Just one with geek qualities. Do we then, call comic books a form of pornography?
- pavel_lishin 18y ago
  I strongly disagree with his opinions, too; I went to see him speak, and it was a great presentation until the end where he somehow spiralled off into a tirade about gay marriage killing society. But I don't care. He writes (mostly) great books and he'll keep getting my money so long as he keeps it up.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I respect that he can write a book without selling dogma. I love Enchantment and Pastwatch, even if the Ender series has faded with time.
    - johnyzee 18y ago
      About the faded in time thing, I always felt Ender's Game was surprisingly precise in predicting the rise of online discussion communities, and how their anonymous celebrities can influence a lot of people, while just being a bunch of kids in their bedrooms. The book's from 1985 after all.
      - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
        Peter?
      - unalone 18y ago
        Yeah. That part's very impressive. Although, frankly, I'd take Fake Steve Jobs over Locke and Demosthenes any day. I hadn't thought of that before. I'll have to read over that chapter again and check that out.
Eliezer 18y ago
Can't back plover.net on this one. I don't think he understood what Orson Scott Card was trying to do. He was trying to make the reader cry. Not feel good about themselves, cry. This is a really difficult thing to do, and you can read Card's nonfiction books on fiction writing to find out some of the techniques involved. There are very few authors who can take a consistent shot at making the reader cry actual tears, and (the early) Orson Scott Card is one of them. This reads like someone who made an incorrect guess at what the novel was about, and was offended by that guess.
elai 18y ago
I havent read ender's game. But there is some art critic wishy washiness that I just can't put a finger on when I read this and few of his other pages.
- astine 18y ago
  The author explains it very well in an essay 'an unbalanced and negative page': And then it's easier to be negative. The language seems primed for complaints. Anagram programs always turn up ten times as many insulting phrases as compliments: there are simply more words with negative connotations. This is probably because when people enjoy something, they want to experience it rather than natter about it. But whatever the reason, the result is that it takes a lot less effort to be snarky. Praise, unless you put a lot of work into it, tends to get dull and a bit samey. Praise also makes you vulnerable. Negativity is like a shield: you can keep throwing barbs at things without ever exposing yourself to attack. But praise is different. It's difficult to like something a lot without investing some of yourself in it, and without it becoming part of you. To praise something in writing is to reveal some of yourself, and face the possibility that there isn't much to reveal. And to praise something in public is to risk the ridicule of people with snarky websites. In other words, he spends his time criticising people because he's afraid of criticism himself.
pg 18y ago
This is a crock. The device of having a despised outsider turn out to be a hero is extremely common not just in sci-fi but in heroic tales generally. And the argument about each chapter being merely a build up to a catharsis could be made about pretty much any thriller.
- DocSavage 18y ago
  "There is no dramatic tension or genuine excitement about any of these encounters" .. yet he also says "The disturbing thing about Ender's Game is that Card is a good craftsman of prose; he makes the pages turn, he's an effective manipulator." How do you get readers rushing to turn pages when there's no dramatic tension or involvement with what the reviewer declares "blank" characters? The reviewer neglects the structure of the academy breeding competition, instead assuming that everybody hated Ender just because he was better than them. The school is a crucible and it's not just Ender that's under pressure. I could go on here, but it seems like the reviewer's distaste for the author's viewpoints has heavily influenced how he read the book and interpreted the themes.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Yeah. I always thought that the best part about Ender's Game was how it worked as a critique on academics. Getting older, the "who's to blame for genocide" bit got old, but the part that remained strong was the sequence about how the different groups approach academics and the game, and how kids brought up in high-competitive schools become very obsessive, rarely for any good reason.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  The secret of selling a million copies in any genre is having your main character suddenly find out that there's something that makes him different from everyone else. And the English language already has an excellent word to describe books/movies like this: masturbatory.
  - unalone 18y ago
    That's also the secret to getting an interesting plot easily. It comes up so often in fiction because it's interesting. And it's possible to get things more complex and keep it interesting, but it's much, much harder. Even Ulysses, which is famous for being about an ordinary person going about an ordinary day, has the main character a Jew in Ireland - which is rare - and adds Dedalus, who is too smart for his own good. Difference equals interest. That's not masturbatory. That's fact.
bena 18y ago
This is the second thing I've read from this site that's all "Blah blah blah. I'm so clever. Blah blah blah." Except it takes him a lot longer than three sentences to convey this. Am I the only one who finds this guy to be a pompous faux-intellectual who confuses length with depth.
alex_c 18y ago
>It's a wonderfully guilt-free massacre, mass murder with a clear conscience I take it the reviewer didn't read the sequels?
- spoondan 18y ago
  He's reviewing Ender's Game; he has evaluated its message and merits on its own. It'd be better to disagree with his opinions than to complain he doesn't cover material he hasn't set out to review. Anyway, why would you expect the reviewer to read the sequels if he so dislikes Ender's Game?
  - alex_c 18y ago
    That's an absolutely valid point. The reason I went ahead and posted my comment anyway was because it's the most obvious example of how the reviewer and I interpreted the book differently. Granted, I read it years ago, and the goal was entertainment rather than literary criticism, but I saw plenty of guilt: it all simply landed on Ender's shoulders when he finds out what he had done, and fit in with the guilt for his previous acts. I think it's possible to read Ender's Game with either interpretation in mind (guilt vs. no guilt), but my interpretation seems to be more supported by the sequels.
