SPOILERS ARE ALLOWED IN THIS THREAD, so go no further if you don't want to see them! :lol:

I just wanted to go ahead and post our discussion thread in case anyone wanted to discuss as they were reading (like me!)

I will save this top post for a list of questions/discussion points and/or links (going to go grab them from Elsi's post to put here)

Just one basic rule, not that I think we'll really need it, but just in case:

Be considerate to the other discussion members. Here's what I mean:

You may discuss anything about the story, you may rant and rave at the characters, situations or author, but you may NOT rant at other BObs and their opinions. This does not mean you can't disagree and/or say so (this is a discussion after all!), just please please please don't say things like "I can't believe you liked that character, who in their right mind would?!" or "How could you not have liked the way that ended, that's just stupid!" you get my point, just be considerate to each other. Other than that, discuss and debate away!

Links: (I haven't looked these just yet, so I may have a look and grab some questions to post outright here later on)
study guide posted on Card's own web site. http://www.hatrack.com/research/teachers/2004-04-01.shtml
full text of the SparkNotes Study Guide at http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/endersgame/

Alrighty, I'm just about 50 pages in and my initial impression is:

OH! Poor little guy, he's only 6 for cryin' out loud! :lol:

As I read through the author's intro one thing that struck me is that he was criticized by a guidance counselor for not presenting Ender correctly as a gifted child, in the way he thought/talked etc. And I could see her point in a way, as I'm reading, I don't feel like he's 6, but then, I don't remember exactly how I was at that age myself. But then I agree with OSC when he said "Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along -- the same person I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires..." in his intro, because while I obviously know that I've grown as a person, that my motivations and thought processes have evolved, I don't feel like I was less serious then than I am now, my concerns were just different based on my experiences. So, having been exposed to different more "serious" things at an earlier age, it's hard to say how I would have reacted, or what thought processes I would have had. Humans are nothing if not adaptive!


OSC has made it obvious in the very beginning that the powers that be are warping Ender, that they know they are, and that they will continue to, and that while they feel some remorse over it, it's justified for the greater good. Ouch...

This quote especially struck me "Humans are free except when Humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe Humanity needs me -- to find out what you're good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools." To me that defines the military action controversy, i.e. that you are forced to do things in the military for the greater good (at least as your superiors define it to you) that you would never do if left on your own, and that the means to the end are justified in that scenario. Heavy thoughts... I can't really picture myself in that situation, but I also know that I can't predict what I would do, or be capable of if forced to it.

Okay, back to reading!

I got a few more pages in today after finishing Wicked (ding dong the Witch it dead, hallelujah! :P) and found another quote that I can really identify with:

As he thought of it though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

I can really feel this. Obviously my life is nowhere near as serious/stressful as Ender's is, or will be, but I can understand the desire to just live, rather than having to constantly fight to survive, kill or be killed, or to be the best, or to at least constantly advance. Our society seems to think that there's something wrong with you (by this I mean the corporate world) if you don't want to move up in the system. I kind of feel like if you have managed to reach the level of responsibility that you are comfortable with, and want to stay there, it may be viewed as a weakness, rather than a strength, and I don't honestly understand why that is. why do I have to constantly strive to move up if I'm happy right where I am? And why does this mean that I'm unmotivated or lazy? I really don't think it does. What I think it means is that my first priority is not the making of money for someone else, and that isn't what they want.

I'm also sure this viewpoint is colored by the many work related things that have been going on in my family over the past several years, some bad shakes that have seemed pretty unfair to people who really just want to go to work, do a good job at what they are good at, and come home to spend time with the people that are important to us, rather than giving all to a cold company that will throw you away to achieve a bottom line. This isn't bitterness, this is hard fact. So I can definitely feel for Ender just wanting to live, rather than constantly battling just to make it.

On another point, I admire him, because he keeps getting thrown into unbalanced situations, and while he does have feelings about it, he takes it in, figures out how to deal and moves on. I want to be that way, and hope that I'm learning to in my own life, because it's something I sorely need!

