
Ender's Game Review - markessien
http://plover.net/~bonds/ender.html
======
pg
This 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.

~~~
Alex3917
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.

~~~
unalone
That's also the secret to getting an interesting plot easily.

It comes up so often in fiction because it's _interesting._ And it's possible
to get things more complex and keep it interesting, but it's much, _much_
harder. Even Ulysses, which is famous for being about an ordinary person going
about an ordinary day, has the main character a Jew in Ireland - which is rare
- and adds Dedalus, who is too smart for his own good.

Difference equals interest. That's not masturbatory. That's fact.

~~~
Alex3917
I have to disagree. The idea that we're going to wake up one day and something
is going to happen that's going to make us better or more important than
everyone else is pretty much the dictionary definition of masturbatory.

~~~
icky
Read your Joseph Campbell before categorically dismissing half of all fiction
in human history.

~~~
Alex3917
I've pretty much dismissed all fiction for the reason that unalone mentions:
fiction is designed to be interesting. And I don't like reading stuff that's
interesting. I mean I do occasionally, but it rarely holds my attention.

edit: I have wanted to read Campbell for awhile though, maybe that will be my
next book.

~~~
icky
> And I don't like reading stuff that's interesting. I mean I do occasionally,
> but it rarely holds my attention.

I can totally relate: I hate food that tastes good, and breathing oxygen.

~~~
Alex3917
Humor, as pg succinctly puts it, comes from novel breakages. (There are
academic studies confirming this.) So keeping that in mind, it's possible that
something can be objectively funny without anyone actually finding humor in
it. (For example, if they don't see the breakage or they just don't care.)

Interesting works the same way. Something can be objectively interesting
without anyone actually finding it interesting.

If this sounds funny, it's because words are defined as used. And there are
certain words that are used differently than what they actually mean. For
example, if I asked you for an interesting idea you wouldn't tell me the
number of penguins in Antarctica, because we all accept that a fact is
different than an idea. But if you look in a dictionary, you'll see the word
idea defined as if it were a fact, even though we all agree that it's not.
Why? Because in practice when people use the word idea it's almost always in
the context of "give me an idea of how big this room is" or something like
that. I.e., in most cases idea is used as a synonym for fact, even though we
agree that this isn't what _an_ idea is. You'd have to look in a really good
dictionary and scroll all the way to the bottom of the list of definitions to
even get a hint that this is the case, and even then they won't give you a
good working definition.

So what is interesting? Unalone nails it when he says something different.
That is, something that breaks with our mental models of how the world works,
but without actually suggesting a new set of more accurate schemas (which
would be insightful.)

I prefer reading insightful stuff to interesting stuff, which is why I say
that reading stuff that's interesting (objectively) doesn't hold my
(subjective) interest.

~~~
unalone
No. Absolutely not. There is no objective study of humor, or of interesting.
You can't manufacture it. Different people find different things funny for
different reasons. I've taken classes in stand-up comedy, improv comedy, and
in general dramatics, and this is the big thing that we learn. While humor can
be analyzed, and while there's a craft inherent in modeling a joke, that
doesn't make humor objective. And it's the same thing with interest. Some
people find things interesting that aren't interesting whatsoever to me. The
same is true in reverse.

I mean, thanks for agreeing with me, but from what you're saying here I think
that you're saying something pretty nonsensical. "Interest" and "insight"
aren't objective standards. It's entirely subjective, through-and-through. If
you don't like reading because you don't find it interesting, then it's not
interesting to you. It's not objectively interesting whatsoever. And usually,
insight and interest are matched. If something's saying something new, then
it's both insightful _and_ interesting, precisely for the "different" argument
that I made before.

~~~
astine
I don't know, while I might agree that what qualifies as 'interesting'
probably is subjective, I think that insight is concrete enough so that you
could objectively state whether some was or not with relation to the author or
the audiance.

