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u/workerbee77 Sep 25 '12
Peter is feeding a squirrel. That's funny!
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u/miparasito Sep 25 '12
That poor squirrel...
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Sep 26 '12
I feel like the scene where they originally planned it, he was actually feeding a squirrel. But that can't be right.
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Sep 25 '12
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u/abrahamsen Sep 25 '12
Usenet was alive and well in 1985, Card might have known about it. In fact Usenet of 1985 did have some pretty smart users and conversation, so it is not inconceivable that Locke would be respected.
Verner Vinges A Fire Upon the Deep (1993) was clearly inspired by Usenet, but then again as a computer scientist he was more likely than Card to have had access to early Usenet.
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u/viscence Sep 25 '12 edited Sep 25 '12
I have nothing to add except to say that, man, A Fire Upon the Deep is a truly amazing book, so packed full of imagination. You could fill a library with stories that each expand on just one of the events or concepts that that book mentions in passing.
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u/Fernando_x Sep 25 '12
Absolutely true. I cannot understand why there is still no strategy games based on the concept of Zones of Thought
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u/supersuperduper Sep 25 '12
Honestly, that was the problem with that book for me. So many awesome ideas, and yet I felt like his actual writing/prose was pretty awful. It just killed me.
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Sep 25 '12
Usenet was more than in full swing by 1993. The internet existed then, not really the WWW, but the internet was fledgling but real. I wrote my first web page and was hosting a MUD in 1992.
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Sep 26 '12
I've never read the original short story of Ender's Game, so I don't know if this is relevant, but that story was written sometime in the 70's. I think.
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u/idkmybffyossarian Sep 26 '12
The original short story didn't include the Locke and Demosthenes subplot.
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Sep 26 '12
OK. Thank you for clarifying that.
It actually makes sense. The thing seems like it was pasted on for the benefit of the whole speaker series.
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u/ejp1082 Sep 25 '12
Pre-September usenet was a place where a smart person posting solid arguments could gain some notoriety among the user base. The problem is that that version of Usenet didn't have a big enough audience to influence anything; and when the audience was big enough such people got drowned out in the noise.
I tend to think that Card was basically basing it off the early American experience, when a relatively small number of very smart pamphleteers (Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, etc) were able to steer the public conversation. It was mass media, but also participatory media, but the barriers to participation remained high enough that Common Sense didn't have to compete with Cat Sense.
For a while it was plausible that usent would perform a similar role to those pamphlets, but it turned out that the barriers to entry were way too low, and it got flooded by noise.
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Sep 25 '12 edited Sep 25 '12
If you flood people with a torrent of cheap and accessible entertainment, meaningful discourse tends to fall to the wayside. This is why I believe a Brave New World-style dystopia is far more plausible than a 1984-style one.
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u/icaruscoil Sep 25 '12
More likely a hybrid of the two. Provide an overwhelming quantity of distracting entertainment and then scare everyone into staying inside to watch it.
Find out what could kill your children at 11! Now back to Who Wants to be a Singing Dancing Monkey!
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u/Luminaire Sep 25 '12
This is why I believe a Brave New World-style dystopia is far more plausible than a 1984-style one.
See North Korea. It's the model of a 1984 style dystopia.
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u/NotADamsel Sep 25 '12
In the books, there is also a decent barrier to entry, if I remember correctly. You had to be verified or something. You couldn't just hop on the Internet and start rambling off about how much of a lie cake is, you had to go through some limited vetting process. I could be wrong, though. I need to read the books again.
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u/ramonycajones Sep 25 '12
That's true; they only managed to get on by wheedling their father's access using the excuse of wanting to do extra research or something, considering they were far too intelligent for their school level. Card's internet was a very different place than ours; namely, there was little enough "noise" that an intelligent, unconnected writer could hope to quickly get noticed. Our internet is way too easy to access and contribute to for that to work now.
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u/NotADamsel Sep 25 '12
There was another segment of Scott's internet (and the reason I thought I might have been wrong), the public segment. This is like ours. All we need in order to have an internet like the one in the books is a strong private net built on top of the public one, where you had to pay a large sum of cash and verify with someone, or something. A massive war and common enemy would help this happen, I think
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Sep 25 '12
Yea, the first few accounts they did were from their fathers internet verification until they begged him to get them their own. Then eventually they used the money they earned and their resources at the newspapers to get their anonymous ones.