So far I'm the only one posting, I sort of apologize for that, but my problem is, if I wait until the end of the book, I will have forgotten the things I wanted to say. I wasn't sure if anyone else was like this, and I don't mind having spoilers necessarily myself, so decided to go ahead and start the discussion thread in case anyone else felt the same, or if anyone who's already read the book wanted to start discussing, or give the rest of us something to think about as we read.

I'm really enjoying it so far, and I see why people have recommended it highly! :D

Hopefully my copy will come on Tuesday :)

Got my copy this morning and started straight away - I knew if I left it and read something else I'd be ages getting to it.

So far I've read up to Chapter 6 and you know what I am really enjoying it - but I agree Shauney I don't feel this is a child's voice - I feel this is the voice Ender will have always. And I feel that (sorry I am crap at grammar) although this is written as if it is in the present, it feels more like Ender is reflecting back on events in the past, as an adult.

I don't know how a "gifted" child would sound. I don't know if I want to know :lol:

But I am reminded a bit of War Games (an 80's film and books I think) and Tron. I mean, it sort of feels slightly dated but I LIKE things that feel that way. Like I enjoy John Wyndham for exactly the BBC voice he has... does that make sense?

I'm just about to start Chapter 11 :)

Good Grief Gizzy you've passed me! :lol: I take that to mean you're enjoying it? I'm in chapter 10... so I guess I'll go ahead and make a comment on what I just noticed since I'm here!

The part I'm in now is when Ender receives his first command, and he's having his first practice with his troops. Just noticing how he's singled out Bean and treating him very similarly to how he himself was treated, and not liking himself for doing it. I think we've probably all had that experience, where we've sworn to ourselves that if the roles were reversed, we would do everything differently, but then when it happens, we find ourselves doing exactly what we promised we wouldn't. And not liking ourselves for it, for not exactly sure how to do it differently, or how to fix what we've started.

Anyone else struck by that?

I also noticed at Border's today it appears that there is at least one book that stars Bean, which is funny, because I just now got to Bean's first appearance, after seeing that book. :D

I'm finding the fantasy game that Ender plays interesting too, I think they call it the Giant's Drink? Anyway, as Giz mentioned some parts are dated, that game is one of those to me, but the funny thing is, while we have games like that now that are much more sophisticated, back when this was written, those types of solve the riddle and move on games were not graphics based as they are now, they existed, but were textual, so Card was ahead of his time on those! ;) And honestly, I feel like he did a better job of it than Lev Grossman did in Codex. The computer game was the weakest part of Codex to me, having nothing to do at all with Ender's Game, just comparing the descriptive use of computer games to help tell a story.

Back to reading!

Yes I am really enjoying it :)

Is the thing Valentine and Peter refer to as nets the internet? Are they talking about blogging, sort of?

I liked the game - I mean the Giant's drink one - I'm not a game player at all, I have done The Sims and that's it, so although I understand it's dated it reminded me of those adventure gaming books by Steve Jackson - you know, the ones where you had to make decisions and use dice and stuff?

Also the stuff with Bean? Yeah, I see what you mean Shauney but it felt a little... parental. I know these kids are genii but they seem to have very little of the kid about them.

ANyway onwards .....am on chapter 12 and just going to read my next chunk. And I think I may have to add this series to my wishlist :erm:

I believe they are referring to what we would consider the internet, Giz, I'm guessing that OSC just envisioned something a little different than what has happened, but not so out of the realm of possibility. So probably forum postings, live online chats etc., so far as conferences maybe, I'm not entirely sure, but basically all things that are possible with the internet yes. I think he's kind of envisioning that having taken the place of the news, papers and tv maybe.

