posted
huh? What do the buggers look like? personally i always thought the hive queen look somthing like the one bug chick for teen titans -->link<--(the ones on the last and second to last line) . Maybe they look like somthing from starship troopers, or from Halo 2 (sorry, no links). Meh, what does ya all think?
posted
They look like whatever you want them to look like. Card doesn't bother to describe because he doesn't bother to visualize. It's totally up to the reader.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Until the movie Starship Troopers came out, I thought of the buggers as vaguely insectoid, which meant I thought of smooth-carapaced creatures with six limbs and multi-faceted eyes.
Starship Troopers cured THAT idea. The last think I want is for anyone to look at Ender's Game and think of that movie. So not only did we change the name, for film purposes, from Buggers to Formics, but also we reconceived the buggers as being warm-blooded and furry. No smooth shell.
And we were free to do this precisely because I had not described them beyond "insectoid." Which they still are, being wasp-waisted and six-limbed.
posted
Poor Buggers! Why do we humans always demonize insects? Just because they ARE so foreign to us? I'm glad that in the end, at least, they were recognized as an important sentient species. I must say, Ender connecting with the Buggers/Formics has greatly inspired me in my own work with insects. They truly are fascinating, and I love them.
You can make me an ambassador to the Formics, if you like. I'd feel completely at home amongst them.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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quote:Why do we humans always demonize insects? Just because they ARE so foreign to us?
Pretty much. They are close enough to our form with a body, limbs, a head with mouth and eyes for us to anthropormorophise them, but they are a monstrous perversion (not really, but at some level, this is what we feel) of our form.
We don't have this problem with most mammals, because they are close enough to our form to not give us this reaction.
We also don't have this problem with, say, snails or worms, because their form is too different to cause this reaction.
Disclaimer: This is just an idea of mine. I don't know if it's true or not.
Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
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This is making me think of a short story I read years ago, about a roach like alien race that makes contact with us, but that, because of its form, evokes in humans an instinctual loathing and desire to squish. Anybody familiar with the story? If I were to guess I'd say it was a Golden Age author, but I'm not positive. This is going to bug me until I forget all about it in a day or two. Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I recently read Deepness in the Sky which has an alien race whose adults have full 360 degree vision, but whose children only have eyes in the front of their head, and must therefore move their head in order to see things around them. When they first meet humans, they have an extreme emotional response because it is so cute the way we move our heads side to side.
This didn't really have any affect on the plot, but it made me smile. Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
mr. card, i would be thrilled if you could share some of the concept art with the forum if you ever get the chance. i'm willing to bet that everyone here would...um...shudder in ecstacy and then die.
quote: So not only did we change the name, for film purposes, from Buggers to Formics, but also we reconceived the buggers as being warm-blooded and furry. No smooth shell.
That will actually help alot, I not very good at inmagining when reading. I kinda grasp what they look like. Now i won't having ten minutes a day where i just think of what they would look like.
Posts: 72 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Far be it from me to correct the author....but I recall that when Val first comes to Lusitania in XENOCIDE, and visits the Hive Queen, there were some descriptions of how they look like. Don't have the book right with me, but I will look it up.
Another point is that, but I am not hindered by any knowledge of biology or physics, for various reasons it's impossible for insects to get very large. The buggers are warm-blooded though, so that would seem to solve the main problem, but that still leaves me puzzled as to how to would have evolved....Ah the joys of xenology!
Posts: 64 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
As for the demonization of insects, I think it might have to do with that fact that, evolutionary speaking, they used to crawl all over us a lot, before when we had roofs and houses. That's why we don't like them!
Posts: 64 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Far be it from me to correct the author....but I recall that when Val first comes to Lusitania in XENOCIDE, and visits the Hive Queen, there were some descriptions of how they look like. Don't have the book right with me, but I will look it up.
I think you might be right, let me look it up
---------five minutes later-------------
Well I'll be dipped, your right "... while the queen herself was surely three meters long. And height wasn't the half of it. Her wing-covers looked vast, heavy, almost metallic, with a rainbow of colors reflecting the sunlight. Her abdomen was long and thick enought to contain the corpse of an entire human. Yet it narrowed, funnel-like, to an ovipositor at the quivering tip, glisten with a yellowish translucent fluid, gluey, stringy, it dipped into a hole in the floor of the room, deep as it could go, and then came back up, the fluid trailing away like unnoticed spittle, down into the hole" <- wow...
Posts: 72 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Yeah, but (a) that describes the hive-queen, not the individual buggers <quibble> and (b) that's in a later book and nobody working on the movie gives a d*** about them.