isopropyl 18y ago
He needs (and you (if you haven't) need) to read Ender's Shadow. Bean's POV offers lots of important clarification and insight to Card's interpretation of "love thy enemy." It's a much more interesting read but is just as enjoyable as Ender's Game, but don't read one without reading the other (IF you intend to write an essay such as this, rather than enjoy the story at face value).
jimbokun 18y ago
Ugh. My kingdom for a submission down arrow. Citing Jesus and mocking Christianity as part of reviewing Ender's game totally jumps the shark. This is such an obvious troll, I am utterly disappointed that Hacker News has collectively up-modded this close to the top of the front page (as I write this). I thought this community was better than this.
- markessien 18y ago
  I think the article is valid discussion point. Getting rid of things you disagree with, or you feel are wrong is like burning books because they do not agree with your ideology. There are very few movies with 100% positive ratings, because people always disagree. If a person disagrees eloquently, then he should be given forum to make his point. Diversity of opinion is the engine for progress.
  - unalone 18y ago
    It's eloquent, yes, but it ignores a lot of aspects about the book. And while I like that it's been posted, I agree that it's not a very factual response, and I'm exercising my right to disagree with it.
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    "I think the article is valid discussion point. Getting rid of things you disagree with, or you feel are wrong is like burning books because they do not agree with your ideology." I'm sure that an eloquent, thoughtful critique of Ender's Game worthy of discussion can be written. This is not it.
- pg 18y ago
  I am utterly disappointed that Hacker News has collectively up-modded this close to the top of the front page (as I write this). I thought this community was better than this. Yeah, I thought the same thing. I considered killing it, but it didn't seem quite deliberately dishonest enough. I just took "it's porn" out of the title. I suspect that's why this got so much attention.
chaostheory 18y ago
since we're on the subject - what do you guys think of the essay 'Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman'? http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html Summary: Ender's Game is an apologia for Hitler.
- icky 18y ago
  [SPOILERS and SHAKY HYPOTHESIS below] I think that if you look at the claims in the essay through the lens of Card's Mormonism, a very different picture emerges. Ender's celibacy until marriage is [ostensibly] normal in Mormon society, and the age at which he married then is just a number, which falls within the realm of coincidence. You'll note that Ender killed the Buggers without knowledge of what he was doing, then became wracked with guilt. This hints at Enders Game as a defense not for Hitler, but for Brigham Young, and his (disputed-whether-he-knew) role in the Mountain Meadows massacre. This would explain Card's unseemly rage at the author of the Ender-as-Hitler essay: she had effectively Godwin'd a revered patriarch of Card's religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
  - chaostheory 18y ago
    given what happened to the essay's author at a convention, your explanation makes the most sense. I just still find it strange that the sequel had Ender going to a Brazilian planet...
    - unalone 18y ago
      Well, Card says in his intro to that book that part of it was his fascination with the language and the culture. And I think that the Portugese was what made Speaker such a fascinating read. I don't think Card is trying to excuse Hitler. I really don't think so. Not even subconsciously. And I thought upon reading that article that it was interesting, but rather misguided. The OP response made a lot of sense, considering Card is very likely a Mormon. But even then, I think it was subconscious on his part.
mattmaroon 18y ago
I lost what respect I had for Orson Scott Card when he wrote this article http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html back in October. I won't bother running through all of the blatantly false statements in there, but the most obvious would be: "Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension - so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) " When a simple Google search turns up this direct quote from Bush himself given June 17, 2004: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias. Even though I thought Ender's game was decent, Ender's shadow mediocre, and couldn't get through the next, I still had some respect for the guy, which is now gone.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias Media bias is decried everywhere. Read any Howard Kurtz lately? Watch CNN's "Reliable Sources?" It's called media commentary. It's all about identifying and commenting on media bias, tactics, business models, etc. Work at the meta-level. Personally I don't have respect or lack of respect for Card. I read his books and found them, well, mundane but better than the average sci-fi. His political opinions don't come into the discussion -- unless we're judging the man instead of his work. I believe the thread is about the work. If it were along the lines of "Orson Scott Card: Moron or not?" it should be flagged. Ideas are not people. Bad people can have good ideas, and vice-versa.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    The idea that the media is biased in general is decried only by conservatives. I've yet to hear one person claim that there's a conservative bias. Conservative TV and radio networks use it to play the ref. They get a segment of the population to watch them that way. Orson Scott Card should be smart enough to know better. I wouldn't even mind if he pointed out factually accurate examples (though that's still mistaking anecdotes for data) but his article is riddled with blatant inaccuracies that can be disproven on YouTube in a few minutes.
brandnewlow 18y ago