About the games, yes, it's totally that kind of game, just interesting because back when he wrote this, those kinds of games (that we have now in great abundance) really hadn't hit the scene yet as computer games. Games didn't have the kind of graphics then that we have now. So in a way, he imagined a future that wasn't too far off the mark, it's just a veered a little left or right of what he was thinking, at least so far as those small pieces are concerned (internet and games). But then there's battle school, where I can't positively say there is nothing like it for real, but at least the general populace isn't aware of it (a military school in space, or where the boys are taught to fight in 0G, based on battles with aliens that have already happened), so in that respect, his future is still far ahead, rather than having been surpassed by the present. Does that make sense? It's an interesting contrast I think.

It is an interesting contrast.

I thought of something I needed to come and say earlier and now of course it has disappeared utterly :(

Anyway I think this will get finished tomorrow...

I hate it when that happens! That's why I was posting as I was reading, rather than waiting until the end, because I knew I'd get done and go, yeah, it was good, I liked it... and that would be the end of it! LOL!

I'm hoping to finish up tonight or tomorrow as well, got about 90 pages left I think.

I read this one several years back, but I'm not sure if I remember enough of it to participate in an intelligent discussion about it.

That's not to say I won't be poking my head in from time to time and perhaps piping up on things when I do remember them.

Here's the BC journal page to the copy I read in case you're interested in what I have to say (I rated it an 8 btw), which was released to a PBS member back in 2005 and hasn't been journaled since.

All done! Wow... gonna have to mull it over for awhile before I can say anything intelligent, since I read the rest in one big hunk. Definitely interested in the rest of the books though!

Just want to hop in and say I am glad you guys are enjoying Ender's Game, because I consider it one of my most favorite books.

The Net is similar to our internet, but it seems to have a much wider and deeper influence in daily lives than our current internet. Talking of which, it reminds me of how YouTube is uesd to involve people in political debate. So in Ender's world, their net is a further step of that, where there is lively and fruitful discussion on politics and more info available for research.

Do read Ender's Shadow after this. It' focus on Bean, and it is interesting how the same events told from Bean's point of view could make for such interesting read and different story. A majority part of the time line of the two books overlap, and both books are good. For me, that's a much better #2 book in the series than the original #2 Speaker of The Dead.

Ahhh see now I have both Speaker for the Dead and Ender's Shadow here but I would've tended to pick up Speaker first since it's officially the 2nd in the series. Nice to get an alternate POV.

And yes, I was going to comment on Shaunie's earlier comment about the branch off to the Bean series, but wanted to check and see which ones I had. Looks like I have some of each, kind of collected them in date order before I stopped and said wait a second, let me read what I've got first before collecting the rest. Here's my list from my BC Shelf: Cherie's Orson Scott Card books

Oh good more books - I will finish this tonight for sure and then add the others to my wishlist :)

I am not sure about intelligent observations :lol:

Speaker for the Dead is a completely different animal than Ender's Game, despite featuring the same character. And it's one of my favorite novels of all time, in all honesty. I love them both but there's a depth to Speaker that is different than Ender's Game. If any of you can find it, read it!

I really want to comment on Ender's Game since I re-read it for the nth time for this discussion but haven't found a moment where I can sit down and write my impressions.

However, I can say that, no matter how many times I read this book, it still touches me deeply, it still makes me cry at the injustices thrown at Ender, the way his life, even his own conception, has been controlled and played with, for the sake of the world. It's one of those moral dilemmas of whether the means justify the ends and when it involves a child, no matter how adult they sound or think, it's all the more disturbing.

Besides, I cried like a little girl by the end, like I always do, when Ender discovers that he has just commited genocide because of a misunderstanding, an inability to communicate.

Or that he can't ever go back home.

oH sh*t i wish I hadn't just read Xeyra's post :cry:

I am not going to come back until I have finished the book now. That's the problem with trying to post as you read.

I'm sorry, Giz!!! I didn't mean to spoil you. :cry:

The end was definitely a shocker, though in retrospect, if seems like maybe we should have realized what they were doing since he wasn't allowed any rest because they couldn't allow him any.