Our concern is for the millions of viewers we want to have see the movie who HAVEN'T read any of the books, and the millions of Ender's Game readers who have never actually read Speaker for the Dead. They spend WAY more movie-going money than the three hundred people who read Xenocide.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
By the way, sorry I took out the typo "novel" for "movie" - I edited my post as I was scanning down the topic and saw the error, and only later realized that someone had alluded to it in a later post. But ... I worked as an editor and proofreader for too long to be able to stand leaving an error uncorrected, once I notice it.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
In the book there is a part where Graff tells Ender of how when landing on Eros the buggers stormed the ship and killed everyone on board. Everyone was able to see through the cameras and radios because the buggers didn't know to turn them off or dismantle them. This is all when Graff explains what he thinks of the buggers before leaving for Command School. It might be interesting to fade away to this in the movie as they talk so as to show the viewers exactly what the buggers look like instead of watching their ships duck in and out of the atmosphere.
Posts: 51 | Registered: Mar 2005
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But i think they should give a -bleep- about what the buggers, cause isn't the buggers apart of the hive queen? huh? And without buggers the actuall hive queen would be like a legless armless person. Or a queen ant who has lost her army.
Posts: 72 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I suppose the quibble is for naught, though. It doesn't matter what the buggers look like as long as they behave appropriately. Although I would like them to be somewhat wasplike, myself. Beautiful sleek lines, bold coloration, wicked cool stinging apparatuses...
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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...and big teeth-things!!!*holds hands up to mouth, pretends fingers are fangs*
damn you monty python, i was going to post a serious reply before that scene came to mind!
but seriously, i do like the idea of making them wasp-like. Anything to keep the buggers from looking like the bugs from starship troopers. *sighs* that movie had potential, except for the fact that nobody who made it had read the book.
Posts: 93 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I haven't found too many forces in this world as destructive as Starship Troopers. That was one bad movie, and by bad I mean completely and utterly awful! I wonder if they ever really looked at the movie before the released it? You think someone would have been able to sit through it
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
As long as you don't realize that there was a *book* involved anywhere in the making of the movie, it's not throat-slittingly bad. Close, but not quite. Taken as completely brainless entertainment for 12 year old boys, it works. Otherwise, not so much.
I have to say I am *completely* thrown off by fur-bearing buggers... (fine, Formics.) Not in a bad way, just discombobulated... I always thought of them as big ants. Nothing more complicated that big ants. Now all I can think of is big ants in fur coats.
posted
There is a little bit more description in XENOCIDE, when the Hive Queen sends some buggers to protect Human and Rooter from the angry mob. p. 345-6
"What they had taken for shining machinery on the fliers was not machinery at al, but living creatures, not as large as men but not as small as pequeninos, either, with large heads and multi-faceted eyes...But now seeing them, black shining exoskeletons, a thousand lenses in their shimmering green eyes..."
Posts: 64 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Gryphon, I'm right there with you... I even started feeling bad for the ants after I read the series! but I guess some insects have those stiff, bristly hairs on their abdomens, so maybe the "fur" will be analogous? (<--sry, need spell-checker ^^)
Posts: 16 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I actually first saw Starship Troopers as a mindless 12(ish... maybe a year or two later) year old, I had no idea there was a book and the movie seemed pretty decent for what I assumed was suppoused to be a mindless throwaway action movie designed to make a quick buck. I'm guessing the book actually has a plot from this discusion? Never would have guessed from that movie...
sorry for the offtopicness
Posts: 187 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I can understand wanting to distance the movie from Starship Troopers, but is it really necessary to give them fur and removed the multi-faceted eyes? I always though of the buggers (as Heinlein intended I'm sure) to be bug that went through an evolutionary process more complicated than they got BIG! I suppose furry isn't bad if we're talking bumblebee-furry, not wookie-furry. Of course, it's your story, Formics can be whatever you please. Posts: 61 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I've always thought, by the way, that humans have a natural fear/disgust reaction to insects because they are one of our few natural predators. They bite us, feed on us, and give us diseases. So the human communities that survived and evolved were the ones who fled or killed insects.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Tigers and lions are also our natural predators, but we think they're cute. Of course, they're also mammals.
I think we fear insects because they are so numerous, and they are so different from us physiologically.
Me, I'm an insect lover and advocate. But that's because I am strange.
On another note, many insects DO have setae, or hairs on their bodies. However, the hairs are often prickly or venomous to discourage predators.
I'd love to see how the Formics communicate and attack. Their very name implies a use of formic acid, the way ants do.