His basic argument holds truth though, there are pornographic elements in most created works, i.e. elements created strictly to gratify or comfort the reader in some specific way. This is why we instinctually pigeonhole and look down upon genre fiction writers, because their primary task is to comfort the reader, not to challenge or engage in a dialogue with him. Let's break down the different genre's and see what belief systems they seek to gratify. Feel free to add your own: 1. Detective Novels - Sherlock Holmes is fun to read because his adventures take place in an environment in which the details of a man's appearance, speech etc. can predict with 100% accuracy his psychology and plans. 2. Horror novels - Many horror novels play on our desire to believe that we can overcome "the other" through some human act. In Dracula, for instance, the vampire is defeated by meticulous planning, organizing, and above all else, the sharing of information. Modernity vanquishes the old world scourge. For people who get off on organization, that novel tweaks your pleasure sensors left and right. 3. Science Fiction - Depends a bit on the sub-genre. Hard science fiction offers scenarios in which numbers and logic reign supreme. Softer science fiction, a la Star Wars, is often really just fantasy in another cloak... 4. Fantasy - Fantasy gratifies our desire to believe that those passing, semi-eccentric thoughts we all harbor from time to time, are really the laws that govern the world. Wish-fulfillment narratives are really just the exploration of ideas that pop into everyone's head from time to time. To put it in hacker terms, works of genre fiction create systems where the requirements never change. Much like video games, the rules are set in place early on and strictly adhered to. This is immensely comforting. On a personal note: it's also fairly disturbing. For about 20 years now, my mother has more or less read a book a day or so, from cover to cover. She has a full-time job (teacher) and was always around to do mom stuff when I was a kid, but she spends her nights up reading. One could argue that this is awesome, but it's not. Because she's reading genre fiction. She gets the latest romance novels every Wednesday and has them finished by Sunday. That leaves her two days to work through other genres. A few years back, her Monday-Tuesday books were gay Vampire romance novels. Before that it was detective novels. Every time I visit, it's some new sub-genre I've never heard of. We're all entitled to our quirks and interests, but I would argue that what she is doing is self-medicative and produces no other value. She never has anything to SAY about these books. They prompt no insights into life. She never wants to talk about them with us when we try to engage. And I think that's what this article is getting at, tracing out this masturbatory impulse in an oft-praised work. We need to be aware of this stuff so we can appreciate and steer clear of it when we don't want it. Now, I would argue that the best genre fiction can and often does create social good beyond medicating sad, frustrated people. The Harry Potter books created community and sparked copycats. That's more or less good. The Star Wars films stoked a lot of imaginative response and prompted a lot of people to make interesting films. That's good too. The trouble is the books that are meant to be held in.
GavinB 18y ago
Let this serve as a reminder to us all not to be haters. Because every time you take a long, refreshing draught of haterade, you become a little more like this guy. Yes, even when you're right.
webwright 18y ago
Linkbait formula: Take something that web geeks like (like Ender's Game). Then, publicly kick it in the nuts on your blog. Watch the traffic roll in.
- ksvs 18y ago
  Then, publicly kick it in the nuts on your blog ...by comparing it to porn. That was the brilliant part.
- sfk 18y ago
  This is utterly unfair. There aren't any ads on that site and the author does not market himself or his site at all.
  - webwright 18y ago
    I disagree. Is money the only motivation? A ton of people blog for the attention, to feel smart, SEO for future endeavors etc. Forums, blogs, and blog comments are full of people tossing out trollish or evocative statements for all sorts of motivations. This post exists for the same reason that any trollish forum post exists.
    - sfk 18y ago
      We are both in the realm of speculation about the author's motives here. I don't like this particular essay either, in fact I think it's horrible. However, my troll detector is silent on this one. I agree with pg that the author isn't deliberately dishonest.
beta 18y ago
Since when has masterbation been a considered a bad thing? In all honesty, I speculate nearly all 'bad' and 'good' goals undertaken by individuals are for at some level their own gratification, satisfaction, medication, pleasure, whatever the semantic of choice. There isn't anything wrong with that. From deliberately catching a glance of a beautiful woman across the street to tirelessly working at finding a way to end world hunger, it's done at some level for your own satisfaction. It's what drives the world. To those who feel so threatened by the idea of associating whatever endeavor with pleasure as a motivation, calm down. It's part of what makes us human. It certainly doesn't strip an accomplishment of it's value.
ciscoriordan 18y ago
The only good thing about this review is that it reminds me that I don't remember the book very well, and should read it again. Check out this guy's other reviews -- he whines about everything. Just another Internet troll.
jmatt 18y ago
So I started reading this article and immediately suspected something was wrong. It won Nebula and Hugo award and most scifi types at least enjoyed it. In fact I knew a few people who started reading science fiction because of Ender's Game. When I first read it (circa 1986) no one that I knew cared what his personal/political beliefs were. The book stands alone and could not have been too persuasive on its readers; I know others who read it in the same time period and their beliefs are quite diverse. So I could understand it not being this reviewer's type of book. But to wax on like this takes a special type of person, someone who just loves to hate on (popular) things. I decided to check out a few other reviews this guy has written. This comes from the same guy who hated the lord of the ring movies... http://plover.net/~bonds/lotrfilms.html http://plover.net/~bonds/lotrfilms.html and the matrix... http://plover.net/~bonds/matrix.html http://plover.net/~bonds/matrix.html So who cares what he has to say about Ender's Game. His review adds little value here where there is, presumably, a majority who enjoy scifi and fantasy. His opinion is obscure at best and predictable based on his previous reviews. So there you go, I've reviewed him the same way he's reviewed ender's game... Minimal thought about the material mishmashed with my opinion of the author.
TrevorJ 18y ago
I read this review as somewhat satirical, but I could be mistaken.