~~~
unalone
_relation to the author or the audiance_

But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?

~~~
astine
Yes, but it can be objectively subjective; or rather, it is subjective, but in
a different sense.

To illustrate, the phrases "The audience finds this interesting," and "The
audience finds this insightful," are both subjective in the sense that their
truth-value is dependent on the subject (different speakers likely would have
different perspectives,) but they are objective in that, given a particular
subject, they are either true or false. So: ojective in the particular, and
subjective in the universal. The difference is that the later can depend on
factors that are external to the subject, are objective and can be shared.

A phrase (or whatever) can be insightful with respect to a particular context
if it adds something that was not previoulsy present in that context. So an
analysis of Hitler (for example) revealing him to be a raving ego-maniac would
have been insightful in the early thirties when most people had rather more
benign opinions of the Nazi party. Released today, the same analysis would be
rather less insightful. Given that when people use the word 'insightful,' they
usually are speaking from a particular context (usually shared with the
listener), the word can be said to be used objectively.

~~~
unalone
Okay. So, objectively when regarding a large mass of people.

My only objection to that would be that again, an audience can vary wildly in
different conditions. My professor gave an "enlightening" lesson on Delicious
to my class, that the audience (college freshmen) on a whole found insight
from. But the same lesson to, say Hacker News, would be far less insightful.
You could get two different objective readings for the same material. Or am I
missing something in what you said?

~~~
astine
No, that's about it.

I just annoyed when people are too quick to insist that something is
'subjective' as a means of dismissing it's relavence or importance, so I tend
to be picky about it.

~~~
unalone
That's fair enough. I only did it in this case because the argument is so
specifically about objectivity.

------
jimbokun
Ugh. 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.

~~~
markessien
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.

~~~
jimbokun
"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."

I'm sure that an eloquent, thoughtful critique of Ender's Game worthy of
discussion can be written.

This is not it.

------
Eliezer
Can'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.

------
rcoder
My 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.

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
unalone
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.

------
isopropyl
He 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).

------
webwright
Linkbait formula: Take something that web geeks like (like Ender's Game).
Then, publicly kick it in the nuts on your blog. Watch the traffic roll in.

~~~
sfk
This is utterly unfair. There aren't any ads on that site and the author does
not market himself or his site at all.

~~~
webwright
I disagree.

Is money the only motivation? A ton of people blog for the attention, to feel
smart, SEO for future endeavors etc. Forums, blogs, and blog comments are full
of people tossing out trollish or evocative statements for all sorts of
motivations. This post exists for the same reason that any trollish forum post
exists.

~~~
sfk
We are both in the realm of speculation about the author's motives here. I
don't like this particular essay either, in fact I think it's horrible.

However, my troll detector is silent on this one. I agree with pg that the
author isn't deliberately dishonest.

------
elai
I havent read ender's game. But there is some art critic wishy washiness that
I just can't put a finger on when I read this and few of his other pages.

~~~
astine
The author explains it very well in an essay 'an unbalanced and negative
page':

 _And then it's easier to be negative. The language seems primed for
complaints. Anagram programs always turn up ten times as many insulting
phrases as compliments: there are simply more words with negative
connotations. This is probably because when people enjoy something, they want
to experience it rather than natter about it. But whatever the reason, the
result is that it takes a lot less effort to be snarky. Praise, unless you put
a lot of work into it, tends to get dull and a bit samey.

Praise also makes you vulnerable. Negativity is like a shield: you can keep
throwing barbs at things without ever exposing yourself to attack. But praise
is different. It's difficult to like something a lot without investing some of
yourself in it, and without it becoming part of you. To praise something in
writing is to reveal some of yourself, and face the possibility that there
isn't much to reveal. And to praise something in public is to risk the
ridicule of people with snarky websites._

In other words, he spends his time criticising people because he's afraid of
criticism himself.

------
jmatt
So I started reading this article and immediately suspected something was
wrong. It won Nebula and Hugo award and most scifi types at least enjoyed it.
In fact I knew a few people who started reading science fiction because of
Ender's Game. When I first read it (circa 1986) no one that I knew cared what
his personal/political beliefs were. The book stands alone and could not have
been too persuasive on its readers; I know others who read it in the same time
period and their beliefs are quite diverse.

So I could understand it not being this reviewer's type of book. But to wax on
like this takes a special type of person, someone who just loves to hate on
(popular) things. I decided to check out a few other reviews this guy has
written. This comes from the same guy who hated the lord of the ring movies...

<http://plover.net/~bonds/lotrfilms.html>

and the matrix...

<http://plover.net/~bonds/matrix.html>

So who cares what he has to say about Ender's Game. His review adds little
value here where there is, presumably, a majority who enjoy scifi and fantasy.
His opinion is obscure at best and predictable based on his previous reviews.

