Enders Game

[Dome]

I loved Enders Game. All the Battle School stuff was/is amazingggg.

If you liked this I highly recommend Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

[Narg]

I really enjoyed Ender's game. For those who don't like that it was a bunch of kids doing everything maybe you'll prefer the movie where they'll all be teenagers.
Speaker for the Dead, is a completly different book, no battle scenes just a mature Ender. I really liked it, thought it was very interesting.
The Shadow Series weren't as good as far as I'm concerned.

[Broodwich]

Old Man's War is sorta along the same lines and is tits. I think it was Pico who recommended it years ago in a similar thread

[KGJV]

if your reading time is scarce, better read The Forever War or other classics instead of Ender's sequels.

if your reading time is very scarce, juste read anything from Philip K. D.i.c.k.

[madpeople]

QUOTE (Adept @ Feb 16 2013, 02:15 AM) His asshattery either hadn't developed yet, or he kept it on a tight leash.

Card is though, as you imply a nasty social conservative head case. I think his success swelled his head up.

I don't know much about the man, I'm only concerned with the work.

QUOTE The sequels go quickly downhill, as per usual.[/quote]
That's the gist I get from this thread.
Funnily enough at the end of the book I wasn't really left wanting more, except maybe to see a film of it for the battle room battles and fancy effects for the DR device. My only interest in the other books was to answer a couple of questions:
Did the people of earth learn the truth about who the pseudonyms of the 3 children were
I think they learn who Loki was when peter came to power, did they learn that Demosthenes was actually Loki's sister and it was all a set up? What did they think about it? What did the people of earth think watching the initial battles knowing they were commanded by an 11yr old? Did the people he was commanding know who their commander was? Did Ender respawn the Bugger race somewhere? Did they live happily ever after? (I'm guessing he did, then there was war because people of earth were scared, then I'm not sure)

QUOTE (cashto @ Feb 16 2013, 02:35 AM) I could not shake the feeling that Card was deliberately trolling my willing suspension of disbelief. A six year old military genius who plays laser tag while his brother and sister sway the world by posting their opinions anonymously on the internet? ... you've got to be f-cking kidding me. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.

The anonymous postings going further than newspaper columns was a bit silly.
The genetically enhanced* child genius who has his childhood taken away and replaced with continuous carefully controlled challenges becoming a brilliant military commander I could go along with. It plays into my already held belief that children are much smarter than adults give them credit for. Adults might have more knowledge and experience due to being alive longer, but assuming more intelligence is presumptuous. If the kid has the intelligence as a given, and spends his entire life gaining knowledge and experience all day every day in only one thing then I could accept he could be pretty damn good by that age.

*I filed in the blanks in some places my self while reading.

QUOTE After a certain point, I just had to write off the plot entirely, and tried to find something else worth salvaging from the book. But if you take story out, all you're left with is a repetitive series of adolescent geek revenge fantasy vignettes. It just didn't do it for me.[/quote]
I saw the repetitiveness of it. But I think there's something else to it too. There's something or some bigger ideas not spelled out or hinted at that are alluded to by the figure of the book's contents. Reading the story and the words is like following the coast line of a country at maximum zoom on google maps, it's just repetitive cliffs and beaches again and again. But there's something else there grander more intangible ideas. With google maps you can zoom out and discover you've been looking at continents - much grander structures only barley alluded to by the boring and repetitive coastal details. Unfortunately the book doesn't come with a zoom function so you've got to struggle with the shape of the ideas indicated to by the low level details the book deals with.
That's what I got out of it. A sense of some deep concept was being presented to me but I was only being shown the edges of it and not grasping the shape of the whole. I think the focal point of this was about between 1/5 and 1/3 of the way through.
I think this is a philosophy book, but the philosophy isn't in the words or the story or even between the lines.

QUOTE (germloucks @ Feb 16 2013, 04:14 AM) I've read a ton of books by Orson Scott card. The only ones worth reading are Ender's game (which was fantastic) and the series that follows Bean after Battle School, instead of the books that follow Ender. After this book, if you want to skip the trash (speaker for the dead is okay, but not Xenocide), then go for Ender's Shadow.

I agree that some of the sciencey stuff is way out there. Later on in one of them, cant remember which one, some character transfers his consciousness into a flock of doves. The pequinino thing in Xenocide was terrible too.


EDIT: Even though those other books kinda suck, Orson's characters discuss a lot of interesting political science/philosopical stuff which is a huge turn on for me so i read em all despite the painful dialogue.

Noted. I'd probably be content to be told the answers to my questions, I don't really plan on reading the rest of series, maybe one more, but not any time soon and I get the impression that there are better things out there to read. - Thinking KG's advice here.

QUOTE (Dome @ Feb 16 2013, 07:32 AM) If you liked this I highly recommend Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.

Done that. Agree it was very good. Again there is talk of a film for Snow Crash, which if done well could be incredible, but could so easily be terribly awful.

QUOTE (cashto @ Feb 16 2013, 01:23 AM) I've never understood the appeal of that book. This review pretty much summarizes my reaction to the book, especially the first section.

Amusing review I'll have to consider "Is it a porno" in my future assessment of things, at least if I decide I don't like them - to avoid future reviews of action films as "It's an explosion porno, and I don't care. It's good".
I was more interested in how the challenges were handled than that they were successfully completed.
Perhaps it's because I read the book because I read this and had previously heard good things about the book.

[Adept]

To me Old Man's War was just an inferior rip-off of Starship Troopers (though without the fascism overtones).

I recommend Anvil of Stars for a different take on Sci-Fi interstellar conflict and child soldiers.

[Broodwich]

you actually liked starship troopers???
I found that book incredibly boring. It was like a 300-some page civics lecture with 3 vaguely narrated battles

[MonAG]

Harry Potter in space... But at least Harry Potter is more interesting...

[Adept]

QUOTE (Broodwich @ Feb 16 2013, 09:33 PM) you actually liked starship troopers???
I found that book incredibly boring. It was like a 300-some page civics lecture with 3 vaguely narrated battles

It's the earliest battlesuit Sci-Fi and reasonable early military Sci-Fi in general. Points for originality IMO.

But the Anvil of Stars is something else entirely.

[BackTrak]

I never miss a chance to take a crack at snow crash. Get it for the first 1/3 rd of the book, which is awesome. Then it goes off the rails into ancient language analysis and goofball virus theory - left overs from the good ol days of "every computer based nemesis can easily be beat with a virus that only the hero can write in 30 mins or less" school of thought.