46 points by markessien 18y ago

If the book is porn, and the book is full of children, wouldn't that make it... child porn? I don't entirely agree with the argument. The Battle School is supposedly full of overachievers, people who probably "excel at games" compared to their peers back home. They are all used to being top dog, so when you put a bunch of top dogs inside a competitive environment (or really just any long-term living/working situation), things get nasty.

stcredzero 18y ago
Many of the things said about Ender's Game could also be said about Harry Potter: "...the plot is contrived to make sure that other characters always hate Ender. There is no obvious reason for him to be so despised, at every turn, by his peers: he's a confident guy who excels at games, the kind of guy who would typically be well-liked at school." "Geek wish-fulfillment is not the only fetish on display in Ender's Game: the other is self-pity, the lonely self-pity of the truly gifted and persecuted." For the record, I like Ender's Game and the Harry Potter books. (But wouldn't claim they were anything more than an enjoyable read.)
- markessien 18y ago
  On an unrelated note, someone should create some type of 'record' thing on the net, where we can actually record all the things that people say 'for the record'.
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    It's of no use. I've already decided against running for office.
- tptacek 18y ago
  I don't get the self-pity thing off Potter, and I don't get the sense that the plot in the Potter books has been contorted to align most of the other characters in the book after him; there's a coherent set of adversaries for Potter, with understandable motives. It's harder to make that argument about all of Ender's adversaries.
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    The rest of the books in the Enderverse flush them out nicely.
- nihilocrat 18y ago
  I like Ender's Game as well (haven't read Harry Potter), but in retrospect, the characters are a little cartoony and unbelievable compared to what I've seen in "real" literature. We like to read about unreal characters, true, but it makes it hard for the reader to relate to these characters or to the plot they are going through. I'll say how I've always felt about sci-fi: the universe and the concepts in play are more important than any of the traditional literary mechanisms such as plot, character development, etc.. I feel that this guy is just comparing the character of Ender on the level of the "real" literature I mention above. By those standards, characters like King Arthur or Siegfried are ridiculous charicatures, devoid of any true humanity.
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    This could also be why Mr. Bonds doesn't like Anime. The hook is the sense of motion, tension, and action that can be conveyed. A lot of the other aspects of Anime shows are bad, however. Then again, you can say the same for any given genre of books or for cinema in general.
- unalone 18y ago
  I think Harry Potter is on a level above Ender's Game in terms of ambition. Rowling does some pretty impressive things in her novels. But in both cases, it helps to look at why the authors make their heroes despised. Card does it to isolate Ender, to force him into being brilliant when he really doesn't want to be a hero. That's the theme that underscores the original four books. In Harry Potter, it's done because Rowling marks Harry as this object of perfect good. Not as a perfect character, mind you, but a character that serves as a metric against which the other characters are judged. And so Harry finds himself disliked by certain other groups throughout the series, and it's almost always used to illustrate a certain vicious aspect of personality (be it class/race warfare, or glory-seeking, or bureaucracy).
deleted 18y ago
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rcoder 18y ago