So there you go, I've reviewed him the same way he's reviewed ender's game...
Minimal thought about the material mishmashed with my opinion of the author.

------
alex_c
>It's a wonderfully guilt-free massacre, mass murder with a clear conscience

I take it the reviewer didn't read the sequels?

~~~
spoondan
He's reviewing Ender's Game; he has evaluated its message and merits on its
own. It'd be better to disagree with his opinions than to complain he doesn't
cover material he hasn't set out to review.

Anyway, why would you expect the reviewer to read the sequels if he so
dislikes Ender's Game?

~~~
alex_c
That's an absolutely valid point. The reason I went ahead and posted my
comment anyway was because it's the most obvious example of how the reviewer
and I interpreted the book differently. Granted, I read it years ago, and the
goal was entertainment rather than literary criticism, but I saw plenty of
guilt: it all simply landed on Ender's shoulders when he finds out what he had
done, and fit in with the guilt for his previous acts. I think it's possible
to read Ender's Game with either interpretation in mind (guilt vs. no guilt),
but my interpretation seems to be more supported by the sequels.

------
beta
Since when has masterbation been a considered a bad thing?

In all honesty, I speculate nearly all 'bad' and 'good' goals undertaken by
individuals are for at some level their own gratification, satisfaction,
medication, pleasure, whatever the semantic of choice.

There isn't anything wrong with that. From deliberately catching a glance of a
beautiful woman across the street to tirelessly working at finding a way to
end world hunger, it's done at some level for your own satisfaction. It's what
drives the world.

To those who feel so threatened by the idea of associating whatever endeavor
with pleasure as a motivation, calm down. It's part of what makes us human. It
certainly doesn't strip an accomplishment of it's value.

------
chaostheory
since 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.

~~~
icky
[SPOILERS and SHAKY HYPOTHESIS below]

I think that if you look at the claims in the essay through the lens of Card's
Mormonism, a very different picture emerges.

Ender's celibacy until marriage is [ostensibly] normal in Mormon society, and
the age at which he married then is just a number, which falls within the
realm of coincidence.

You'll note that Ender killed the Buggers without knowledge of what he was
doing, then became wracked with guilt.

This hints at _Enders Game_ as a defense not for Hitler, but for Brigham
Young, and his (disputed-whether-he-knew) role in the Mountain Meadows
massacre.

This would explain Card's unseemly rage at the author of the Ender-as-Hitler
essay: she had effectively Godwin'd a revered patriarch of Card's religion.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre>

~~~
chaostheory
given what happened to the essay's author at a convention, your explanation
makes the most sense. I just still find it strange that the sequel had Ender
going to a Brazilian planet...

~~~
unalone
Well, Card says in his intro to that book that part of it was his fascination
with the language and the culture. And I think that the Portugese was what
made Speaker such a fascinating read.

I don't think Card is trying to excuse Hitler. I really don't think so. Not
even subconsciously. And I thought upon reading that article that it was
interesting, but rather misguided. The OP response made a lot of sense,
considering Card is very likely a Mormon. But even then, I think it was
subconscious on his part.

------
nihilocrat
If 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.

~~~
stcredzero
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.)

~~~
tptacek
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.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
The rest of the books in the Enderverse flush them out nicely.

------
mattmaroon
I lost what respect I had for Orson Scott Card when he wrote this article
<http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html> back in October. I
won't bother running through all of the blatantly false statements in there,
but the most obvious would be:

"Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq
sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans
had that misapprehension - so you pounded us with the fact that there was no
such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied
to them and said that there was a connection.) "

When a simple Google search turns up this direct quote from Bush himself given
June 17, 2004:

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and
Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al
Qaeda."

I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their
ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias. Even though I
thought Ender's game was decent, Ender's shadow mediocre, and couldn't get
through the next, I still had some respect for the guy, which is now gone.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
_I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their
ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias_

Media bias is decried everywhere. Read any Howard Kurtz lately? Watch CNN's
"Reliable Sources?" It's called media commentary. It's all about identifying
and commenting on media bias, tactics, business models, etc. Work at the meta-
level.

Personally I don't have respect or lack of respect for Card. I read his books
and found them, well, mundane but better than the average sci-fi. His
political opinions don't come into the discussion -- unless we're judging the
man instead of his work. I believe the thread is about the work. If it were
along the lines of "Orson Scott Card: Moron or not?" it should be flagged.

Ideas are not people. Bad people can have good ideas, and vice-versa.