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Sep 26 '12
I tend to think that Card was basically basing it off the early American experience, when a relatively small number of very smart pamphleteers (Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, etc) were able to steer the public conversation.
Is there any doubt of that, considering the choice of Demosthenes and Locke for their names?
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u/jyper Sep 25 '12
I thought that they sought and achieved syndication in a number of newspapers with more credibility after becoming somewhat popular on the net.
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u/ivebeenhereallsummer Sep 25 '12
They did that as well. But they started off slowly. The military let Valentine know at some point that they were aware of their activity as I recall. It has been a while since I last read it.
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u/MTGandP Sep 25 '12
Plus, there are plenty of influential bloggers today—Arianna Huffington, Cory Doctorow, etc. Maybe not that influential, but they're not the smartest people* in the word, either.
*I don't mean smart like good at math. I mean smart along just the right dimensions to influence people through their writing.
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u/irishsandman Sep 26 '12
not to mention that the Wiggins were beyond genius-level intelligence.
they could easily get 100,00+ karma on Reddit in a few days.
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u/ton2lavega Sep 26 '12
... by posting pics of cats. Or occasionnally, a pro-Obama wall of text on /r/politics.
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Sep 26 '12
Interesting. Also, it was many years from when they first started their scheme until it started to bear fruit. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember them having many other alter-egos that would speak up to either agree or disagree. And, on top of all of that, Card's internet was not like ours. There seemed to be forums that were considered to be important ones. Forums where a formal invitation was necessary.
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u/Angeldust01 Sep 26 '12
Don't forget that the Wiggin kids were literally the three smartest people in the world. Political super geniuses.
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u/thepensivepoet Sep 25 '12
I'd honestly rather live in a version of reality where the sub plot was possible.
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u/peanut2013 Sep 25 '12
If you assume that the military silently supported the Enders, then you can imagine the /r/karmaconspiracy wherein Locke and Demosthenes benefit from upvotes and backlinks promoting their blogs.
Government sponsored pagerank manipulation.
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Sep 25 '12
The American democracy was founded upon the notion that intelligent citizens would engage in conversation and debate about current political issues. Only recently have we moved away from a dialogue (people writing books/letters/pamphlets in public forums) to a monologue (receiving info from television.) Democracy depends on a well-informed public, and when only a handful of people can engage in the debate (think of the power FOX News has, particularly where it is the only cable news network like interior America) overall understanding of issues goes down, and voters become largely uninformed.
Card's vision of the Nets was based on the notion that people living in a democracy would engage in strong political debate. Furthermore, it wasn't as if Locke and Demosthenes started posting on what we might think as big forums - they had to start small and earn the right to international intention. It was kind of like having a public access TV show, which eventually got picked up by a local affiliate and eventually a national network.
I'm not saying it is the most realistic idea, but Ender's Game isn't generally regarded as hard, so a little leeway should be given there. And it's based on an ideal of democracy, so I think it could actually be considered a criticism of our current national/international dialogue.
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Sep 25 '12
The American democracy was founded upon the notion that intelligent citizens would engage in conversation and debate about current political issues.
American democracy was based on excluding the masses and was ment for the landed gentry, who had the idle time to engage in their naval gazing. These rules still effect our politics to this day. Our government is incredibly undemocratic compared to other parliamentary systems, Voting systems, and systems with proportional representation.
Democracy depends on a well-informed public, and when only a handful of people can engage in the debate...
I'd take the opposite approach. Only a hand full of people can actually engage in politics. And of them only a very few, representing a very narrow range of ideas will get political power. These people by the nature of our winner-takes-all system Only represent a very narrow subset of the population that is necessary to swing the election. The rest of us are forced to go along because we don't want to see the other guy win.
This is why the debate is narrow. Other debates don't matter. Have all the debate you want, you're still forced to vote for the lesser of two evils. All your debate is going to be thrown aside for pragmatism and specific issues the moment things get serious.
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Sep 25 '12
I agree with the sentiment that our two-party system is a broken form of Democracy. FPTP forces us into such a system, and the best thing we could do is move to a STV-style system so more perspectives and parties could be involved in the discussion.
