I'm new to the forum, but I just read Ender's Game and have a question that struck me as I read the book. I apologize if it has been asked and answered before on the forum.
It seemed to me that it didn't make sense for the Bugs to attempt a second invasion if they truly only attacked the first time because they didn't understand that humans were intelligent. How could a species not know that another species that met it in space was intelligent?
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
Because they attacked us they knew that we would try to attack them back because we wouldn't understand that they didn't really mean us harm anymore.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
How much do you want to know? This question is eventually answered (more or less) in the subsequent books of the series.
I disagree with Julie's answer (which isn't to say she's wrong), but I don't want to explain my opinion, unless you don't care getting spoiled a bit on the later books.
-Bok
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
Mine was a very oversimplified and underexplained response that I wrote on less than four hours of sleep. I know that I had a rationale for that, but I'm still a bit sleep deprived and I don't remember where I was going with that. Sorry.
Posted by Plemet (Member # 4638) on :
I believe that Ender's Game does well to anwser your question without the help of later books in the series. The buggers first attacked human outposts killing dozens in order to learn about humans.Although humans took this as a great crime the bugger drones were not sentient like their queens. The buggers assumed that the humans they had discovered were mindless drones. Buggers continued to invade human territory and were finally defeated by Mazer Rackham. But you know all that. Whats important is that the Buggers assumed that a few humans that they had discovered were not intelligent because they were ruled by a queen. It was never assumed that humans as a race were unintelligent. Even more importantly is that a second invasion was never was never attempted by the buggers. It was Ender who led the second invasion and it was "against the buggers."
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
Ender led the Third Invasion.
The First Invasion was a bugger "scouting party" if you will. The Second Invasion was a colony expedition, which was why it had a Queen with it. I'm sorry, I don't remember why they came back to establish a colony after the First Invasion proved Earth was inhabited. I know there was a reason, I just don't remember it.
Posted by Grandma Edie (Member # 5771) on :
You will find the answer to this question at the end of Ender's Game (I don't have the book handy and am quoting from memory.) When Ender finds the surviving pupa of the hive queen and her brood, the telepathic message says, "We though we were alone in the galaxy; we never imagined that intelligence could exist in creatures that cannot dream each other's dreams." [Card puts in better, but that is the idea.]
So, the hive queens equated intelligence or personhood (as distinct from animals) with telepathy. They probably observed our great cities, etc. but they, with their mind-set, they saw them as we see birds' nests' or bee hives: That is, they saw them as an interesting demonstration of what instinct can do.
This is not surprising, since humans have shown that they have difficulties seeing other human races or human languages as being of the same species. Especially with language. If someone cannot talk to you, there is a tendency to disregard him. When Card wrote Pastwatch one of the first things that the Interveners do is to be sure that there is a native who can speak spanish there to meet him. I don't think Card underestimates the importance of communication in recognizing the rights of another.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Julie, it was nothing personal, I just wanted to say I had my own opinion. It sounded short, mainly because I didn't want to spoil the later books.
And it seems I was wrong on that anyway. I agree largely with Grandma.
First Invasion: Bugger exploratory mission that met resistance from the local fauna.
Second Invasion: Buggers have Eros as a command point and then try to colonize Earth. They are defeated, and realize that humans are sentient in a different way than Buggers.
Third Invasion: Buggers will not invade a third time, but know humans will respond... They try to affect Ender to show mercy on them.
Or so goes my take.
-Bok
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
Very well put. Edit: This was in reply to Grandma Edie.
[ January 08, 2004, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: Julie ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I was actually trying to remember this the other day, why Ender should have any pity for the... uh... Formics. Thanks for the reminder, as I don't think my husband could take me plunging back into the Ender series right now. No one can take just 5.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
(Spoilers?) Though the question then arises of how many other species that we would consider sentient may have been wiped out by the buggers in the meantime. Kind of like what happened to the descolada. How unique was Ender's ability to be linked to them? How much was the success of the linkage dependent on the brilliance of the Battle School Fantasy Game?
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
And the ability to make the bridge?
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
If the Buggers only had relativistic flight capabilities it occurs to me that when we were launching the counter attack they were retreating to their home world? Why?
This strikes me as very bad planning. Unless it was a sort of "White Council" meeting to do things that had never been done i.e. build the bridge, discuss human nature, and plan for possible extinction.
If they had been proactive even to the point of sending out ten random queen ships they would have multiplied their chance of survival.
I think the discussions of the Bugger Council as the human fleet approaches would make a facinating short story.
BC
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
Except do the hive queens have different thoughts from each other? I didn't think so because then how would a new queen know everything that her predecessors knew? So how could they hold a council if they already think the same thoughts?
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
I don't think the buggers wiped out any other intelligent life. Because intellignet life wasn't discovered by humans until the piggies, by then they'd colonized way outside the bugger's former empire. After the piggies the next intelligent life they found was the descolada and, IIRC, their homeworld was impossibly far away from the rest of humanity. So the chances are good the buggers didn't run into any intelligent life before us.
Posted by Julie (Member # 5580) on :
Let me see if I follow your line of thought: Because the humans didn't find any intelligent after they killed the buggers (who were trying to get rid of us), the buggers didn't kill any other intelligent life? I think all that is proved is that if the buggers found intelligent life they killed it, not that they didn't kill any or even that they didn't find any. I think the fact that they were so willing to commit xenocide with us proves that they were fully capable of exterminating an entire race of sentient beings. (That is, as long as they didn't know the race was intelligent/not going to kill them first. )
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
quote: So how could they hold a council if they already think the same thoughts?
Here I think you are making a classic mistake, that is that if two complex systems start out identically to the degree that they can be measured they will remain identical. This is not the case. Hence the Butterfly Effect.
Despite shared knowlege and experience each Queen would have a singular point of view, and myrid unique experince. They conquered seperate worlds, overcame different obsticals, controlled different drones. Each would have a different point of view. Also they might have gathered because with proximity they have greater power.
Perhaps they were frightened and took comfort in physical proximity. Or they were obeying a genetic need to clump before swarming.
Had they killed off other intellegence? Well it is likely that they did, after all we are very young as a species, on only one planet, and we have whiped out three intellegent species that I can think of and I am sure that we have done in a dozen or more very clever ones.
BC
PS Name them if you can!
Posted by TheClone (Member # 6141) on :
Hmmm, intelligent species? Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, and Homo Neandertalensis? That's kind of stretching, though.
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
Two of the three I had in mind, and some of the clever ones, back hunters, or larged brained mammals inclued smilidon and the mammoth.
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Sorry.
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