So I finally read Ender’s Game . Not really sure what the big deal is.
I found the book okay and easy to read, but not very interesting. There really wasn’t much science in the fiction and I thought the whole thing was kind of silly and filled with juvenile revenge fantasies. I tried to start the Speaker of the Dead but stopped pretty quickly after reading that in 3000 years there will still be people who believe in the zombie Jesus fable not to mention that Portuguese will survive pretty much intact.
Also, I discovered separately that Orson Scott Card is batshit insane and I am very glad I borrowed the book from the library instead of buying it.
tl;dr Didn’t think Ender’s Game was very good and don’t see what the hubbub is all about.
I’ve got enough comment karma that I can risk some downvotes. The reason for the “hubbub” is that most people read it at a young age (say 10 to 12). From a young boy’s perspective, it is a book that can be identified with on a near mystical level. It creates an “aha” moment that someone actually gets the way they feel. But for someone reading it for the first time as an adult, it is really not a big deal.
That is the conclusion I have come to now as well. I am surprised that it won the awards it did though, presumably with adults voting in favor. Though if I had read it as a 10 year old, I imagine I would have identified greatly with the book, and not noticed most/all of the odd morality, as well as the thinly veiled pedo bear fantasy scenes.
The reason I finally read it now is that I came across a greatest SF novels list and Ender’s Game came in at #1. I suppose there are many adults who still remember it very fondly from when they read it as children, but it still is something that I don’t get.
It is one of the few books to win both the Hugo award and the Nebula award. (The two most prestigious science fiction book awards.) Yes, those were voted by adults; many of those votes would have come from the prominent science fiction writers of the day. (The Nebula, for instance, is voted on only by professional sf/fantasy writers.)
The reason to this has nothing to do with people having read it as children and being fond of it. I’m sorry. It is easy to dismiss a book you didn’t care for for reasons such as the ones you speak of above, but I fear you stray into making an error of assumption—the assumption your taste will be like the taste of others.
There is nothing wrong with not liking Ender’s Game . Acclaim like this is really just a stamp saying “There’s a better chance that you’ll like this than something else, but no promises.” There are people who dislike Hamlet. There are people—intelligent people with good educations—who dislike the books you think are the greatest. This does not make you a fool, nor does it make them a fool. A great many things play into taste.
For what it’s worth, the book is generally acclaimed for a couple of reasons. First, for giving an interesting look at what society might do to children by forcing maturity upon them too early, and by turning them into warriors. Second, because of a well played twist ending. Third, because of strength of narrative pacing.
Also, with relativistic travel in play, having linguistic enclaves thousands of years in the future isn’t at all unreasonable, particularly with the stabilizing force modern communication has exerted on language shifts. Beyond that, these books are social science fiction—they aren’t really trying to predict the future, no more than 1984 was trying to predict the future.
They are about exploring the human condition when different (and often extreme) pressures are placed upon them. Looking at how religion would deal with space travel and alien species is a way of writing about who we are.
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