My response to Ender's Game upon a re-reading a few months ago, while not as strong as this reviewer's, were certainly not favorable. I am a much more sociable, confident person than I was at age 11 or 12, when I first read Card's writing. Even without knowing as much as I do now about his particularly distateful (to me, at least) political and social views, it was pretty apparent that Card and I disagree on many critical ethical issues: eugenics, whether the "ends justify the means," and when (if ever) armed conflict is a noble activity. However, the Ender's Game series (like Dune, Wizard of Earthsea, and other young adult Sci-Fi and fantasy I read as a child) still served a valuable role for me in that earlier, more difficult time in my social development. By providing role models that were not, in fact, the typical action hero, athlete, or rich businessman, they showed me a glimpse of a world (however unrealistic and disfunctional) in which a geek could get ahead. For that (and for teaching the ever-valuable lesson of questioning the motives of even respected authority figures) I still owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Card and his menagerie of characters.

markessien 18y ago
I just read his political views, and I guess this is why I never read about authors before reading their books. It's hard not to let personal differences in social views colour your perception of their work - which could be excellent when read without bias. A book should be irrelevant of its author.
- davo11 18y ago
  agree totally, likewise for music, I try hard to avoid any knowledge about artists I like life, it invariably colors there work in my mind. I don't think it's possible to create something that is different without being a little unusual. Could anyone work a nine to five job be a good stable citizen and then come home and write a stephen king novel, or an enders game? Phillip K Dick is an example that always springs to mind, he wrote so many books, and was diagnosed with mental disease. I have read a quote that aliens dictated his books to him, can't track it down now. Where would Hollywood be without an endless supply of phillip K. Dick novels? Robin Williams has been diagnosed manic depressive, when he take his medication he is no longer funny he has said. The idea that creativity is neatly pigeon holed without spilling over into the rest of your life, for good or bad, is just as nonensical as that review (I always thought the book was a standard teenage angst sort of thing).

sharkfish 18y ago

I can't stand Card's political views. He hates gays and has expressed violent attitudes toward gays. Who knows, maybe his writing is a form of repressed homosexual relief for him. I still enjoyed Ender's Game very much, however. My problem with the review is that it can apply to any fiction that withholds gratification or attempts suspense and has a "super hero" type character. I think of Ender as a kind of super hero, in fact. Just one with geek qualities. Do we then, call comic books a form of pornography?

pavel_lishin 18y ago
I strongly disagree with his opinions, too; I went to see him speak, and it was a great presentation until the end where he somehow spiralled off into a tirade about gay marriage killing society. But I don't care. He writes (mostly) great books and he'll keep getting my money so long as he keeps it up.
- unalone 18y ago
  I respect that he can write a book without selling dogma. I love Enchantment and Pastwatch, even if the Ender series has faded with time.
  - johnyzee 18y ago
    About the faded in time thing, I always felt Ender's Game was surprisingly precise in predicting the rise of online discussion communities, and how their anonymous celebrities can influence a lot of people, while just being a bunch of kids in their bedrooms. The book's from 1985 after all.
    - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
      Peter?
    - unalone 18y ago
      Yeah. That part's very impressive. Although, frankly, I'd take Fake Steve Jobs over Locke and Demosthenes any day. I hadn't thought of that before. I'll have to read over that chapter again and check that out.

Eliezer 18y ago

Can't back plover.net on this one. I don't think he understood what Orson Scott Card was trying to do. He was trying to make the reader cry. Not feel good about themselves, cry. This is a really difficult thing to do, and you can read Card's nonfiction books on fiction writing to find out some of the techniques involved. There are very few authors who can take a consistent shot at making the reader cry actual tears, and (the early) Orson Scott Card is one of them. This reads like someone who made an incorrect guess at what the novel was about, and was offended by that guess.

elai 18y ago

I havent read ender's game. But there is some art critic wishy washiness that I just can't put a finger on when I read this and few of his other pages.