I'm sorry Giz :hug: I always go through the "go ahead and tell me, no wait, don't, well, ok, go ahead" thing myself, but just know that I wouldn't be able to really comment on a book unless I do it as I go along. Next time maybe just come in, post your thoughts and don't read anyone else's yet! :lol:

Or if we decide we don't like having a thread up until more peeps are ready to discuss, maybe I can just keep like a little journal of my thoughts and copy paste in when it's time or something.

Xeyra :hug: I didn't cry at the end, but I think only because I was really trying to get through, so I think I hadn't come down from the shock of what they'd done to him yet to get to the really sad for the last little queen he was getting impressions from. I definitely got it though. And that he would have been right all along if they had just left them alone like Ender suggested, and maybe they wouldn't have come back. A very very painful miscommunication. :cry:

I think maybe for the next book we should have spoilers but if they are BIG spoilers like that, they should be done in hidden text?

I finished it and I did feel like crying at the end. But - and I am totally not blaming you Xeyra, it says spoilers allowed at the beginning - it really did spoil it for me, knowing what happened. :erm: I didn't know whether to say that, but like I say it's my own fault.

Anyway I am going to add some of the others to my wishlist now.

I debated whether to write what I did but in the end left it, because I needed to say something about how I felt every time I read the book, though I should have thought about white texting it. :whip: I'm sorry to have ruined your enjoyment of the book, Giz. :bash:

And that's the dilemma... you shouldn't have had to white text it because this was a thread where you can discuss whatever you want. I guess the lesson is for each individual in whether or not you really are okay with spoilers, you know? And unfortunately sometimes you're not sure until it happens and you're either upset by it, or not.

I'm not sure if there is an answer, it would be weird to me to have an entire thread of white text, because when do you decide it's a big enough spoiler to merit that and when not? :lol: It would almost be like having a discussion in invisible ink! :giggle:

OK, I'm finished! So I'm finally daring to peek in here. Sorry you read too much in here too early Giz! :hug:

I'm about to blab to my heart's content though, so everyone be warned!

Overall: Loved it! I never wanted to put it down, and found myself reading excitedly but not too rushed, so I didn't miss anything. I definitely want to read the rest of this series. :D

Poor little Ender! The cover of my copy has such a sweet-faced little boy floating around in a flash suit -- I just wanted to scoop him up and hug him the whole time! Geez, they were so mean! And he was so sensitive and they kept making him do things that made him hate himself!

I sorta foresaw some sort of weird thing happening at the end. Having the buggers stay perfectly evil was just too simple, so I figured the story would introduce some reason to like them a bit more, or at least to understand them a bit more by the end.

I didn't guess that they'd have Ender "playing" for real at Command School though! But you know, once they fessed up that he'd been truly finishing out the Third Invasion, it just seemed too easy. ('Course, it could have been that the buggers weren't fighting back all that hard and we just weren't cued into that yet.) I dunno -- the whole thing about Ender and his sib's being the long-awaited super-brains of the whole human race always seemed a bit silly to me. They had almost a century's worth of people available to them (since they could keep someone from aging as fast as everyone else via the space flight/relativity thing if they'd needed), and there was never anyone else that whole time? Not a one? 'Cos yeah, they seemed smart but...not the one and only saviors of the universe at such a young age sort of smart. Peter and Valentine seemed smarter to me, actually, especially with their political savvy. Ender seemed more charasmatic and like a good leader than a mega-brain. :shrug:

And it's just not possible for me to avoid considering the feminist view-point, apparently. :giggle: I also spent the whole time thinking that Card was impressively ahead of his time with the video game thing (well, apparently at least 10 years ahead :giggle: ) but not nearly so good at keeping up with gender considerations! Um, let's see.... How many characters in this book? Lots! How many female characters anywhere for any reason? Mom (minor role, serves food, doesn't lead conversations at meal time), Ender's school teacher on earth in the first chapter, Valentine (runner-up potential savior, true, but discarded for being too empathetic? Ah, the "softie" then, used to keep Ender soft), and Petra (only girl in the smart kid battle school, and of course the first one to break at Command School). So four females vs. a kazillion males. We didn't even see women elsewhere doing things like piloting civilian crafts or anything. Serious Lord of the Rings vibe there! I realize it was the military, and woman have really only been getting a foothold in the military more recently in the US, but this was supposed to be a multinational sort of military in the twenty-second century! Interesting what seems dated and what seems ahead of it's time....

