The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => Literature => Topic started by: Wilshire on May 11, 2013, 01:14:43 pm
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What a great book. Don't know what anyone here thinks of Orson Scott Card, but from only ready Ender's Game I'd say he's quite the writer. I couldn't stop reading until I had finished the book cover to cover, and I'd recommend it as a classic in the sci-fi genre.
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Lol... The Speaker for the Dead may be my all time favorite SF book.
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Was that the next published book of the series?
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Not sure about publishing chronology. It is the second book of the Ender Quartet though, which I'm pretty sure were three-quarters published before the Bean Quartet was started.
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Publishing Chronology went:
Ender's Game Short Story
Ender's Game novel
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind
Ender's Shadow
(other shadow Books)
Ender in Exile
(whatever else has come out)
Speaker for the Dead and Dune are probably my two favorite Sci-fi books, though I've read Ender's Game more than SftD, and Dune more than EG.
It is a great book, and relevant to this board, since Kellhus and Ender are basically identical, although Ender feels remorse when he has to murder those he's caused to love him and loves as well. Ender's the perfect little murderer, all his sins are okay because they are sins of love, or of loving too much. and if they're not sins of love, they're sins of superior intellect, which is even more forgiveable than love. His only failing was when nefarious devil folks withheld crucial information and tricked and deceived him, so his ignorance is only bad because of the actions of other people, his ignorance simply cannot be his own fault, can it? How can you not worship such a god in miniature?
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I saw there's a film version of this being produced, and boy does it look atrocious.
...anyways, I'm a fan of his books, his recent The Lost Gate was a fun light read, read it last summer.
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lockesnow, I really wish there was more really stellar SF to choose from. I really hope Bakker tackles the genre sooner rather than later (and apart from The Second Apocalypse, wherever that lands on the SF/F gradient).
While we're on Card, The Worthing Saga is an interesting read (though, apparently, unbeknownst to me, really exposes OSC mormon - or whatever - preaching tendencies he has).
Maps in the Mirror is, also, a constant and lifelong companion of enjoyment.
EDIT: Anyone ever read the Alvin Maker books?
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I've read/own just about everything Card's written, one of my great sadnesses of the past few years is that I didn't save the text of a post where I completely broke down his writerly tendencies/tropes as each one recurred in Pathfinder (what a load of garbage that book was, a low-grade James Horner esque rehash of every other book he's written). It's kind of disturbing just how many of his stories revolve around a super-genius boy getting to play with his own planet as a sort of pseudo god.
Also, there's never been a female protagonist in a card story or novel that had the same interests as a male protagonists. All females are ultimately focused on either preserving their virginity/purity from the rapaciousness of men or are hellbent on tricksing men into marriage or are after only babiesbabiesbabies or are totally obsessed with a man so that they have no life of their own.
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Words can stand apart from their maker's. It is the meanings that they invoke inside me that matter.
Though, I'm sure he's as biased as the rest.
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Apparently Card is making bank this year. I saw that "Seventh Son" movie is being made along with Ender's Game (which I thought looked good from the previews :P). Wonder if he ever guessed he'd get 2 huge movie deals for books he wrong 20 years ago?
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Well, Card actually had a hand in delaying the making of Ender's Game for that past ten years to facilitate the age of the actors (what is acceptable today in terms of embodied portrayal by a child, wasn't not too many years ago).
I tried reading the Alvin Maker series... never quite caught me like the Ender Quartet did (and even that suffered some serious setbacks during Xenocide and Children of the Mind).
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Ok yeah true, he did refuse to let anyone touch it until the directors stopped trying to bone him.. but even still, bet he didn't expect to get both.
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Seventh Son (moreso than the Ender Quartet) is likely a goldmine to Hollywood. Alvin Maker's comparable to a lesser known Harry Potter.
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I really love this article.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
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Thanks Locke, that is a fantastic deconstruction.
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its unbelievably superb. it really opened my eyes to the moral toxicity that Scott ennables the reader to happily go along with, it's just and incredibly clear detailing of the flattering ways that reader is made complicit in and agreeable to genocide and murder.
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I hope that all of this isn't stripped from the characters in the movie-to-be. It would be disappointing, though not unexpected, if they stripped all the ambiguity and turned it into a humans-conquer-evil action flick.
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its unbelievably superb. it really opened my eyes to the moral toxicity that Scott ennables the reader to happily go along with, it's just and incredibly clear detailing of the flattering ways that reader is made complicit in and agreeable to genocide and murder.
I skimmed the essay yesterday - I will have to read it more fully and respond. Interesting commentary, lockesnow :).
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This might be my favorite part, and relevant to how Kellhus is so similar to Ender
I do not make the allusion to Christ casually. The figure of Christ, like that of Hitler, comes up briefly in Ender’s Game, and the associations it calls up are revealing. When Ender’s friend Alai points out that his habitual salute to Ender, “salaam,” means “peace be unto you”, an image immediately leaps into Ender’s mind. He recalls his mother quoting Jesus from the gospels.
“’Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ Ender had pictured his mother piercing Peter the Terrible with a bloody rapier, and the words had stayed in his mind along with the image.” (p. 187)
The word “peace” calls to Ender’s mind not the Prince of Peace, not the Jesus of turning the other cheek, not the Jesus who stayed his apostle’s hand when the apostle attacked the soldier who came to take Jesus in the garden. “Peace be unto you” evokes in Ender an image of murderous revenge against his personal tormenter: the savior as righteous killer.
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The main differences being that Ender is a kid and Kellhus is a man. Its so much easier to dismiss the mistakes of a child.
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Loved EG! Got to read it to my daughter recently and it was wonderful fun that way too. I think Card captured so much of pure childhood fantasy in the zero g war game.
I need to give Speaker for the Dead another try--I really didn't like it the first time around, it seemed unattractively politically correct to me years ago--something like, there are no true faults between people, just misunderstandings. But I'm definitely going to read it again, maybe just my biases at the time.
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Yeah I think EG is a great book for younger readers. SftD maybe not as much, since the main character is all grown up. The later books ('Shadow' series: Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant) is more along the lines of EG, though the original series (Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind) was superior.
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Yeah I loved most of the Ender stuff. Only thing that bugged me really was how Achilles also ended up being a genius and he was just some street brat as well.
SftD for me was great but the original EG is awesome - I remember reading the G scenes and having such a vivid idea.
Did anyone see the films? What did they think of it? Lots of little homages to the book if you were looking.
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As far as film adaptions of books go, it was pretty good. Obviously it wasn't perfect, but its not like it had a SW or LOTR budget to work with. The cast of children actors did a pretty good job, and it was probably difficult all around to shoot the movie with hat many kids running around. That said, Harrison Ford was not impressive.
I really enjoyed the movie, but it was far better for those of us who read the books first. Too much was happening behind the scenes for the movie to be fully appreciated read the books.
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Yeah exactly. There were some really weird differences. Uh What! Major Anderson is black you say? Also a woman? The fact that Rackham was not a reveal felt a bit off but I can see why they changed that. The Giant Game seemed really insignificant in the film - wish we saw the giant eat him a few times.
I thought the battle room scenes were superbly done though and i was totally geeked out.
I wish it would have made money so we could have gotten a sequel but I dont see SftD adapting well to film.
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I didn't like the movie--the games did come to life for me like they did with the book--but I don't know if any movie could fit my mind's eye version.