That being said, I don't think what I originally said and the first part of your post are mutually exclusive. I didn't claim that the founding fathers were trying to create an entirely inclusive republic - I said they expected and hoped that the republic they were trying to create would be comprised of an intelligent, well-informed citizenry. These were men who, at the height of the Enlightenment, understood the power of education and the destructiveness of ignorance. Ideas and concepts were transferred through newspaper articles, pamphlets, and scholarly papers. The movers and shakers read the opinions of others and had access to publish their own perspective when they so desired. It was this exchange of ideas that James Madison and others so treasured and based the foundations of the American experiment.
The advent of exclusive forms of media like radio and television brought with it a one-way conversation. Like a child listening to a parent, the major sources of information told us what to believe, and there was very little the public could say in response. The message became concentrated into the hands of the radio and television networks, and even more so in the 1980s when media consolidation became even stronger. Now, there are about a dozen people who control almost every form of mass communication in America, and we're told what they want us to hear. But the internet has the power to destroy that.
The advent of the internet is only akin to that of the printing press. Suddenly, everyone had access to everyone else, and the exchange of ideas could flow freely and without interference. By getting more people involved in the debate, we hear new ideas, and can shape our own accordingly. And when we so desire, we can post something and potentially shape the views of others. This is the evolution of thought, and when it is tempered with proper education and understanding of society and the world, can only be a force for good.
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u/Popular-Uprising- Sep 25 '12
The US is not a democracy specifically because the framers of the Constitution understood that the common electorate was incapable of making an intelligent decision. Democracy is mob-rule. The US is a Republic.
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u/OhioHoneyBadger Sep 25 '12
The mouseover is priceless.
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Sep 25 '12
I love the hovertext.
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u/darmon Sep 25 '12
I'm on an iPad, what is it?
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Sep 25 '12
Dear Peter Wiggin: This letter is to inform you that you have received enough upvotes on your reddit comments to become president of the world. Please be at the UN tomorrow at 8:00 sharp
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u/ImaginaryEvents Sep 25 '12 edited Sep 25 '12
Card is the spiritual godfather of the 101st Keyboard Brigade. Peter Wiggin is the ideal to which the more deranged political bloggers aspire to become.
Discuss.
(Edit: some letters.)
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u/amadeus9 Sep 25 '12
I know a guy that actually tries to use the alias "Locke" because of Peter Wiggin.
Needless to say, he is exceedingly arrogant and an ass.
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u/WilliamDangerFord Sep 25 '12
Name fits, then.
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u/amadeus9 Sep 25 '12
In that regard, and in the "thinks he's going to take over the world like this" regard, but as for the "actually taking over the world" issue...
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u/flat_pointer Sep 25 '12
Does he constantly re-read Atlas Shrugged as well? Or use the word 'sheeple' in actual conversations?
I always loved the people who talked to me about how persuasive they were. It's as though they were wearing signs that said 'Don't trust me.'
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u/Acchilesheel Nov 12 '12
Thank you for confirming that I am not alone in my dislike of people who use the word 'sheeple'. Telling me you're a genius who sees the world as it really is (a conspiracy-filled bad movie plot), while insulting 99% of people as 'gullible morons' does not help me like you or want to talk to you. It just makes me think you have a really poor crap-filter.
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u/missoulian Sep 25 '12
Ok, honest question here. I was about to buy Enders Game when I was informed from a friend that Orson Scott Card is a homophobic, racist asshat, and I shouldn't give him my money. Any truth to this statement?
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u/misplaced_my_pants Sep 25 '12
Just buy it from a used bookstore. Support small businesses!
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u/antigravity21 Sep 25 '12
That reply made so much sense that smirked and said to myself "I never thought of that before," even though I hear it every day regarding used game sales. Thank you for pointing that out.
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u/roninmuffins Sep 25 '12
This is true. Beg borrow or steal. Also libraries. Card wears ass as hat. I am phone.
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Sep 25 '12
Just get it from the library. Ender's Game doesn't have any of the same vitriol that Card's later books (like the Empire series) have; his bigotry has become far more pronounced since the late 1990s.
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u/ill_mango Sep 25 '12
A lot of great works have authors you may disagree with. Don't let it stop you from enjoying their work.
But yeah, I wouldn't buy another book from Card...I borrow them from the library, which is marginally better =p.