But on the flip side, part of me wondered at the very end if the overly-male character load wasn't partly on purpose, to serve as a better contrast with the buggers who we hadn't known much about all that time. The message left by the queen was much more female-centric, and among the buggers we finally saw female 5 & the pupa of female 6! Of course, my cynical side then says, yeah, and the buggers seemed to accept their defeat awfully...passively...to me. Hmmm..... I'd be interested to see if anyone else ever thought anything along any of those lines anyway!

Oh, and how did the buggers know on which colonized planet to leave the End of the World set-up for Ender? Didn't they send queens out to the new colonies when they settled them? I thought the Third Invasion only finished off one planet, but then they were all dead.... Maybe there were only the two queens for all those buggers? That'd be a whole lot of being fruitful and multiplying for those few queens.... :unsure:

I also wondered how the buggers could have missed that Earth had intelligent life when said life was flying about in space crafts when they found them! Wouldn't that have been a bit of a clue?!! Even if the first arrivals weren't their "thinkers," wouldn't they have brained the thoughts to the rest?


OK, now I've got to go check out some of those study-type questions on the links. :giggle:

I've finally gotten around to re-reading my library copy of this. (I had read it many years ago but didn't remember anything except that I liked it).

Some very interesting points have been made so far in the discussion, and I've enjoyed reading those thoughts. Some things that struck me:

I definitely agree that the narration is far from presenting Ender or his siblings as age-appropriate in their dialog and actions, even for extremely gifted children.

For all that he's presented as a mostly sympathetic character who's horrified at his potential for violence, Ender is not a nice kid. His response to the classmate who's hazing him omits any of the normal possibilities of calling for help, running, etc. and goes for a sickening, possibly crippling attack. At that point, he's not in the military program yet, and you'd think that he could reasonably expect appropriate adult intervention.

He also apparently has very little social skill - no set of friends at school, etc. Now, I know that most 6 years old, most kids don't have the same kind of social skills that older kids do - but they usually have some childhood friendships and some relationships with adults (teachers, neighbors, extended family, etc).

Yet, for someone as socially stunted as he was, he could sometimes be very insightful about his role and about those under his command. It didn't seem to fit.

The population cap reminds me of China's current rules about 1 child per family, as well as the flux in populations of different ages in the US and some of Europe (Baby Boomer generation, etc). I think more could have been made of the differences that makes in society and economics - certainly it's playing out in interesting ways for us today. But it's insightful of Card to have predicted that this could happen, and that it would have an impact.

Those shoving Ender into this role of the "only" one who could do this are awfully sure of themselves. I'm not sure if Card meant that to be a commentary on the attitudes of those in the military industrial complex, or just a way to move the plot along. Of course, it also seems likely that they had others on the stringer at least part of that time, who failed out of the program. Clearly, they'd tried this with others in the past, based on Ender's conversation with Mazer.

It says on fantastic fiction that a film of Enders Game is being developed.....

Do you think Orson Scott Card's faith has any impact on his writing?

I was wondering that myself, when Kyri was mentioning how male-centric everything seemed.

I think he tried to remove that though, by making all religions something that were frowned on, if you remember the first conversation that Graff was having with Ender when he was talking him into going to Battleschool.

I didn't really get an overwhelming sense of religion though, but then I'm oblivious to things a lot of the time! :lol:

I remember being struck by this when I read the book a couple of years ago.

