Ender's Game Review
plover.net
Ender's Game Review
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Ender's Game Review
#2If 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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#3If 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…
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.)
Re: Ender's Game Review
#4If 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…
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Re: Ender's Game Review
#5If 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…
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 Gam…
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'.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#6If 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…
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 Gam…
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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#7My 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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#8I 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?
Re: Ender's Game Review
#9My 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 cri…
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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#10Can'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.