The War of the Worlds and Ender’s Game – October CC Book Club Selection

[Mary13]

<p>

@VAMom2015

My first thought on reading WOTW was “how did Orson Welles manage to start such a panic with this book?”

</p>

<p>From a 2005 National Geographic article:</p>

<p>

The hoax worked, historians say, because the broadcast authentically simulated how radio worked in an emergency.</p>

<p>“Audiences heard their regularly scheduled broadcast interrupted by breaking news,” said Michele Hilmes, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison and author of Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952.</p>

<p>Stations then cut to a live reporter on the scene of the invasion in New Jersey. “By the end of the first half of the program, the radio studios themselves were under attack,” Hilmes said.

</p>

<p>There’s more…it’s interesting: [“War</a> of the Worlds”: Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic](<a href=“National Geographic”>National Geographic)</p>

[gouf78]

<p>VA Mom–Peter is a sociopath and a very bright one. Val was being used by Peter and knew it. She wasn’t sure how to combat it however. Peter knew he needed a more mellow “on-line” personality to succeed and used Val. He would have both voices of dissent in the media and would be able to make things go his way no matter what situation. He used Val’s love for family and writing ability to his advantage. Did it work exactly as planned? Not sure. Maybe he would be able to achieve global domination without the violence which was his trademark. But once he had domination it wouldn’t matter–he could be a bully again. We don’t know the outcome of his tactics. We do know that Val black mailed him into being good by taking photos and keeping records of his actions.</p>

<p>The starships were sent out in waves YEARS apart–long range military planning at its finest. It takes years to arrive to the final destination. Galaxies apart. That’s why the starships closest to the enemy were the least prepared for them. They were old ships. The people manning them however were a product of time relativity–much younger than they would have been on earth. The new technology allowed instant communication which was a huge part of the final battle.<br>
Ender didn’t lose friends because the author chose that option. Ender’s friends were better trained probably than those who ultimately lost their lives. And honestly, Ender didn’t have all that many friends.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>I love seeing all the new posters!! Welcome everyone!</p>

<p>

@VAMom2015

I enjoyed Ender’s Game but really didn’t understand Peter. He’s made out to be a monster, megalomaniac, and unredeemable when he is dealing with Ender (and I believed that he could and would kill him given the chance). It seems even after the war that Val keeps Ender away from Peter so Peter doesn’t destroy Ender. So how does Peter not destroy Earth with these same flaws? I was expecting that. Maybe because he used Val to be the more extreme one in the blogging and he took on the more reasonable role that he actually learned and changed? I find this somewhat hard to believe because of how Val made sure Peter could never get to Ender.

Ender and Peter haunt each other. Peter doesn’t seem able to get past the fact that Ender is “The One”. Peter relives that failure every time he sees Ender and Ender spends his life in fear of becoming evil like Peter. It’s a odd symbiotic relationship that helps develop the personality of both boys. Valentine is also part of the relationship. All three would all be different people without each other. I read a brief discussion of Ender’s Game where someone suggested Peter, Ender, and Valentine represented Freud’s id, ego, and superego. It doesn’t match up perfectly, but it is interesting to ponder.</p>

<p>I’m confessing to not yet finishing my reread of Enders’s Game, but I’m getting there!</p>

[ignatius]

<p>I got a different impression regarding the actual battles. Ender directs his squadron leaders (friends among them); he, and he alone, can see one and all. Each of the squadron leaders sees only his particular fighters, so rely on and trust in Ender for direction. However, none of the children actually go into battle. Like Ender, they direct their actual fighters. When Petra gets into trouble in battle, she’s not actually in danger herself but rather loses her fighters. Ender can relay info to other squadron leaders to help her out and they can do so at the drop of a hat because they too are capable of seeing each of their fighters. At no time do the kids learn to man ships. They focus on tactics and simulations and trust in Ender. So, command - from Ender to squadron leaders to manned spaceships - from a distance.</p>

<p>Like in the movies: “No children were harmed in the fighting of the battle.” I guess that might not hold true for mental harm.</p>

<p>Ender and his squadron leaders were all in the same location. Ender was isolated till after the battle.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@musicprnt

“Oh there you are - I knew you’d be here” …c’mon, these are British people, of course they don’t make a big scene, public displays of affection and such not allowed.

</p>

<p>“The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain common sense.”</p>

<p>- George MacDonald Fraser, Officer of the Order of the British Empire</p>

<p>

@BUandBC82

Peter relives that failure every time he sees Ender and Ender spends his life in fear of becoming evil like Peter. It’s a odd symbiotic relationship that helps develop the personality of both boys.