~~~
mattmaroon
The idea that the media is biased in general is decried only by conservatives.
I've yet to hear one person claim that there's a conservative bias.

Conservative TV and radio networks use it to play the ref. They get a segment
of the population to watch them that way. Orson Scott Card should be smart
enough to know better.

I wouldn't even mind if he pointed out factually accurate examples (though
that's still mistaking anecdotes for data) but his article is riddled with
blatant inaccuracies that can be disproven on YouTube in a few minutes.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm not going to continue the attack/defense of Card, because I think its in
poor taste. I will, however, correct your statement about media bias.

Google "Conservative Media Bias" -- lots of folks see conservative media bias.
We have a few liberal friends that fall into this category, just as we have a
few conservatives lambasting the liberal bias. Try visiting Media Matters for
America, an entire non-profit "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring,
analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Lots
of folks think the media has a conservative bias -- usually because most media
organizations are owned by large corporations with corporate interests.

Media bias (and the way news stories are put together) in my opinion is a fun
topic in which all political views can play. Things like selection of stories
to appear above the fold, the increasing use of commentators as anchors on
some networks, the way most reporters vote, whether or not you can truly
separate yourself from the story, or the competition between wire stories and
local reporters -- it's all goodness. The idea that somehow we shouldn't "play
ref" with media sources is rather odd. I usually multi-source any significant
news. And people of like opinion would obviously "play ref" in the same way,
right? Sounds like a natural thing for left/right entertainment people to talk
about.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't know why you think pointing our that Card is harming America is in bad
taste. A bit off-topic perhaps. The guy is a decent writer and persuasive, but
repeatedly writes articles full of blatant fallacies to convince people of
harmful things. Homophobia, liberal media bias, global warming, etc. He's like
a conservative Michael Moore.

------
bena
This is the second thing I've read from this site that's all "Blah blah blah.
I'm so clever. Blah blah blah." Except it takes him a lot longer than three
sentences to convey this. Am I the only one who finds this guy to be a pompous
faux-intellectual who confuses length with depth.

------
brandnewlow
His basic argument holds truth though, there are pornographic elements in most
created works, i.e. elements created strictly to gratify or comfort the reader
in some specific way. This is why we instinctually pigeonhole and look down
upon genre fiction writers, because their primary task is to comfort the
reader, not to challenge or engage in a dialogue with him.

Let's break down the different genre's and see what belief systems they seek
to gratify. Feel free to add your own:

1\. Detective Novels - Sherlock Holmes is fun to read because his adventures
take place in an environment in which the details of a man's appearance,
speech etc. can predict with 100% accuracy his psychology and plans.

2\. Horror novels - Many horror novels play on our desire to believe that we
can overcome "the other" through some human act. In Dracula, for instance, the
vampire is defeated by meticulous planning, organizing, and above all else,
the sharing of information. Modernity vanquishes the old world scourge. For
people who get off on organization, that novel tweaks your pleasure sensors
left and right.

3\. Science Fiction - Depends a bit on the sub-genre. Hard science fiction
offers scenarios in which numbers and logic reign supreme. Softer science
fiction, a la Star Wars, is often really just fantasy in another cloak...

4\. Fantasy - Fantasy gratifies our desire to believe that those passing,
semi-eccentric thoughts we all harbor from time to time, are really the laws
that govern the world. Wish-fulfillment narratives are really just the
exploration of ideas that pop into everyone's head from time to time.

To put it in hacker terms, works of genre fiction create systems where the
requirements never change. Much like video games, the rules are set in place
early on and strictly adhered to. This is immensely comforting. On a personal
note: it's also fairly disturbing. For about 20 years now, my mother has more
or less read a book a day or so, from cover to cover. She has a full-time job
(teacher) and was always around to do mom stuff when I was a kid, but she
spends her nights up reading. One could argue that this is awesome, but it's
not. Because she's reading genre fiction.

