posted
I can't pretend I've gone back through all of the novels, or read all of the short fiction in the Enderverse to start this thread.
What interests me is the idea of Bean and Ender being reunited on Lusitania. At the end of Shadow of the Giant, it seemed to me like a slam-dunk that Bean would eventually end up on Lusitania where another version of the Recolada virus would be able to fix his genetic trouble. The brain working on it was troublesome though. I'd always had trouble with the math of how Ender lived so long even with relativistic effects of space travel until OSC subtlety slipped the stasis option into Ender in Exile (I was thrilled because it seems like OSC's mind is moving in the same direction.)
I can see it already. Jane introduces herself to Bean sometime in the indeterminate past. Maybe it's Jane that starts Bean doing stints in stasis to keep prolonging his life while she monitors all planets for promising genetic therapies to keep him alive, eventually rerouting him to Lusitania for the recolada treatment only to realize he is already too big to survive even with the treatment (It would work fine on his kids at this point though). This of course simply means he has to do a trip into philotic out-space, but how does he come back? As Bean in the 6 year old body, Bean the man who married Petra, or even as the old man he might feel like? It occurred to me too that Bean might feel such a kinship with Jane that he'd end up accidentally projecting himself onto the philotic net along with Jane, but I couldn't figure out if they could maintain separate consciousness, or if they'd become two personalities of ostensibly the same entity (possible religious connotation?).
If you add in the surprise factor to Ender that Jane was aware of Bean the whole time (if you're worried it takes away from Ender's or Miro's relationship with Jane, remember with Bean traveling at relativistic speeds Jane can only give so much of herself to him.) Also how cool would it be if the reunion of Bean and Ender revolved around the discovery of a fifth sentient species (third technologically advanced) with which war seems inevitable. Except that the two human minds most responsible for the first Xenocide prevent any war at all. Also fun possibility of Bean's kids hitting it off with Peter and Valentine of Ender's creation, and a genetic crossing of the two.
Anyway, in my mind this is how it happens, and I never would have bothered writing about it before, but OSC kept writing Ender books. With each new one he wrote things I wanted to see. Even ways that I'd imagined, but in fantastic details I couldn't have anticipated. There are so many authors for whom I'd imagine continuing a series to be a mistake, and maybe COTM was, but OSC keeps me enthralled. Going to the bookstore to find the short stories that sneaked by me now.
So anyway, that's it...anybody want to play with me on these ideas? Agree, disagree, add in other details, call me names...
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