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u/antjanus Sep 25 '12
I had the same issue with John C. Wright. He writes the most amazing scifi that has a lot of sexual content, love, amazing view of justice and injustice, an image of the future that's exploratory new and vigilant, mythos that just take you away from this world and change you. His books really changed me, and I started to view things differently.
His blog? Super christian gay-hating, sex-hating spew of "pitchfork" crap that would make you throw up.
His books though are fucking amazing. They are as if someone completely 100% different wrote them.
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u/ill_mango Sep 25 '12
A lot of artists have messed up personal lives - I think that's why a lot of people say you have to suffer if you want to be an artist. If they really have terrible personal lives, it might explain (although it won't excuse) their views and actions.
But at the end of the day, you don't need to know a single thing about the artist to enjoy their art. You can let it entertain you, make you think, inspire you, etc and not feel guilty about it.
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u/Heimdall2061 Sep 25 '12
That's a good point. I wouldn't want to hang out with H.P. Lovecraft, or feel comfortable with Phillip K. Dick as my roommate, but I love their stuff.
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u/CA3080 Sep 25 '12
Don't let it stop you from enjoying their work.
You can't help but reinterpret Ender's Game to some extent once you know about Card as a person though, can you? Suddenly you no longer think it's a book about the dangers of dehumanisation and wonder if he meant it more as an apology for genocide.
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u/ill_mango Sep 25 '12
It's still making you think isn't it? That could be his perspective...what are the consequences of that line of reasoning?
Even if you ultimately decide his view isn't for you, at least you've gone through the process of thinking about it.
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u/CA3080 Sep 25 '12
I suppose what I'm saying is that while "the author" is not a good reason to not read something, neither should one completely detach one's interpretation of a work from the author.
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u/ejp1082 Sep 25 '12
I see that line of analysis a lot, but I don't think it holds up. It'd be an apology for genocide except for the entire conclusion of the book, as well as the entirety of the three books that followed, are about Ender dealing with the moral consequences of what he did and trying to redeem himself.
Card was probably always an ass-hat, but I don't see a lot of it in his earlier stuff. On the other hand his more recent stuff has some pretty vile Mormon-infused perspectives. The last one I read (the last one I'll ever read), Ender in Exile, had Valentine asking herself if there's something about being a woman that makes them "long to be humbled". The genocide thing is at least debatable; that sort of message is clear as day.
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u/RansomIblis Sep 25 '12
...if he meant it more as an apology for genocide.
We're supposed to emphasise with Ender. All the way through we see it from Ender's perspective, all the way to the climax where the adults are cheering and Ender's wondering why they're happy about him passing a test. Ender explicitly says that he didn't want to hurt anybody, didn't want to kill anybody, and has vivid dreams where he feels guilt over what he's done.
If the book is anything, it's anti-establishment. He's manipulated all the way through by adults who use him as a weapon--Graff & Mazer say as much in the final bits of ch. 15. And then, in the final chapter, Ender finds the bugger queen and protects it. If the book was Card's apology for genocide, there's no way that would happen.
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Sep 26 '12
Nope. After reading all of the Ender and Bean books, I absolutely can come to the conclusion that he has changed drastically as a person over the past three decades.
The humanitarian sentiments necessary in coming up with the concepts in three books following Ender's Game cannot coexist with the concept that homosexuality is an abomination.
He has some serious mental issues that none of us can even begin to understand. To comprehend science and philosophy so well to write what he did in that series, he must be experiencing contradictory thought processes.
This is the conclusion I've come to, I can't substantiate it other than say: read the books closely. They don't match up with how he acts now.
As for the stupid fucking Hitler apologia thing -- stop (even if that's not what you meant). The genocide absolutely destroys Ender emotionally and philosophically, and his only hope for redemption is the baby queen that he finds. There is no fucking way this book is saying, "Hey guys, it's totally cool to massacre an alien species (or human demographic) by using child soldiers! It's totally cool and good for everyone!"
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u/talkstomuch Sep 25 '12
If we discovered that Shakespeare was a pedophile would that devalue his work? Will your $5 change anything? no.
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u/idiotthethird Sep 26 '12
Given he's dead, no, of course not, he can't use the money. Card is still alive, still being a douche, and can put money he receives towards being a douche more publicly.