astine 18y ago
The author explains it very well in an essay 'an unbalanced and negative page': And then it's easier to be negative. The language seems primed for complaints. Anagram programs always turn up ten times as many insulting phrases as compliments: there are simply more words with negative connotations. This is probably because when people enjoy something, they want to experience it rather than natter about it. But whatever the reason, the result is that it takes a lot less effort to be snarky. Praise, unless you put a lot of work into it, tends to get dull and a bit samey. Praise also makes you vulnerable. Negativity is like a shield: you can keep throwing barbs at things without ever exposing yourself to attack. But praise is different. It's difficult to like something a lot without investing some of yourself in it, and without it becoming part of you. To praise something in writing is to reveal some of yourself, and face the possibility that there isn't much to reveal. And to praise something in public is to risk the ridicule of people with snarky websites. In other words, he spends his time criticising people because he's afraid of criticism himself.

pg 18y ago

This is a crock. The device of having a despised outsider turn out to be a hero is extremely common not just in sci-fi but in heroic tales generally. And the argument about each chapter being merely a build up to a catharsis could be made about pretty much any thriller.

DocSavage 18y ago
"There is no dramatic tension or genuine excitement about any of these encounters" .. yet he also says "The disturbing thing about Ender's Game is that Card is a good craftsman of prose; he makes the pages turn, he's an effective manipulator." How do you get readers rushing to turn pages when there's no dramatic tension or involvement with what the reviewer declares "blank" characters? The reviewer neglects the structure of the academy breeding competition, instead assuming that everybody hated Ender just because he was better than them. The school is a crucible and it's not just Ender that's under pressure. I could go on here, but it seems like the reviewer's distaste for the author's viewpoints has heavily influenced how he read the book and interpreted the themes.
- unalone 18y ago
  Yeah. I always thought that the best part about Ender's Game was how it worked as a critique on academics. Getting older, the "who's to blame for genocide" bit got old, but the part that remained strong was the sequence about how the different groups approach academics and the game, and how kids brought up in high-competitive schools become very obsessive, rarely for any good reason.
Alex3917 18y ago
The secret of selling a million copies in any genre is having your main character suddenly find out that there's something that makes him different from everyone else. And the English language already has an excellent word to describe books/movies like this: masturbatory.
- unalone 18y ago
  That's also the secret to getting an interesting plot easily. It comes up so often in fiction because it's interesting. And it's possible to get things more complex and keep it interesting, but it's much, much harder. Even Ulysses, which is famous for being about an ordinary person going about an ordinary day, has the main character a Jew in Ireland - which is rare - and adds Dedalus, who is too smart for his own good. Difference equals interest. That's not masturbatory. That's fact.

bena 18y ago

This is the second thing I've read from this site that's all "Blah blah blah. I'm so clever. Blah blah blah." Except it takes him a lot longer than three sentences to convey this. Am I the only one who finds this guy to be a pompous faux-intellectual who confuses length with depth.

alex_c 18y ago

>It's a wonderfully guilt-free massacre, mass murder with a clear conscience I take it the reviewer didn't read the sequels?

spoondan 18y ago
He's reviewing Ender's Game; he has evaluated its message and merits on its own. It'd be better to disagree with his opinions than to complain he doesn't cover material he hasn't set out to review. Anyway, why would you expect the reviewer to read the sequels if he so dislikes Ender's Game?
- alex_c 18y ago
  That's an absolutely valid point. The reason I went ahead and posted my comment anyway was because it's the most obvious example of how the reviewer and I interpreted the book differently. Granted, I read it years ago, and the goal was entertainment rather than literary criticism, but I saw plenty of guilt: it all simply landed on Ender's shoulders when he finds out what he had done, and fit in with the guilt for his previous acts. I think it's possible to read Ender's Game with either interpretation in mind (guilt vs. no guilt), but my interpretation seems to be more supported by the sequels.

isopropyl 18y ago

He needs (and you (if you haven't) need) to read Ender's Shadow. Bean's POV offers lots of important clarification and insight to Card's interpretation of "love thy enemy." It's a much more interesting read but is just as enjoyable as Ender's Game, but don't read one without reading the other (IF you intend to write an essay such as this, rather than enjoy the story at face value).

jimbokun 18y ago

Ugh. My kingdom for a submission down arrow. Citing Jesus and mocking Christianity as part of reviewing Ender's game totally jumps the shark. This is such an obvious troll, I am utterly disappointed that Hacker News has collectively up-modded this close to the top of the front page (as I write this). I thought this community was better than this.

