posted
In Card's recent Sci-Fi Overdrive interview, he says "I've never read Starship Troopers by Robert Hienlien because everybody tells me that Ender's Game is based on it.."
I find that bizarre that anybody would think that. Yes, the buggers share a lot of simularities, but (Pardon me, OSC) the idea that insectiod aliens would have a hive consciousness is not a terribly original or imaginative idea.
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posted
I think another part of the comparison would be the game, and how both Rico and Ender excelled at the game and went on to use those skills to lead their armies to victory by destroying the queen bugger/brain bug.
Not that I think either of them copied off of the other. Just a big similarity. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.
Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:the idea that insectiod aliens would have a hive consciousness is not a terribly original or imaginative idea.
This is OSC's point as well, actually. The Bugger's weren't his focus, and so he created the most clichéd aliens imaginable. He's not saying it's like Starship Troopers, other people are.
That said, it's surprising as heck that he still hasn't read it.
-not really trogdor, but too lazy to log out
Posts: 1481 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: That said, it's surprising as heck that he still hasn't read it.
I agree. He says that he cannot read it because he doesn't want it influencing his sequels. I don't see how it could really affect the sequels at this point. It could have affected EG, but not the shadow series, nor this mythical sequel with Bean's grandkids.
But the real tragedy is that he hasn't read the book, but he sat through the movie. (Worst adaptation ever). It's on his list of the worst movies ever made.
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posted
Well, I enjoyed it. Not as much as the book, of course, but it was interesting. Cheesy? Yes. One of the worst films of all-time? No.
Neither is Phantom Menace. His main complaint is that the Gungans are stupid? Is every lifeform on the planet now extremely intelligent? Um, no. Multiply that by a couple thousand years and, voila! Gungans.
I would have agreed on The Fountainhead had he not writted the book off as "melodrama". He's since traded in the melodrama of understanding Rand's words for the melodrama of everyone else who has misunderstood her and subsequently ragged on her. I leave the movie off the list out of principle.
The rest I haven't seen (except Dune, with which I'll agree). Maybe I'll go see them now, as there's a pretty good chance I'll enjoy them.
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posted
Burninating the Countryside Burninating the pesants. Burninating all the people And the thatched roof cottages! thatched roof cottages! And the trogdor comes in the Night!!!!
Anywho, I may have this backwards, but didn't Ender's Game come first? I would have staked my life on the face that Ender's game is older than Starship Troopers. If, however, this is not true please let me know in the most hateful post that you would ever post.
posted
Hey, guys (i mean this as a muilti-gender 'guys')- check out the Intro. in Ender's Game. I know you all have read it through, but OSC does answer some of te things you are asking...
(Don't mind some of the things i say... this is the edit BTW)
posted
Where I'm from, "you guys" and "y'all" can be used mostly interchangably, but "y'all" is definitely more casual.
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hey, i like 'you guys', but thats me.. I feel it is better than addresseing everyone as 'you people'(could be taken the wrong way, i.e. in Anger Managment) or 'ladies and gents' (too formal) or 'everyone' (too general). Anywho...
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posted
Actually, Ender's Game and Starship Troopers are thematically opposite.
In Ender's game humanity uses it's soldiers to exterminate another race and it's ok, because they didn't know any better. Simplified greatly, military force is a good thing as long as you can justify it yourself.
Starship Troopers is a subtle satire of how "democratic" nations turn into facist states over night at the prospect of war. Furthermore, it was, unless I'm mistaken a view on the korean war. The Chinese were overwhelming hordes with a bug like orginization while the brave americans had to fight to perserve existance. Net thematic effect, if I might quote Orwell, "Facism is just a democracy in a crisis."
Posts: 28 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Svidrigailov -- I've read Starship Troopers a couple of times, and I never got that out of it, but I certainly can see where you could. Was it *intended* to be a satire, or do some people just take it as one?
Am I just too naive/dim-witted to realize that the author is not being serious and that everbody is laughing at, and not with me?
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posted
I've read both books, and while they have a lot in common, they certainly dont feel like anything of the same story (or more to the point, in my reading of Ender's Game so long ago, never did I think "Hey! This reminds me of Starship Troopers!") OSC goes in depth into the human psyche, how people operate, why they do things. The same thing he does with the Formics, why they did the things they did, explaining they point of view they hold. No, whoever said that he based EG on ST needs to take some time and actually think about what they're reading, and let it sink in. You're missing the point of EG.