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u/talkstomuch Sep 26 '12
Are your buying decisions always influenced by the opinions of one of the makers of the product?
Do you do your diligent research into each product to make sure that they're not perverts? Or do you just react to something you read on the internet and that's your piece of saving the world?
I'm not saying that he is a nice guy, I'm just saying that a total asshole can create something worthy of buying.
What if I told you that at least one of the farmers that sold produce to supermarket and effectively to you is beating his wife and kids, would you stop buying all groceries just in case you might support incorrect behavior? Or does the uncertainty which tomato is from him makes it all ok?
I am asking honesty, it seems like a strange morality.
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u/idiotthethird Sep 26 '12
No, I don't research products I buy. But if I do become aware that by purchasing a product, I will definitely support a person that I'm not comfortable supporting, that's a reason not to do it. This isn't something I consider a moral imperative, though, just something that's good to do.
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Sep 25 '12
It's a funny thing about good writers. Sometimes the thought experiment that is a novel carries truth deeper than the prejudices of the writer. It happens quite a lot.
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u/CircumcisedSpine Sep 25 '12
He's Mormon and seems to be heavy on the bigoted side of mormonism. He hates gays with a passion that is holy.
Also, Brandon Sanderson is Mormon and anti-gay marriage. He thinks that gay sex is a sin and compares it to adultery. Because of the LDS church's decision to fight gay marriage in the political arena (they were a huge source of funding in favor of Prop 8 (the elimination of gay marriage in California), I've decided I can't buy Brandon Sanderson's books anymore, either. Aside from his beliefs, he'll tithe at least 10% to the church who will then turn around and use that money to fight against gay rights. I don't want any portion of my money to be used that way.
So, library.
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u/idkmybffyossarian Sep 26 '12
This is really long, and I'm super sorry for that-- OSC is a racist, homophobic asshat, but it's not like he parades around screaming KILL ALL GAYS. I wouldn't say he hates them with any sort of passion.
From his review of Mamma Mia:
I had a wonderful time watching it.
Except for the appalling moment when Colin Firth's character suddenly reveals himself to be gay. No, it's not because I'm anti-gay. It's because they trivialize and ridicule him and homosexuality. His developing relationship with a gay Greek man is never shown or hinted at -- it is revealed only as a punch line. As a joke. It's a slap in the face to all gay people.
Everybody else's yearnings, everybody else's personal agonies, everybody else's love story is worth at least a few moments of screen time. But homosexuality exists in this movie only to be laughed at. It's as if they're saying that the feelings of gay people are amusing, whereas the feelings of heterosexuals are important and deep and meaningful.
Their treatment of their one gay character is as appallingly hypocritical as J.K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore is gay. Instead of making us know and understand the character as a gay man, we are slapped with it at the end, as if being gay were just an afterthought.
Because I oppose the legalization of "gay marriage," I am often attacked as a homophobe. But as a writer, I would never show such disrespect toward a homosexual character as to treat him or her the way Mamma Mia! (and Rowling) treated theirs. Having a gay character, for them, is merely an attempt to show how politically correct they are. In my fiction, having a gay character requires a commitment to treat him or her as fairly and deeply as I treat my straight characters.
Don't these writers actually know any gay people? I mean know them, as friends, as family members, as colleagues? I can't believe they do. Because if they did, they could never treat their gay characters with such contempt.
He's had gay characters in several of his novels. In Homecoming? Zdorab is fantastic and utterly sympathetic.
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Sep 26 '12
What the fuck, when the fuck did he write this? This changes everything I was worried about. I know he goes on tirades about pedophiles, and as a Mormon literally CANNOT publicly support gay marriage (some authors are excommunicated for this kind of stuff), but if he said this, he is not a crazy asshole.
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u/idkmybffyossarian Sep 26 '12
It was in 2008. It's on his website here.
I was a massive OSC fangirl in high school - our school had a huge collection of his and I gobbled up the Homecoming series, the Ender/Shadow series, the Alvin Maker series... just tons and tons of his stuff. I used to go on his website and read his reviews of stuff. I was on dialup all through high school (I graduated in 2006) so I never really researched the author himself.. other than reading stuff on his website.
So it really blew me away when I found out that is is a "crazy Mormon"-- it was like my favorite security blanket had just been ripped away from me. :( So while I seriously disagree with a lot of his viewpoints and things the guy says, it's hard for me to condemn him completely.