Indeed, I think this is a sort of self-perpetuating cycle that can be seen in a lot of settings, both at the individual and the institutional level. Part of what I think underlies the behavior is the (perhaps subconscious) thought that "Well, I turned out right afterwards, so it must have worked." If you really think that through, you can see that the logical connection is missing -- perhaps the hazing/bad treatment/whatever worked, or perhaps you turned out right in spite of the hazing.

But it's hard not to buy-in. Since I'm a lawyer, I'll use law school as an example. Law professors are (practically by definition) those who did well in law school. Thus, perpetuating the system of how law is taught serves to reinforce the internal belief of a law professor that s/he is the cream of the crop. If you were to change the system, different folks might end up at the top of the heap; then the best students wouldn't be the most similar to their professors and it would undermine the authority of the professorate. So even when there are lots of good reasons to change a system (e.g., to make law school more friendly to women), it's slow to shift.

Basically, I think that even when people originally start out thinking, "when the roles are reversed, I won't behave this way," it sometimes ends up reinforcing itself.

I was noticing this too, and I take it we were supposed to notice it since Ender had such feelings that he'd never do that and then turned right around and did it at the first opportunity!

That moment Ender was handed command he had a lot of new things to deal with at once, so falling on a previous example when he had one to work with might have cleared up his head to give more attention to the issues concerning the whole unit, but still....

And change is uncomfortable, no? I mean we often find change something to be resisted, the old ways work... I KNOW I am guilty of that.

Particularly, in some ways, for routine things. If I have a system in place that appears to be working, I'm sometimes not interested in "efficiency" improvements that require me to learn a new system. Sometimes, I think that's justified (i.e., the alleged improvement is really minimal and the hassle is high), but often it's just because I'm stubborn or otherwise busy.

I agree with this, as it parellel's the Ender's Game story. I was pleased when OSC wrote this one as I always liked Bean.

But then DO read Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide to continue Ender's story ad Shadow of th Hegemon and Shadow Puppets to continue Bean's story.

I don't see his faith coming through as much in this novel as in his Homecoming Saga (which basically follows the Book Of Mormon) But I often see it in his writing.

For anyone that would like to read the original short story that lead tothe Ender's Game saga, here is a link:

http://www.hatrack.com/osc/stories/enders-game.shtml

So from you guys who have read the series already, would you recommend reading Ender's Shadow as the next book, or going to Speaker of the Dead next as that's listed as next in the trilogy? I keep seeing different info on the proper order of things.

Ender's Shadow is a parallel story with Ender's Game, from Bean's point of view, I think. Speaker of the Dead takes place a few years after. I originally read the latter after Ender's Game and found it an incredible read, but it's very different from Ender (and Ender's Shadow). I think it depends on whether you'd like to take a different look from a different perspective on the events at the Battle School right now or move on to Ender's future.

This post didn't help you at all, did it? :P

:lol: It doesn't seem helpful does it, but I don't know if I could have put it any better!

Here's what OSC has to say about the matter:

Question: What's the "preferred" order of reading the Ender series?
Answer:

Preferred order ... depends on what you mean by preferred, and who's doing the preferring.

You can read them in the order written - Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, then Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant. Or you can read them in chronological order of story beginnings, which is Ender's Shadow, Ender's Game, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind.

But in truth it doesn't matter, except that you should read Xenocide right before Children of the Mind, since they are really two halves of a single continuous story. In most of my books, I include all the information you need

Well, it's more than a few years. It's about 3000 years, to be correct. But because of time warp in space, Ender is a 30 something-year-old.

So, in The Speaker of the Dead and the other two books, there aren't any child genius. A lot of talking. If what you like in Ender's Game is the action and child genius story, then definitely you will like the Bean series more. It also features Petra, if she is your favorite character.

I'd forgotten that. Wow, it's been a while since I read Speaker. I'm glad I mooched a copy recently that's on its way to me. I gave mine away in a relay years ago and always kind of regretted it.

Yeah I think I am going to keep mine on my PC. I was thinking of crossing it.... but I suspect I will regret it :lol: