4 ms·

Good suggestions already ITT, so I'm not gonna repeat. All of Enderverse by Orson Scot Card is simply excellent. Ender's game is a nice peak into what goes on

Good suggestions already ITT, so I'm not gonna repeat. All of Enderverse by Orson Scot Card is simply excellent. Ender's game is a nice peak into what goes on in the whole series. A mash between true strategy, relationships, personal development, philosophy and is very engaging. However the rest of the Ender series deal mainly with philosophy. Plenty of nuggets there. Additionally Shadow's saga is situated on Earth and is about strategy and competing. Highly recommended too.

moron4hire 12y ago
I'm sorry, this isn't meant as an attack on you, but I thought Ender's Game was a rather terrible piece of over-indulgent nerd fantasy with a heaping helping of apologia for "preemptive" warfare. My wife also loved the book and I just don't see it. Well, I sort of see it, it's appealing to anyone who felt like an outsider in school. But its treatment of that feeling all seems very dangerous. It resorts to a weird sort of ego-stroking to explain away why the reader cum Ender was an outcast, then justifies all of the hyperviolence against all offenders under the age-old abuser's excuse "I didn't know my own strength." I don't think people read enough into the book and treat it too much as light, throw-away fiction.
- grandalf 12y ago
  The best one is Speaker for the Dead. Also, Ender's Shadow attempts to address some of the flaws you mention. I don't think the book justifies pre-emptive war at all: The problem of a potential alien attack is relevant (in an ironic way) b/c many human political decisions are framed by leaders as a choice between action and annihilation. In the original short, that framing is intended to get the reader on board with the rest of the story without extensive justification. In subsequent books, the fictitious society comes to view the decision made to kill the aliens as having been a terrible atrocity.
  - moron4hire 12y ago
    I tend to think of that more as Orson Scott Card backpedalling after the various backlashes against his personal values. Books are reflections of the people who write them. Every violent encounter in the book is "it's really too bad how everything turned out, but nobody knew, so that makes it okay!" On several occasions, Ender commits what amounts to manslaughter at best, 2nd degree murder at worst, and it's all just washed away as "well, but they hate him because he's so freaking good." It's absurd.
    - grandalf 12y ago
      So assume that Ender's response was proportional considering the bullying he underwent. His fear of being attacked at first sounds like a child's paranoia, but when he kills his tormentors the reader sees that this scared little kid is quite lethal. We're left to wonder why he's lethal and soon we realize that he's innately good at executing force in a strategic way. We question his judgment a bit -- should he have avoided killing the bullies at all cost? But we realize that his judgment is no worse than that of any other kid, only his execution (no pun intended) is far, far better. He would have been devastated if he'd known the bullies died. I think this aspect of Ender was conceived as a great short story angle, but as the plot develops it gets a bit two dimensional. Card counters this by framing Ender as the embodiment of human ability -- justice, self-awareness, compassion. Further into the book we find that Ender's ability is a function of his empathy -- much like someone who empathizes with us may find just the right words to hurt us, Ender empathizes with his enemy allowing him to vanquish it. Though because of his kind, compassionate disposition, he must be deceived into fighting an actual war. I will admit that revelations about Card's homophobia are a bit concerning, but I try hard to separate the creator from the product of creation in all areas...
      - moron4hire 12y ago