</p>

<p>This made me ponder what constitutes evil and how evil inserts itself into the lives of the children. Granted, Ender isn’t “evil” in the same sense that Peter is–he doesn’t want to do harm (at least I don’t think so)–but he does brutally murder two children, and he does this at the ages of six and nine. </p>

<p>Card doesn’t get too graphic in his writing—as mathmom pointed out, he leaves much to the imagination. But if you honestly imagine the violent death of a small child, and picture that death coming at the hands of another small child…there’s evil there. I think the line, “Ender Wiggin isn’t a killer, he just wins–thoroughly” is a cop-out. He’s a killer. But is a child of age 6 (or 9 or 10) really culpable? What is the source of the evil that leads one child to murder another? Ender kills Stilson before he is even a soldier-in-training, so the blame can’t be placed entirely on Battle School standards.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>You are right Mary. Ender does evil things. Is it not “as evil” because it is defensive instead of offensive? I wonder how they will portray this in the movie. The young age of Ender bothers me.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>Now that I have become more aware of Orson Scott Card’s political point of view, I find I am looking for traces of it as I reread Ender’s Game. I found a Salon article from last March that touched upon this issue. It’s interesting. I’m not trying to start a political discussion (I know it’s not allowed ), and I realize Salon leans left, I was just curious to see if Card’s politics influences his writing. Here is the link to the article I found - [What</a> happened to Orson Scott Card? - Salon.com](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/end_game_for_orson_scott_card_partner/]What”>http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/end_game_for_orson_scott_card_partner/) . I also copied the part of the article that talks about Card’s political point of view in the book.

@Steven Lloyd Wilson

And yet there are signs there even in Ender’s Game. I always found Peter to be the most fascinating character, the one that I related to so much more directly than Ender in my darkest moments. His monologue about the nihilism of the modern world still sticks with me, the manifesto of the brilliant and ambitious. I understand people, he intones, I understand how to hurt them, how to make them do what I want. And for all the ability to be successful, to maneuver his way inevitably into the upper echelons of corporations and such, it means nothing to him next to power, to the real power of state. There’s something almost refreshing about Peter, little genius sociopath who wants to rule the world. He’s what happens if John Galt decides to conquer the world instead of withdrawing from it.</p>

<p>And in retrospect, it’s Peter who really announces what Card thinks about the way the world works. Peter’s the character who subverts the government, who takes over the world behind the scenes, with pseudonyms and back door deals to gather power like a pile of poker chips, before ruling the world for the rest of his life as a supposedly benevolent dictator. The contempt for democracy, the loathing for the very idea that the people should make their own decisions about their futures, is staggering in Ender’s Game once noticed.</p>

<p>Democracy is empathy. It is being able to see the rest of society as people just like you are, whether they agree with you or not. It is about not ruling at the barrel of a gun, but explaining to others the way you feel, bringing them around by letting them inside. By getting them to feel what you feel, which is the very definition of empathy. There are those who think that the failure of the world to agree with them, and their embrace of violence as a solution, somehow makes them the strong ones and the world the weak ones. But violence is such an easy solution, the emotional coward’s way out of actually dealing with the existence of those who disagree as legitimate equals.</p>

<p>I know it’s an overused cliché to make a point like this, but I think that Ender would hardly recognize who Card is today. Yet I think Peter would. I think Peter would recognize him as one of the sad, angry, and scared men who make it possible for the Peters of history to ascend their thrones.

</p>

[Mary13]

<p>Thanks, BUand BC82. Very interesting. I’m going to try to skirt the political land mine and focus for a minute on this quote from the above article:</p>

<p>

There are some in the comics world who are really angry about the events, arguing that this is an instance of judging the artist instead of his art. Of not letting a gifted storyteller tell a story because of people disliking his politics. If the story he wrote for Superman has nothing to do with gays, then what does it matter, the argument goes. The problem is that there is no separation of the artist from the art.