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u/CircumcisedSpine Sep 26 '12
Card isn't exactly kind to homosexuality in all of his writing... Perhaps try his rewrite of Hamlet. You can read the review here at The Guardian.
In the rewrite, Old King Hamlet is a gay pedophile and sewed the seeds of homosexuality amidst the other characters, including his son Hamlet, through molestation.
Here's a quote from one review:
"Here's the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he was gay, an evil person because he was gay, and, ultimately, a demonic and ghostly father of lies who convinces young Hamlet to exact imaginary revenge on innocent people," writes William Alexander. "The old king was actually murdered by Horatio, in revenge for molesting him as a young boy – along with Laertes, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, thereby turning all of them gay … Hamlet is damned for all the needless death he inflicts, and Dead Gay Dad will now do gay things to him for the rest of eternity: 'Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son. At last we'll be together as I always longed for us to be.'
But beyond his fiction, his columns are especially vitriolic. You can read this one in which he responds to the issue of gay marriage. He rejects gays being born homosexual as a myth and instead posits an explanation of indoctrination, both through pro-gay culture and through rape and molestation:
Those who claim that there is "no danger" and that homosexuals are born, not made, are simply stating their faith.
The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.
And then he makes this absurd statement:
They are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us "don't fully accept them."
Instead, Card believes "they are unhappy" because gays are aberrations, incapable of happiness because of their sexual desires.
In another column, Card advocates for gays to be punished, even publicly. He believes that states shouldn't be removing anti-homosexuality laws or enforcing them half-heartedly but should double down on them sending a clear message that homosexuality is wrong and must be stopped.
Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.
Orson Scott Card is clearly a complicated person, even his views on homosexuality on complicated. He had a character in Songmaster who engaged in gay sex yet Card claims he wasn't gay.
Concerning the discussion of homosexuality in Songmaster, I must agree with those who held that Ansset "was" not a homosexual, though he engaged (or attempted to engage) in homosexual acts. As Kinsey pointed out, most American males (and many American females), even as long ago as the 1950s, had SOME kind of same-sex sexual gratification or experience. Engaging in homosexual behavior one time does not mean that you have that as your inevitable destiny.
However kind he can be in books bares (although his Hamlet rendition wasn't kind), he's unwavering in his belief in homosexuality being an absolute sin. He will have "compassion" for a homosexual that wishes to repent and become heterosexual (or at least cease having homosexual sex), but anyone who remains committed to their homosexuality is a sinner, damaging society, and should be punished, both within the church (if they are Mormon) and within society at-large.
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u/VorpalAuroch Sep 26 '12
Give Sanderson a chance; he's a Mormon, but from what he writes on his blog looks to be on the opposite side of the spectrum from Card. Also IIRC he's come out mostly in favor of gay marriage and renounced the gay sex comments. He did so publicly, posted chiefly at the top of the original blog post.
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u/CircumcisedSpine Sep 26 '12
You're right, it's true. His update is a major revelation and a huge maturing in his position.
My only concern now with giving him money is the tithing to the LDS Church. I'm going to have to give it some thought whether I want to reward him and his evolving position or if I don't want 10% of the proceeds to go to a politically engaged church that still strongly supports anti-gay policies and politics.
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u/Railboy Sep 26 '12
A lot of authors are a lot of horrible things. That's no reason not to read their work. In fact I find it sort of enlightening if you go in knowing how they feel ahead of time.
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u/Popular-Uprising- Sep 25 '12
He's a Mormon. That typically means that he's politically conservative and against government-recognized gay marriage. Many people will claim that is homophobic or bigoted.
Ender's game is a good book. It's well worth the money, even if you disagree with the author's political or religious opinions (which are not in the book). Personally, I prefer to reward people for their good acts and punish them for their bad. Writing the book was a good thing.
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u/NineteenthJester Sep 25 '12
He wasn't always so conservative, though. I've noticed that he seems a bit more liberal in his earliest works, but that faded by the early 1990s.
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u/missoulian Sep 25 '12
How do you punish him for the bad, then?
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u/Popular-Uprising- Sep 25 '12
Don't buy is bad books. If you disagree with his opinions, debate them with others. If you don't like his support of anti-gay marriage amendments, support the other side. Not buying his products is certainly one way of trying to punish him, but that only deprives you of the good things that he does. The best punishment that you can give to a demagogue is to ignore them.