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posted
I enjoyed the book, and I got that it was anti-war, but not that it was Korea specific. Of course being released in '58 or '59, (I forget which,) it was not DURING the Korean conflict. I enjoyed the book enough to sample some other Heinlien, and I was somewhat disappointed with that.
The only people who reccomend Heilien to me are the same ones who reccomend P. Anthony and Mercedes Lackey, both of whom share with Heinlien that annoying tendancy to throw in unusual sex scenes for whatever reason. Heinlien was weird, but nothing can top that weird space-walrus rape scene from the Anthony's Cluster series.
I followed the link from this thread to OSC's movie opinion articles. I can understand his dislike of Starship Troopers, (The Movie) cause it was cheesy, and could have been so much better. It certainly isn't the worst movie ever. I could rattle off at least ten movies that I think are worse.
What I can't fathom is OSC's disdain of Jim Carrey, and placeing of Charles Grodin above him. I find Grodin unwatchable, and he seems to have no qualms about signing on to a truly horrible movie, (Beethoven, and the one with Martin Short.) At least with Carrey, I know that he will do something "Carrey-ish" that will make at least one scene redeemable. I thought his Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty characters were excellent transitions from the Mask/Ventura humour into serious characters, (Well serious for a comedy anyway.)
And what's his deal with "mean" or "sarcastic" movies? I loved "American Beauty" for exactly the same reasons that I loved "Lovelock." I find Card's lead characters to be very flippant and caustic, (Ender and Bean especially,) but not cliche or cartoonishly so. I loved the viscious little monkey Lovelock, and I see his tragic rebellion and Spacey's characters rejection of his disaffected life as the same liberating thing. One of his more frequent criticisms of movie scripts is their lack of "truthfulness." Maybe that's the difference between his bitter, sarcastic, judgemental leads and the ones in the movies he doesn't like. His characters are almost always believable, and something in the way he writes them makes me able to identify with them. I don't get the whole "Hollywood Cultural Elite" conspiracy that he is refering to, though.
Posts: 186 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
And are there two different versions of the movie Pleasantville out there? Cause it doesn't seem like Mr. Card and I saw the same movie. I never once got a message of "The 90's are better than the 50's" from this movie. If anything, this movie represents the modern day as dysfunctional.
But Mr. Card is a devout Mormon, so I can understand why he hates this movie, and doubts its veracity, because I think the only thing that the movie is attacking is organized religion. The whole Pleasantville as Eden, Don Knotts as God, and God as a tantrum-having child thing is where the movie's message came to me, and none of my Christian friends liked this movie. From his condemnation of any movie that portrays Judeo-Christians in a negative light, I assume that his religious values cause him to resent movies that attack religion. Nothing weird about that, I remember how uncomfortable I was with "The Last Temptation." But I am at a complete loss for how he connected all the political correctness and pro-Clinton stuff into that movie. He sounds like Rush Limbaugh, (It sickens me to make that comparison, but it's what I see,) when he starts talking about the attack on moral values. Maybe I should go watch the movie again, but I certainly didn't see any of that stuff in there.
Just my NSHO.
And I apologise again for comparing OSC, (A man who's opinions I respect and value,) to Limbaugh, (A blustering windbag.)
Posts: 186 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
It seems that we should start a new topic about OSC's preferences in movies, but I think it has already been done. If I remember well, it was stated that he's just a human - maybe not to all - and you have the right to have different opinions.
For example, I kind of liked Dune by David Linch because I've read the book several times before and so understood the things that weren't said. I agree that it could be quite frustrating for someone who did not previously read the book, but for me it was ok. As for the fact that things changed from the book to the film, it happens all the time - wait till we see Ender's Game the movie !!! - and it's not necessarly a bad thing. As for Starship Troopers, I loved the book and liked the movie. Boy, I can harldy wait for his review of Matrix - Revolutions !!
As for the resemblance between Starship Troopers and Ender's Game, you cannot argue that it exists at some level, but that's like accusing post-atomic-war novels that they talk about the same thing ! In fact, here it is even less important than that, as the emphasys is not on the bugs in neither of the books.