</p>

<p>I understand what Stephen Lloyd Wilson is saying, but I disagree. I think we can separate the artist from the art. I think we must. </p>

<p>T.S. Eliot was an anti-Semite, Kingsley Amis was a homophobe, Somerset Maugham was a misogynist…the list goes on and on. And what about our companion author, H.G. Wells? In his book The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, John Carey wrote this about H.G. Wells: “H. G. Wells proposed measures to restrict parenthood as a means to curb the ‘black and brown races’ whom he considered inferior to whites.” [H</a>. G. WELLS AND HIS RACIST EUGENICS: ?THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE MASSES? BOOK BY JOHN CAREY | Cambridge Forecast Group Blog](<a href=“http://cambridgeforecast.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2008/09/25/h-g-wells-and-racism-the-intellectuals-and-the-masses-book-by-john-carey/]H”>H. G. WELLS AND HIS RACIST EUGENICS: “THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE MASSES” BOOK BY JOHN CAREY | Cambridge Forecast Group Blog)</p>

<p>Those authors and their opinions are products of the times they lived in, and Orson Scott Card is no different. His views will seem prehistoric to the next generation, but his works will be read because they have value, even if his opinions don’t. </p>

<p>Here’s a piece to counter the harshness of the Salon article: <a href=“http://popcultureblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/to-see-or-not-to-see-enders-game-because-of-orson-scott-card-that-is-the-question.html/?nclick_check=1[/url]”>http://popcultureblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/to-see-or-not-to-see-enders-game-because-of-orson-scott-card-that-is-the-question.html/?nclick_check=1&lt;/a&gt; (I posted this on our last thread when we were selecting our October book, so some of you may have already read it.) Author Nancy Churnin argues that we must separate “the greatness of these artists from their terrible flaws.” Of Orson Scott Card, she writes:</p>

<p>

I also confess, perhaps naively, to having hopes that while the opinions of Shakespeare, Dickens and Wagner are set in stone with their deaths, Card, who is 61, may evolve over time as so many have changed before our eyes.</p>

<p>Card has known his own personal tragedy. He lost one of his five children, Charles, who had cerebral palsy, soon after his 17th birthday. He lost a little girl the day she was born. He suffered a stroke in 2011.</p>

<p>As a reader, I see the seeds for empathy in his books. He just needs to catch up personally to the ideas he expresses so eloquently in his fiction. I believe in believing in people. And I believe when you believe in someone’s potential for goodness and change, then they may start believing in it, too. So, yes, I’m going to see Ender’s Game. I hope I will be doing the right thing. I hope I won’t be judged too harshly by those who disagree.

</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>

@Mary

Those authors and their opinions are products of the times they lived in, and Orson Scott Card is no different. His views will seem prehistoric to the next generation, but his works will be read because they have value, even if his opinions don’t.

I agree, but it is more unsettling when it’s a current author. It’s easier to spend your dollars on someone who is long gone from the world, than it is to spend them on someone current, who might use them to influence something you don’t support. I’m here discussing Ender’s Game, and I’m planning to see the movie, but I’m still a uncomfortable supporting him. Card has become more of a local issue here in NC. He has been appointed to the board of the UNC-TV PBS station. We’ll see how that plays out.</p>

<p>It really wasn’t my intent to discuss politics. I just wondered if anyone saw his political point of view in his writing. I found myself looking for it this time, where I was oblivious to it last time I read Ender’s Game.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@BUandBC82

It’s easier to spend your dollars on someone who is long gone from the world, than it is to spend them on someone current, who might use them to influence something you don’t support.

</p>

<p>Very good point. To a lesser degree, previous generations must have gone through a similar struggle when choosing whether or not to patronize artists with controversial views. But I imagine it’s even more of an issue now than it was 100 or 200 years ago, because today, if an artist’s work has gained a great popular following, that fame is usually accompanied by a boatload of money.</p>

<p>I’m glad you brought up the topic. It may be a little dicey, but it isn’t a very complete discussion if we delve into a book without talking about the author.</p>

<p>Shifting gears, I was thinking about this question:</p>

<p>

7. Wells was considered a horrifically realistic author in his day – that is, at least one reviewer of the book was horrified by what the Martians were doing because it all seemed so realistic. In addition, Wells’ friend Joseph Conrad called Wells the “Realist of the Fantastic”. Do you agree that this book is realistic? If so, how does Wells make it seem realistic?

</p>

<p>I think Wells’ story is more realistic than Ender’s Game, simply by virtue of the fact that Wells set The War of the Worlds in the present rather than the future. Readers at the time could imagine the setting perfectly. I think Wells tried to emphasize this by identifying so many towns, and having his narrator describe his route in such detail. It probably had the same effect on readers in 1898 as, let’s say, movies like “Independence Day” have on us today. There is something thrilling and terrifying about seeing familiar landmarks get blown to smithereens.</p>

[ignatius]

<p>

@mathmom

I’m not much of a hand at literary criticism, but I have thought a bit about who reads sci fi and what it’s appeal is. The first sci fi I remember reading were short story collections that belonged to my grandfather. Most of them were sort of “What ifs”. Very short with some little twist. A classic of this genre is Asimov’s story “Nightfall”, about a planet with six suns, that hardly ever experiences darkness. In the story at least characters are not important. I enjoy these stories, but at novel length I am interested in characters. In fact, I have a really hard time reading anything if I don’t like at least some of the characters.