        I not sure I see any point in separating them. Wagner's operas can't be separated from the notion of German exceptionalism that laid the groundwork for Nazi ideology. Ender's Game does not exist other than as an expression of Card's worldview. And he had expressed, through it (at least at the time that he wrote it. I am at least willing to grant the rare occurrence of change in people), that ignorance of the consequences excuses such violence, even violence that was executed under incorrect assumptions. In the real world, Ender not knowing that the kids are being killed would not excuse his behavior. It merely changes 2nd degree murder into manslaughter. With the number of times he repeats this behavior, we'd maybe even try him as an adult, discarding even the basic notion within our culture that children are generally not yet to be held responsible for all of their actions. When we try children as children, we are not saying the crime was not their fault, we are saying they are not going to be punished for the crime in the same way as an adult. We still punish them. But according to Card, nothing is ever Ender's fault. Ender doesn't kill them because he is so good. Ender is so good so that he can kill them. The causality in fiction is reversed from reality because there is a distinct narrative to portray, but reality doesn't have a narrative, it emerges. He wrote Ender to have misapplied violence on several occasions, so that he can then be excused for it. The aliens aren't destroyed because they invaded, the aliens invade so that they can be destroyed. They are aliens so that they immediately have the inhuman status that all genocidal maniacs need to assert before trying to cleans the universe of them. To me, not only the revelation of Card's homophobia, but the vociferous manner in which he defended it, is just a corroboration of what Ender's Game tells us about who he is: an extremely rabid right-wing ideologue. We see in Card the beginnings of the Neoconservative movement with all of its contradictions nearly fully formed: the claimed reverence for both God and war, the clashing support for small government and large military. And for the life of me, I just can't read it as 8 to 10 year old children. I have several nephews spread from 2 through 10 years old and there is an extremely distinct difference in basic maturity level between them all. Ender portrays qualities more like a late teenager and he yet is on the young end of the book's spectrum. I just don't see 10-year-olds having the capacity to hate someone else "because they are the best". Mostly because the concept itself is alien to me. I know of it only through its portrayal in the media. It's one of the more dangerous ideas we teach kids. It tells them, "if you could just change, it will get better." And either the kid can change and tries, which is awful, or the kid can't and is stuck thinking life will always be like this, which is also awful. Real bullies are just jockeying for acceptance within their peer group and it has little to nothing to do with the victim. Bullying only ends when it's made to no longer be entertaining for the bully, a shockingly easy thing to achieve, if you just know that that is what needs to happen. But also because that sort of hate takes fear. That's why we use the "phobia" ending on homophobia. Children don't know that kind of fear yet. You have to start to become aware of your own limitations, and the accompanying fear that someone else's success could have a detrimental impact on your own. Kids that age are only a few years into realizing the ball doesn't just dematerialize when you hide it behind your back, say nothing that there are limits on what they will be able to achieve. These fights are fantasies in Card's head, projections of what he thinks makes for righteous cleansing of that which he sees as besetting him from all sides. It's the ol' "'Merica is going to hell in a handbasket". He feels like everyone is out to get him, his way of life, and he is surrounded, so escape isn't an option. And if someone dies in the process, it's not his fault, he was "just" defending himself. Because in his head, he's fighting for survival, and might makes right. Classic fundamentalism.