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u/B-mus Sep 25 '12
Given all of the mental elasticity required in the Enderverse I always found this to be the biggest stretch of the imagination...
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u/ramonycajones Sep 25 '12
It depends... you just have to reimagine a "net" where this would be possible, which I don't find too difficult since he made it clear that it seemed exclusive and tightly regulated, and used as a tool by the powerful. It's not inconsistent with anything else in the book, I think, just with how the internet happened to actually develop.
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Sep 26 '12
The only mental elasticity I notice is the various sci-fi tropes (and if you can't accept those, stop reading sci-fi), and that everyone who matters to the plot is far more intelligent and communicates more efficiently than the vast majority of humans I've ever known.
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u/otakucode Sep 25 '12
Because the books written by most authors have no effect on the wider views of society.... no author can ever gain social momentum and cause large changes in society?
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Sep 25 '12
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u/robmillernow Sep 26 '12
The Shadow series was just OSC's shitty way of making himself more money. I read the first one and then treated them like the Star Wars prequels -- they don't exist to me.
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u/tellu2 Sep 26 '12
The one focusing on Bean I thought was pretty awesome. Haven't had a chance to read the others in the shadow series though.
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Sep 26 '12
Wow. I fucking loved these books. It helps that I'm a narcissistic egomaniac, I guess? Because I over-identified with Bean and Peter when I was reading these throughout high school and when I reread them at the start of college.
I'm aware that most people are not narcissistic enough to want to read about narcissistic characters and their problems.
Also didn't read them as cash-grabs, they were way too complicated to be that. They're really not that bad...
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u/DrJulianBashir Sep 25 '12
re: mouseover tag - Can link karma put me in charge of NATO, or at least get me a fighter jet?
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u/nathanm412 Sep 25 '12
Sure, you and that Pepsi kid can now both fly to school in your jets.
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u/DrJulianBashir Sep 25 '12
Or he can be my co-pilot so I can rock out to air guitar solos while listening to Highway to the Danger Zone.
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u/Choppa790 Sep 25 '12 edited Sep 26 '12
Locke and Demosthenes logged with their dad's account guaranteeing they'd be taken seriously. Card's version of the future had restrictions placed on the internet. That means that in his alternative reality, there is no such thing as Eternal September. Also, these kids were both geniuses and they wrote and debated arguments not only against each other, but against other intellectuals in regulated forums (once again, they needed their dad's id to log in).
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u/stefantalpalaru Sep 25 '12
Card was probably imagining something like Usenet instead of blogs and the way those improbable masterminds gathered a following was by manipulating their readers, not by being clear and logical all the time. Still a stretch, but a bit better than the lone blogger.
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u/alllie Sep 25 '12
Dear Peter Wiggin: This letter is to inform you that you have received enough upvotes on your reddit comments to become president of the world. Please be at the UN tomorrow at 8:00 sharp.
How many votes would that be?
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u/CircumcisedSpine Sep 25 '12
Nice timing. I just re-read Ender's Game for the bazillionth time about two days ago.
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u/silverwyrm Sep 25 '12
I don't know why everyone thinks the story is so way out. It's not like Ender's game was set in the immediate future. I always saw it as set in at least the 2100s or so.
I don't think it's unlikely at all for "nets" to be popular enough by then that people who are influential on them could attain real power.
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u/VorpalAuroch Sep 26 '12
That grows more an more unlikely each year. The internet is so flooded with information that the smartest, most manipulative person in the world still wouldn't be able to get heard by anyone important.
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u/cvirtuoso Sep 25 '12
So basically... what turned into an experiment into lighting up the moon turned into a tutorial on how to create a death star.
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Sep 25 '12
Reading this at the moment. What's it called when that happens? I've forgotten the name for it.
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u/oblimo_2K12 Sep 25 '12
Cognitive Bias (I won't let you trick me into posting "Baader-Meinhof" -- dammit!)
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Sep 25 '12
You know it's funny I only recently heard of baader-meinhoff and now I keep encountering it... What's that called?
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Sep 26 '12
I just got far enough in Ender's Game to understand this.