So my points are: - Ender's Game and Starship Troopers are DIFFERENT in essence - follow your own taste in movies, no critic ever saw exactly the same things in the movie as you did !
posted
Svidrigailov and Mazer . . . I did not get the sense from Starship Troopers that it was particularly anti-war. In fact, the fact that they are fighting against an opponent that is clearly varelse would seem to be a justification of the idea that war is sometimes the only way to defend yourself. If you said a theme was "war is hell," I could agree with you, but knowing what I do about Heinlein, I really don't see it as a satire against war at all. (I think you might be putting your own spin on it as a reader.)
In fact, the idea that he's criticizing nations for turning fascist seems particularly off base to me. I don't think Heinlein thought his society in ST was fascist. I think it was his serious ideal of how a society should function. In many of his other writings, he talks about democray being flawed in that people vote selfishly and ignorantly. I think he was quite serious in the suggestion that democracy would function better if only people who had somehow demonstrated a willingness to put society above themselves as individuals could vote.
(Many people think that Heinlein is somewhat fascist.)
(Of course, some people say the same about OSC.)
Incidentally, I think an anti-war reading would also be misguided for Ender's Game. I think that the anti-xenocide fervor of Speaker for the Dead is demonstrated to be immature in the later novels, where the whole scenario is poised to happen all over again. What this seems to show is that it is easy to judge something as immoral in hindsight, when the thread is absent, but when the threat is present, people become much more concerned with self-preservation. With this in mind, we can see this idea running through Ender's Game as well. Sure, Ender doesn't know what he's doing at the end of the novel, but he does know what he's doing in the fights with Stilson and Bonzo. Over and over again, he shows that he will make whatever decision is necessary to save his own life. Nice considerations, like could the Buggers be our friends, can only be taken up in the absence of threat.
Valentine herself makes this point in one of the latter two novels, iirc, when she talks about the difference between raman and varelse.
fwiw, I like Heinlein's novels, but I think Piers Anthony is a hack.
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posted
I think it's worth noting that Heinlein himself, was a soldier in the US Army, and thought very highly of the orginization.
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I cannot see how anyone would think that Starship troopers is anti-war or anti military. It makes a simple statement right at the start that only the people who are willing to answer the call to protect freedom have a 'right' to be free. Not a single person who does not serve a military tour has a vote.
I joined the Army as an Infantryman because of Starship Troopers, it is a celebration of the men who hold the line. Ender's Game is about the other end of the war, the guys at the top making the big calls.
In Ender's Shadow you get a taste of this when Bean speaks to the men riding the MD-Device into the Bugger home world. The guys who are willing to sacrifice their lives so that humanity will be the master of the future. What was there training like? How did they feel to answer the call? How much did they love and who was the girl that they left behind to smash the enemy of mankind? This is the subject of Starship Troopers.
Eventually, the Aracnoids are forced to negotiate and maintain a peace with mankind in Starship Troopers because mankind finally did enough damage to get their attention. This by attacking the higher castes of Brain and Queen, in this I think Heinlien saw no need for the kind of total war that takes place in Ender's Game, every species he reasons will recognize the forcefull threat of destruction and respond to it.
War may well be the biological equivaliant of a universal language.
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posted
One last ironic fact, the Aracnoids attack a colony at the start of the Bug War, it is an all Mormon Colony, it is either named New Independence or some other name from Mormon history. RH often mentioned the Mormons and Jack Mormons (A group that I believe seperated to become officially the reorginzed LDS church) in his stories set in Missourri in the early 20th century, and he seemed to be fond of them.
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posted
Funny story- (or maybe only slightly ironic story) I met an army guy at an airport over Thanksgiving who was returning to Vermont, I think. I was reading "Shadow of the Hegemon" waiting for my extremetly out-of-the-way connecting flight that would ultimately bring me back to school, and he sits down and proceeds to make me feel slightly amateur-like in regard to OSC, which I suppose is true. However, being one who rarely meets anyone of interest in airports, this guy did manage to change my prejudice towards today's airport-folk; I had basically pegged them all as bitter, hurried people all either too anxious to get where they're going or too upset about leaving where they are that they simply take no notice of those around them and retreat into themselves. So all this is to say that out of this fortunate and slightly romantic situation I was practically ordered to read "Starship Troopers," which I fully intend on doing after I finish the Ender series and "Enchantment." So, to the random Vermont guy, if you're out there, thanks for the suggestion and for restoring my faith in the creatures of the airports.
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