moron4hire 12y ago

I'm sorry, this isn't meant as an attack on you, but I thought Ender's Game was a rather terrible piece of over-indulgent nerd fantasy with a heaping helping of apologia for "preemptive" warfare. My wife also loved the book and I just don't see it. Well, I sort of see it, it's appealing to anyone who felt like an outsider in school. But its treatment of that feeling all seems very dangerous. It resorts to a weird sort of ego-stroking to explain away why the reader cum Ender was an outcast, then justifies all of the hyperviolence against all offenders under the age-old abuser's excuse "I didn't know my own strength." I don't think people read enough into the book and treat it too much as light, throw-away fiction.

grandalf 12y ago
The best one is Speaker for the Dead. Also, Ender's Shadow attempts to address some of the flaws you mention. I don't think the book justifies pre-emptive war at all: The problem of a potential alien attack is relevant (in an ironic way) b/c many human political decisions are framed by leaders as a choice between action and annihilation. In the original short, that framing is intended to get the reader on board with the rest of the story without extensive justification. In subsequent books, the fictitious society comes to view the decision made to kill the aliens as having been a terrible atrocity.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  I tend to think of that more as Orson Scott Card backpedalling after the various backlashes against his personal values. Books are reflections of the people who write them. Every violent encounter in the book is "it's really too bad how everything turned out, but nobody knew, so that makes it okay!" On several occasions, Ender commits what amounts to manslaughter at best, 2nd degree murder at worst, and it's all just washed away as "well, but they hate him because he's so freaking good." It's absurd.
  - grandalf 12y ago
    So assume that Ender's response was proportional considering the bullying he underwent. His fear of being attacked at first sounds like a child's paranoia, but when he kills his tormentors the reader sees that this scared little kid is quite lethal. We're left to wonder why he's lethal and soon we realize that he's innately good at executing force in a strategic way. We question his judgment a bit -- should he have avoided killing the bullies at all cost? But we realize that his judgment is no worse than that of any other kid, only his execution (no pun intended) is far, far better. He would have been devastated if he'd known the bullies died. I think this aspect of Ender was conceived as a great short story angle, but as the plot develops it gets a bit two dimensional. Card counters this by framing Ender as the embodiment of human ability -- justice, self-awareness, compassion. Further into the book we find that Ender's ability is a function of his empathy -- much like someone who empathizes with us may find just the right words to hurt us, Ender empathizes with his enemy allowing him to vanquish it. Though because of his kind, compassionate disposition, he must be deceived into fighting an actual war. I will admit that revelations about Card's homophobia are a bit concerning, but I try hard to separate the creator from the product of creation in all areas...
    - moron4hire 12y ago
      I not sure I see any point in separating them. Wagner's operas can't be separated from the notion of German exceptionalism that laid the groundwork for Nazi ideology. Ender's Game does not exist other than as an expression of Card's worldview. And he had expressed, through it (at least at the time that he wrote it. I am at least willing to grant the rare occurrence of change in people), that ignorance of the consequences excuses such violence, even violence that was executed under incorrect assumptions. In the real world, Ender not knowing that the kids are being killed would not excuse his behavior. It merely changes 2nd degree murder into manslaughter. With the number of times he repeats this behavior, we'd maybe even try him as an adult, discarding even the basic notion within our culture that children are generally not yet to be held responsible for all of their actions. When we try children as children, we are not saying the crime was not their fault, we are saying they are not going to be punished for the crime in the same way as an adult. We still punish them. But according to Card, nothing is ever Ender's fault. Ender doesn't kill them because he is so good. Ender is so good so that he can kill them. The causality in fiction is reversed from reality because there is a distinct narrative to portray, but reality doesn't have a narrative, it emerges. He wrote Ender to have misapplied violence on several occasions, so that he can then be excused for it. The aliens aren't destroyed because they invaded, the aliens invade so that they can be destroyed. They are aliens so that they immediately have the inhuman status that all genocidal maniacs need to assert before trying to cleans the universe of them. To me, not only the revelation of Card's homophobia, but the vociferous manner in which he defended it, is just a corroboration of what Ender's Game tells us about who he is: an extremely rabid right-wing ideologue. We see in Card the beginnings of the Neoconservative movement with all of its contradictions nearly fully formed: the claimed reverence for both God and war, the clashing support for small government and large military. And for the life of me, I just can't read it as 8 to 10 year old children. I have several nephews spread from 2 through 10 years old and there is an extremely distinct difference in basic maturity level between them all. Ender portrays qualities more like a late teenager and he yet is on the young end of the book's spectrum. I just don't see 10-year-olds having the capacity to hate someone else "because they are the best". Mostly because the concept itself is alien to me. I know of it only through its portrayal in the media. It's one of the more dangerous ideas we teach kids. It tells them, "if you could just change, it will get better." And either the kid can change and tries, which is awful, or the kid can't and is stuck thinking life will always be like this, which is also awful. Real bullies are just jockeying for acceptance within their peer group and it has little to nothing to do with the victim. Bullying only ends when it's made to no longer be entertaining for the bully, a shockingly easy thing to achieve, if you just know that that is what needs to happen. But also because that sort of hate takes fear. That's why we use the "phobia" ending on homophobia. Children don't know that kind of fear yet. You have to start to become aware of your own limitations, and the accompanying fear that someone else's success could have a detrimental impact on your own. Kids that age are only a few years into realizing the ball doesn't just dematerialize when you hide it behind your back, say nothing that there are limits on what they will be able to achieve. These fights are fantasies in Card's head, projections of what he thinks makes for righteous cleansing of that which he sees as besetting him from all sides. It's the ol' "'Merica is going to hell in a handbasket". He feels like everyone is out to get him, his way of life, and he is surrounded, so escape isn't an option. And if someone dies in the process, it's not his fault, he was "just" defending himself. Because in his head, he's fighting for survival, and might makes right. Classic fundamentalism.