markessien 18y ago
I think the article is valid discussion point. Getting rid of things you disagree with, or you feel are wrong is like burning books because they do not agree with your ideology. There are very few movies with 100% positive ratings, because people always disagree. If a person disagrees eloquently, then he should be given forum to make his point. Diversity of opinion is the engine for progress.
- unalone 18y ago
  It's eloquent, yes, but it ignores a lot of aspects about the book. And while I like that it's been posted, I agree that it's not a very factual response, and I'm exercising my right to disagree with it.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  "I think the article is valid discussion point. Getting rid of things you disagree with, or you feel are wrong is like burning books because they do not agree with your ideology." I'm sure that an eloquent, thoughtful critique of Ender's Game worthy of discussion can be written. This is not it.
pg 18y ago
I am utterly disappointed that Hacker News has collectively up-modded this close to the top of the front page (as I write this). I thought this community was better than this. Yeah, I thought the same thing. I considered killing it, but it didn't seem quite deliberately dishonest enough. I just took "it's porn" out of the title. I suspect that's why this got so much attention.

chaostheory 18y ago

since we're on the subject - what do you guys think of the essay 'Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman'? http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html Summary: Ender's Game is an apologia for Hitler.

icky 18y ago
[SPOILERS and SHAKY HYPOTHESIS below] I think that if you look at the claims in the essay through the lens of Card's Mormonism, a very different picture emerges. Ender's celibacy until marriage is [ostensibly] normal in Mormon society, and the age at which he married then is just a number, which falls within the realm of coincidence. You'll note that Ender killed the Buggers without knowledge of what he was doing, then became wracked with guilt. This hints at Enders Game as a defense not for Hitler, but for Brigham Young, and his (disputed-whether-he-knew) role in the Mountain Meadows massacre. This would explain Card's unseemly rage at the author of the Ender-as-Hitler essay: she had effectively Godwin'd a revered patriarch of Card's religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
- chaostheory 18y ago
  given what happened to the essay's author at a convention, your explanation makes the most sense. I just still find it strange that the sequel had Ender going to a Brazilian planet...
  - unalone 18y ago
    Well, Card says in his intro to that book that part of it was his fascination with the language and the culture. And I think that the Portugese was what made Speaker such a fascinating read. I don't think Card is trying to excuse Hitler. I really don't think so. Not even subconsciously. And I thought upon reading that article that it was interesting, but rather misguided. The OP response made a lot of sense, considering Card is very likely a Mormon. But even then, I think it was subconscious on his part.

mattmaroon 18y ago

I lost what respect I had for Orson Scott Card when he wrote this article http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html back in October. I won't bother running through all of the blatantly false statements in there, but the most obvious would be: "Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension - so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) " When a simple Google search turns up this direct quote from Bush himself given June 17, 2004: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias. Even though I thought Ender's game was decent, Ender's shadow mediocre, and couldn't get through the next, I still had some respect for the guy, which is now gone.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias Media bias is decried everywhere. Read any Howard Kurtz lately? Watch CNN's "Reliable Sources?" It's called media commentary. It's all about identifying and commenting on media bias, tactics, business models, etc. Work at the meta-level. Personally I don't have respect or lack of respect for Card. I read his books and found them, well, mundane but better than the average sci-fi. His political opinions don't come into the discussion -- unless we're judging the man instead of his work. I believe the thread is about the work. If it were along the lines of "Orson Scott Card: Moron or not?" it should be flagged. Ideas are not people. Bad people can have good ideas, and vice-versa.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  The idea that the media is biased in general is decried only by conservatives. I've yet to hear one person claim that there's a conservative bias. Conservative TV and radio networks use it to play the ref. They get a segment of the population to watch them that way. Orson Scott Card should be smart enough to know better. I wouldn't even mind if he pointed out factually accurate examples (though that's still mistaking anecdotes for data) but his article is riddled with blatant inaccuracies that can be disproven on YouTube in a few minutes.