</p>

<p>As I mentioned in an earlier post, Orson Scott Card wrote the introduction in my edition of *The War of the Worlds. * In it, he contributes his thoughts regarding the appeal of science fiction and to those whom it does appeal.</p>

<p>

Why, though, is science fiction read so intensely by young people? Though there are many people who continue to read science fiction throughout their lives, a very large proportion of the genre’s readers come to it young, read it intensely - sometimes exclusively - throughout junior high, high school, and college - and then never read it again. Why was it so important to them during their adolescence and early adulthood, only to be ignored later?</p>

<p>Of course, one could point out […] that most adults don’t read anywhere near the quantity of literature they consume in their youth. Nor do they read with the same intensity.</p>

<p>[…]</p>

<p>Science fiction offers youthful readers as many roles and as many worlds as they could hope for. When the writer’s vision is bleak, the stories are bleaker than real life: The sun never shines, everyone is a power-hungry hypocrite, and only the hero maintains a spark of nobility in the midst of the cynicism. When the writer’s vision is optimistic, the hero is at the cutting edge of a noble enterprise, willing to sacrifice himself to achieve great ends.

</p>

<p>This makes me think of the Harry Potter series with Harry as Ender. The adult wizard world counts on Harry to save it - or perhaps Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games who fights for her district. War of the Worlds has glimpses of children - imperiled children caught up by parents. We mentioned about the ethics of Ender being used by adults but it seems the other books I mention do the same. I doubt it would ever occurred to Wells’ to have a child protagonist. In many ways his work reflects the time and culture. Perhaps the reason some find WotW slow comes from the fact that the narrator never gains that spark of nobility that Card mentions. The narrator simply narrates - it makes his story one we could all experience and yet … Martians … in London! </p>

<p>OSC ends the introduction with

And this branch of literature, with all that it offers, began with the writer whose book you now hold in your hands.

</p>

<p>I like science fiction, so good for Wells. :)</p>

<p>(And yes I digressed again with the mention of other literature.)</p>

[Mary13]

<p>^ Who could help but think of The Hunger Games? And Divergent by Veronica Roth? And Unwind by Neal Shusterman? Each of these sci-fi series owes a debt of gratitude to Ender’s Game.</p>

<p>Can anyone think of sci-fi novels that pre-dated Ender’s Game and had children as the imperiled protagonists?</p>

[NJTheatreMOM]

<p>War of the Worlds is an adult book, even though it is science fiction. It has had amazing longevity. One wonders whether Ender’s Game will have the same kind of enduring popularity.</p>

<p>I read Ender’s Game a few years ago, when my youngest was still in high school. He had urged me to read it, and I did so in order to share something that was important to him and his brother. I did the same with Harry Potter and a few other things, like Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. </p>

<p>I liked all of the above books/series, but in the case of the youth fantasy books, I have never felt the slightest urge to re-read any of them. I thought I would re-read Ender for this discussion, but then I discovered that I unfortunately had a mental block about it!</p>

[NJTheatreMOM]

<p>Ender’s Game was originally published at almost exactly the same time that video games in which kids could act as fantasy action heroes first became widespread.</p>

<p>Maybe they were part of the same zeitgeist… :)</p>

<p>In any event, I think video games probably influenced things like The Hunger Games as much as Ender did.</p>

[ignatius]

<p>^^^ But OSC wrote Ender’s Game for adults. It happens to have a young protagonist and so has been adopted by the young adult audience - but it was not written with the YA audience in mind. The other books you and Mary mention were written for YA and then adopted by an adult audience also.</p>

<p>Quiz time:</p>

<p>[SparkNotes:</a> Ender’s Game: Quiz](<a href=“http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/endersgame/quiz.html]SparkNotes:”>Ender's Game: Full Book Quiz: Quick Quiz | SparkNotes)</p>

[mathmom]

<p>

Can anyone think of sci-fi novels that pre-dated Ender’s Game and had children as the imperiled protagonists?