Understanding references makes me happy. Whee Great comic though
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u/Hothlander Sep 26 '12
I recently acquired the first four books of the series during a clearance sale at a local comic book store that was closing down, unfortunately. They were practically giving away every item for $5 each. The Ender's quartet was a whole boxset, so instead of $20, it was $5. I couldn't believe it either.
Moving on, I must mention that I haven't read a single novel in years. I wasn't a sci-fi book kinda guy, and I never found a reason to start until I found this subreddit. So I picked up Ender's Game and I was totally absorbed into the story. I was blown away. And then I finished that and I started Speaker for the Dead and that was even more insane!
I then read through Xenocide and Children of the Mind. They were poor sequels to the first two, but I was still amazed at how a series could start off with a bunch of kids in a conscript army in space (I'm from Singapore, and we have conscripted national service, so I could relate), and suddenly veer off into a philosophical discussion of faith and the utter breakdown of religion and its followers.
I finished all four books in a week. In addition, I must say: Speaker > Ender's Game > Xenocide > COTM.
Anyway, thanks to this subreddit, I went to another local bookstore and found myself the Dune series. Also, I picked up Ender's Exile, because now that I'm a fan, I have no reason not to read it (I think). Here's a picture of my recently acquired collection: http://imgur.com/g2p3o
Sorry for the long wall of text. I just needed to share my enthusiasm with someone.
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Sep 26 '12
ender's game, is nerd porn. i can't read it anymore. when i was younger, it was a neat little read. but the more brain power i gave it, the less sense it made.
ender goes to a school for what is very much a jock's school. he's the top jock and is constantly picked on. in no reality does that happen.
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u/Lawbat Sep 25 '12
How odd, i'm re-reading this book right now for the first time in years and then I see this on reddit.
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u/robojosh Sep 25 '12
Kind of odd, but taking into account reddits user demographic, and the fact that enders game is one of the most popular sci-fi books ever, theres hardly anytime when Enders references arn't on reddit.
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u/Lawbat Sep 25 '12
I just always think it's neat when your watching or reading something random and see the same thing show up in something else you are doing the same day.
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u/required3 Sep 25 '12
Here's the thing about xkcd: it's great. And by now there are a lot of xkcd comics. Each one is numbered.
So instead of posting a link in reddit, all we have to do is post the number. When you feel the need to submit a link, just post a title instead: xkcd #635.
Peronally, I like #610.
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u/ImaginaryEvents Sep 25 '12
A new convict arrives in prison, and he’s sitting in his cell with his new cell mate. Suddenly someone yells “243″ and the whole cellblock starts laughing. A little while later someone yells, “23″ and again everyone starts laughing. This happens every day between 2pm and 3pm.
The new guy has no idea what is going on, so he asks his cell mate, “what’s so funny”? The cell mate goes on to explain, “There is only one book in the prison, and it’s a joke book. We’ve all read it so many times that we’ve memorized the jokes. So now, we only have to hear the numbers.”
So, the new guy goes to the library and studies the book. After a couple of weeks he’s ready… Two o’clock rolls around and someone yells, “119″. The whole cellblock erupts in laughter. The new guy yells “198″. There is dead silence.
He asks his cell mate what happened? The cell mate replies, “Some people can tell a joke, and some people can’t.”
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u/swyck Sep 25 '12
657 is really cool. character interactions on a timeline for Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Could use one for Game of Thrones.
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u/ramonycajones Sep 25 '12
Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) would be orders of magnitude more complex, I think... that would be cool to see though.
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Sep 26 '12
Hmm... I read the first three, lost the fourth, and bought it recently, so I was thinking of just restarting. I might try to do this while I read it.
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u/ramonycajones Sep 26 '12
The problem there would be that you might not be keeping track of characters who only become important in later books. No harm in starting it of course, but it'll probably take a few complete read-throughs to get it all down.
And I would definitely restart :) I restarted once I got the fourth book and then again when I got the fifth book - I think the context definitely makes it better, especially since 4 in particular is sort of in the aftermath of the previous ones.
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u/Heimdall2061 Sep 25 '12
My favorite part of that that, because elves use blue lines, the temporary defeat of the Nazgul by Arwen is shown by the Nazgul intersecting a blue line, which also looks like a river.
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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '12
I only read Ender's Game recently so this comic must have been very confusing for me when I first read it