brandnewlow 18y ago

His basic argument holds truth though, there are pornographic elements in most created works, i.e. elements created strictly to gratify or comfort the reader in some specific way. This is why we instinctually pigeonhole and look down upon genre fiction writers, because their primary task is to comfort the reader, not to challenge or engage in a dialogue with him. Let's break down the different genre's and see what belief systems they seek to gratify. Feel free to add your own: 1. Detective Novels - Sherlock Holmes is fun to read because his adventures take place in an environment in which the details of a man's appearance, speech etc. can predict with 100% accuracy his psychology and plans. 2. Horror novels - Many horror novels play on our desire to believe that we can overcome "the other" through some human act. In Dracula, for instance, the vampire is defeated by meticulous planning, organizing, and above all else, the sharing of information. Modernity vanquishes the old world scourge. For people who get off on organization, that novel tweaks your pleasure sensors left and right. 3. Science Fiction - Depends a bit on the sub-genre. Hard science fiction offers scenarios in which numbers and logic reign supreme. Softer science fiction, a la Star Wars, is often really just fantasy in another cloak... 4. Fantasy - Fantasy gratifies our desire to believe that those passing, semi-eccentric thoughts we all harbor from time to time, are really the laws that govern the world. Wish-fulfillment narratives are really just the exploration of ideas that pop into everyone's head from time to time. To put it in hacker terms, works of genre fiction create systems where the requirements never change. Much like video games, the rules are set in place early on and strictly adhered to. This is immensely comforting. On a personal note: it's also fairly disturbing. For about 20 years now, my mother has more or less read a book a day or so, from cover to cover. She has a full-time job (teacher) and was always around to do mom stuff when I was a kid, but she spends her nights up reading. One could argue that this is awesome, but it's not. Because she's reading genre fiction. She gets the latest romance novels every Wednesday and has them finished by Sunday. That leaves her two days to work through other genres. A few years back, her Monday-Tuesday books were gay Vampire romance novels. Before that it was detective novels. Every time I visit, it's some new sub-genre I've never heard of. We're all entitled to our quirks and interests, but I would argue that what she is doing is self-medicative and produces no other value. She never has anything to SAY about these books. They prompt no insights into life. She never wants to talk about them with us when we try to engage. And I think that's what this article is getting at, tracing out this masturbatory impulse in an oft-praised work. We need to be aware of this stuff so we can appreciate and steer clear of it when we don't want it. Now, I would argue that the best genre fiction can and often does create social good beyond medicating sad, frustrated people. The Harry Potter books created community and sparked copycats. That's more or less good. The Star Wars films stoked a lot of imaginative response and prompted a lot of people to make interesting films. That's good too. The trouble is the books that are meant to be held in.

GavinB 18y ago

Let this serve as a reminder to us all not to be haters. Because every time you take a long, refreshing draught of haterade, you become a little more like this guy. Yes, even when you're right.

webwright 18y ago

Linkbait formula: Take something that web geeks like (like Ender's Game). Then, publicly kick it in the nuts on your blog. Watch the traffic roll in.

ksvs 18y ago
Then, publicly kick it in the nuts on your blog ...by comparing it to porn. That was the brilliant part.
sfk 18y ago
This is utterly unfair. There aren't any ads on that site and the author does not market himself or his site at all.
- webwright 18y ago
  I disagree. Is money the only motivation? A ton of people blog for the attention, to feel smart, SEO for future endeavors etc. Forums, blogs, and blog comments are full of people tossing out trollish or evocative statements for all sorts of motivations. This post exists for the same reason that any trollish forum post exists.
  - sfk 18y ago
    We are both in the realm of speculation about the author's motives here. I don't like this particular essay either, in fact I think it's horrible. However, my troll detector is silent on this one. I agree with pg that the author isn't deliberately dishonest.

beta 18y ago

Since when has masterbation been a considered a bad thing? In all honesty, I speculate nearly all 'bad' and 'good' goals undertaken by individuals are for at some level their own gratification, satisfaction, medication, pleasure, whatever the semantic of choice. There isn't anything wrong with that. From deliberately catching a glance of a beautiful woman across the street to tirelessly working at finding a way to end world hunger, it's done at some level for your own satisfaction. It's what drives the world. To those who feel so threatened by the idea of associating whatever endeavor with pleasure as a motivation, calm down. It's part of what makes us human. It certainly doesn't strip an accomplishment of it's value.

ciscoriordan 18y ago

The only good thing about this review is that it reminds me that I don't remember the book very well, and should read it again. Check out this guy's other reviews -- he whines about everything. Just another Internet troll.

jmatt 18y ago

So I started reading this article and immediately suspected something was wrong. It won Nebula and Hugo award and most scifi types at least enjoyed it. In fact I knew a few people who started reading science fiction because of Ender's Game. When I first read it (circa 1986) no one that I knew cared what his personal/political beliefs were. The book stands alone and could not have been too persuasive on its readers; I know others who read it in the same time period and their beliefs are quite diverse. So I could understand it not being this reviewer's type of book. But to wax on like this takes a special type of person, someone who just loves to hate on (popular) things. I decided to check out a few other reviews this guy has written. This comes from the same guy who hated the lord of the ring movies... http://plover.net/~bonds/lotrfilms.html http://plover.net/~bonds/lotrfilms.html and the matrix... http://plover.net/~bonds/matrix.html http://plover.net/~bonds/matrix.html So who cares what he has to say about Ender's Game. His review adds little value here where there is, presumably, a majority who enjoy scifi and fantasy. His opinion is obscure at best and predictable based on his previous reviews. So there you go, I've reviewed him the same way he's reviewed ender's game... Minimal thought about the material mishmashed with my opinion of the author.

TrevorJ 18y ago

I read this review as somewhat satirical, but I could be mistaken.