She gets the latest romance novels every Wednesday and has them finished by
Sunday. That leaves her two days to work through other genres. A few years
back, her Monday-Tuesday books were gay Vampire romance novels. Before that it
was detective novels. Every time I visit, it's some new sub-genre I've never
heard of.

We're all entitled to our quirks and interests, but I would argue that what
she is doing is self-medicative and produces no other value. She never has
anything to SAY about these books. They prompt no insights into life. She
never wants to talk about them with us when we try to engage.

And I think that's what this article is getting at, tracing out this
masturbatory impulse in an oft-praised work. We need to be aware of this stuff
so we can appreciate and steer clear of it when we don't want it.

Now, I would argue that the best genre fiction can and often does create
social good beyond medicating sad, frustrated people. The Harry Potter books
created community and sparked copycats. That's more or less good. The Star
Wars films stoked a lot of imaginative response and prompted a lot of people
to make interesting films. That's good too. The trouble is the books that are
meant to be held in.

~~~
DocSavage
"Genre fiction writers... primary task is to comfort the reader, not to
challenge or engage in dialogue with him"

By "comfort" if you mean "entertain," then yes, _all_ (not just genre) fiction
writers should tell a good story if you want a wide audience.

The attempt to boil down entire genres to a single fetish (belief system)
gratification is extremely dismissive. Sure, you can find examples of
formulaic, bad prose in genres, just as you can find excellent writing. A
number of authors try to get their work classified away from science-fiction
or another genre just because of this stigma.

The linked article claims Ender's game is "porn" but his definition of porn is
not like mine. Porn has little narrative structure. There's almost no story.
There's no 3D characterization or character development. There's no conflict.

If the definition of porn becomes any work with elements that gratify a
reader's particular needs, then which successful works aren't porn? The most
erudite, soul-searching work gratifies a philosophical fetish.

And if your definition of value is tied to creating insight or facilitating
discussion, then that's a clear difference between a work like Ender's Game
and the serial romance books your mom reads.

~~~
brandnewlow
I don't mean to dismiss. I love genre fiction myself. All the works listed
above in my post are things i've enjoyed and mulled over. Eventually though, I
started getting curious about 'why' I enjoyed them so much. When I read
Dracula, objectively a poorly-written novel by someone who's other works were
hardly well-considered, why did I like it so much? What was it about this
novel that made me enjoy it so much while others in my literature class
thought it was terrible?

I agree that calling Ender's Game "porn" doesn't work, and it doesn't work
because he's really arguing that it has pornographic elements in it, not that
the entire work qualifies as "porn." I disagree with his central thesis but
see some truth and value in the argument he's making. Ender's Game does and
has provoked a lot of great discussion, in the original poster's POV though,
those elements were drowned out by the more legalistic, fetishistic elements.

And I do draw a distinction between being provoked to thought and exploration
vs. being provoked to feel warm and numb inside. We should dismiss neither,
but recognize them for what they are. Sometimes you want and need to watch
Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sometimes you reach for Trois Coleurs: Blue.
Sometimes you build a new killer flash game to run on Kongregate. Sometimes
you build a robotic arm. Both serve solid, tangible purposes, but I think its
important to recognize what those are and how they're doing it.

Last point: Jurassic Park is a book I loved dearly as a kid and I'd place it
in a similar boat, some elements that provoke discussion, some elements that
are there to get the reader off. Both have a place.

------
GavinB
Let this serve as a reminder to us all not to be haters. Because every time
you take a long, refreshing draught of haterade, you become a little more like
this guy.

Yes, even when you're right.

------
TrevorJ
I read this review as somewhat satirical, but I could be mistaken.

------
ciscoriordan
The only good thing about this review is that it reminds me that I don't
remember the book very well, and should read it again.

Check out this guy's other reviews -- he whines about everything. Just another
Internet troll.

------
sharkfish
I 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?

~~~
pavel_lishin
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.

~~~
unalone
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.

~~~
johnyzee
About the faded in time thing, I always felt Ender's Game was surprisingly
precise in predicting the rise of online discussion communities, and how their
anonymous celebrities can influence a lot of people, while just being a bunch
of kids in their bedrooms. The book's from 1985 after all.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. That part's very impressive. Although, frankly, I'd take Fake Steve Jobs
over Locke and Demosthenes any day.

I hadn't thought of that before. I'll have to read over that chapter again and
check that out.