Not sci fi, but it’s a really common trope in fantasy. Starting with probably George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872), Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising books (1965-1977).</p>

[ignatius]

<p>I started thinking about Young Adult literature and came across this:</p>

<p>

Definition of a Young Adult Literature: Literature written for and marketed to young adults. Young adult literature is usually given the birth date of 1968 with the advent of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. Other forms of l iterature prior to this date may have had young adult protagonists (such as Huck Finn), but it was usually intended for an adult audience. Characteristics of a young adult novel usually include several of the following:</p>

<p>(1) a teenage (or young adult) protagonist</p>

<p>(2) first-person perspective</p>

<p>(3) adult characters in the background</p>

<p>(4) a limited number of characters</p>

<p>(5) a compressed time span and familiar setting</p>

<p>(6) current slang</p>

<p>(7) detailed descriptions of appearance and dress</p>

<p>(8) positive resolution</p>

<p>(9) few, if any, subplots</p>

<p>(10) an approximate length of 125 to 250 pages</p>

<p>What Is Not Young Adult (YA) Literature:</p>

<p>“While young adults . . . will read ‘classics’ with teen protagonists–such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn . . . or Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or even William Golding’s Lord of the Flies–such novels are not strictly considered YA literature. Similarly, contemporary novels popular with adults and young people, such as those written by Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King, are also not in the category of YA literature.” (Christenbury, Leila. Making t he Journey: Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1994.)</p>

<p>The “classics” mentioned above do not fit into the young adult literature category because they were intended for adult audiences. The popular fiction of Steele, Clancy, and King usually have adult characters. Remember the two-part definition for young adult literature: written for and marketed to young adults.

</p>

<p>Ender’s Game was not written for nor marketed to young adults (at least, not at first publication).</p>

<p>[English</a> 394: Young Adult Literature](<a href=“http://www.public.iastate.edu/~dniday/394syllabuss99.html]English”>http://www.public.iastate.edu/~dniday/394syllabuss99.html)</p>

<p>and from Wikipedia</p>

<p>[Young-adult</a> fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young-adult_fiction]Young-adult”>Young adult fiction - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Am I still digressing? (Rolling eyes at myself)</p>

[mathmom]

<p>^LOL, I’ve never found the definition of YA literature very meaningful. IMO it’s just a marketing ploy.</p>

<p>So, I’ll make a stab at the official questions…</p>

<p>

1. The War of the Worlds influenced several books and movies, like Independence Day. Some of these have heroic endings, where the people beat back the aliens. Others (like Thomas Disch’s novel The Genocides) end rather badly for humans. Depending on how you look at it, The War of the Worlds might have an optimistic ending (yay, we survived) or a pessimistic ending (but for how long?). Why do you think the book’s ending is so ambiguous? How does the open-ended ending affect your reading process?

I think both books have ambiguous open ended endings. It’s what I like about them - life isn’t really a simple game of good guys and bad guys and the good guys win. WotW the humans have won the first battle, but will they win the war ultimately? Who knows. EG doesn’t end with the big twist, and yay we beat back the buggers. It keeps going. The world falls apart without a common enemy and then pulls it back together, but only by dint of being led by a sociopath. Is that really going to work out? Will Peter manage to stay sane without Valentine’s influence? I think the most important piece of the book is when Ender is on the raft with Valentine and says, “It took me a long time to realize I did [hate myself], but believe me I did. Do. And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” Maybe in someway, when Peter wins power, he also learns to love those he’s beaten? Ha! Anyway, I like that the book ends with no real certainty that Earth will stay united, or what real future Ender will find for himself.</p>

<p>Well (spoiler alert!) he does seem to become a good person in the sequels.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>

Can anyone think of sci-fi novels that pre-dated Ender’s Game and had children as the imperiled protagonists?

Well, I mentioned Heinlein’s “juveniles” upthread. They usually involved teen protagonists, but they surely were imperiled. I still have distinct memories of “Tunnel in the Sky,” “Citizen of the Galaxy,” and “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.” Some of these had fairly mature themes, considering they were written in the 1950’s.</p>

[ignatius]

<p>It looks like the Heinlein “juveniles” fit the “sci-fi novels that pre-dated Ender’s Game and had children as the imperiled protagonists” descriptor perfectly.</p>

<p>Why does The Outsiders get credit then as the advent of YA literature when it seems the “juveniles” fit well? Is it because of the science fiction tag on the “juveniles?” </p>

<p>[The</a> Sci-Fi Stigma? | PWxyz](<a href=“http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2010/08/16/the-sci-fi-stigma/]The”>http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2010/08/16/the-sci-fi-stigma/)</p>

<p>And I agree that both books had ambiguous endings.</p>