>It's a wonderfully guilt-free massacre, mass murder with a clear conscience
I take it the reviewer didn't read the sequels?
Ender's Game Review
21–30 of 102 posts
Re: Ender's Game Review
#22He 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).
Re: Ender's Game Review
#23Ugh. 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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#24since 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
Summary: Ender's Game is an apologia for Hitler.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#25My 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…
Try rereading stranger in a strange land or any other book you loved as a teen and it's not going to stand up to what you remember.
Anyway, the amount of open hostility displayed by children shapes how you view the world. As an adult you rarely feel you are surrounded by monsters, but most young people feel this way. I think this is why overt violence is so appealing to young people they live in it's shadow everyday and it becomes what you know.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#26Ugh. 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.
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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#27This 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.
"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 struc…
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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#28My 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…
Try rereading stranger in a strange land or any other book you loved as a teen and it's not going to stand up to what you remember. Anyway, the amount of open hostility displayed by children shapes how you view the world. As an adult you rarely feel you are surrounded by monsters, but most young people feel this way. I think this is why overt violence is so appealing to young people they live in it's shadow everyday…
I don't know about any teen book. I still love Diana Wynne Jones books for the same reason I loved it when I first read it: because of her ability to weave a very dense-but-accessible story out of a fascinating concept. I also still love Asimov and Herbert.
It depends on the sort of read it is. Ender's Game is a book that has an emotional impact on you when you first read it, but not a very intellectual one. Stories that base their punches on emotions without firm concepts don't hold up as well.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#29I 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 her…
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.
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.
Re: Ender's Game Review
#30This 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.
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.