In a way, I hope OSC really did love the Buggers. I know I sure do. They are one of the more enchanting alien species I have come across. Them and the piggies.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
I don't know why you're all attacking Starship Troopers so vehemently. Heinlein doesn't translate well to film; he just didn't write that way. I think they did about as good a job as anybody could have.
Humans invented art, mathematics and interstellar travel. Doogie Hauser is a member of the Gestapo. Ferrets are telepathic. Women only mate with the best and dumbest football players. Multiple amputees still endorse the military. Humans will NEVER admit that another species is intelligent. That includes species that can hurl meteorites out of their asses and hit Buenos Aires from across the known galaxy. Affection is displayed by saying, "OOUUGH!" and smashing your head against someone else’s head. Jake Busey playing a neon green violin is enough to ruin any romantic mood. A civilian is stupid; a citizen is just more aggressive about it.
posted
Mr. Card, you said you were "Perfectly free" to change it since six-armed furry animals still (roughly) meet the description in the novel, but it's not as though you wouldn't be perfectly free to change it even if your book had included a perfect description of the starship troopers monsters. You haven't exactly been overcautious about being faithful to the novel, and you shouldn't be. The last thing I would want is another Harry Potter "Book on Tape" phenomenon. Sure, the first movie did what it had to to make obscene amounts of money, but it felt like buying a book-on-tape. I'd rather see a movie based on a book.
Oh, incidentally, I don't know if you're allowed to say this, but best case, worst case scenarios: when might Ender's Game start filming? (I suppose the worst case scenario is "never," but wost reasonable case asuming it gets made)
posted
So basically these Formics are mutated Wookies? That ought to be a hoot, though I was hoping for some kind of "Naked Lunch" bugs to make an appearance.
Intelligent bugs are always a good source of sci-fi material. Bugs are just icky-icky-poo (that being a scientific term).
Posts: 325 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote: So basically these Formics are mutated Wookies?
Nah, they're too small to be Wookies. Probably more like mutated Ewoks. Hey, while we're giving them fur, why not cute li'l button noses and teddy bear ears? They can make adorable yipping noises and toddle through their starships.
I did think the whole point of the Buggers was to be very alien and disturbing to humans. Who's scared of a fuzzy warm-blood?
Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Just for the record, up until I read Xenocide, I always pictured the buggers as a cross between ants and the creature from Alien. Except I didn't see Alien until some 5 years after I'd read the whole Speaker series, but when I did see it, I thought 'wow that thing looks like a bugger.' Now, I'm sorting of thinking of Alien with bumble type yellow and black bristles. . . no, much harder to imagine with hair.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
See it's tough, because if Ender destroys an entire race of Ewoks, albeit slightly evil and insect-like, I'm just not going to feel all that bad. I might even cheer, which might negate the whole we-ought-to-feel-bad-about-the-xenocide take on things.
posted
I've always imagined them as giant bee like creatures with tough skin that has a greenish hue to it.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Skippy to changing it because of that accursed movie. It's one thing to consolidate based on maximum allowed movie length (Dune, Harry Potter); it's yet another to horribly adapt the basic plot for inane hollywood appeal (Anne Rice's Queen); but to lobotomize a deeply philosophical, thought-provoking classic to base an empty action outline involving debase activites on well-respectable storylines is a regurgitation of quality (Starship Troopers).
Posts: 4 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
re Starship Troopers: In Hollywood, I keep hearing the directors' defenders say, "But it was a satire." What, "Mars Attacks"? Heinlein's book was NOT a satire. So what was the movie making fun of - Heinlein's book? Nothing in the movie except the stupid news headlines seemed satirical (weren't they annoying?). I think the director thought sci-fi films AS A GENRE were funny, so he was slumming and didn't care about anything making sense.
Well, if he learned about sci-fi from movies lone, then yeah, what else could he think? Hokey, silly, empty things, most of them.
And Heinlein has a breezy tone to his writing that CAN be taken lightly if you don't "get" it.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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"23 mins-RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST MORMON EXTREMISTS!"
I don't get this part. I watch starship troopers and I loved the propaganda part reminded me of some kind of warped wwii film but I don't remember anyone shooting a mormon. Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Well... first post here, right into the thick of things.
I really dislike the idea of a furry bugger, simply because of the fact that every reader that has ever read your book will be disapointed with the change, and you throw insults out the window too, you bugger-lover.
In any case, it is indeed your choice, but I think that I speak for every reader when I say that a reconsidering or at least an explanation of the change would be great. I don't understand the need to not look like SST. The targeted audience (10-21 or somewhat about, I'd assume) would likely not have even seen SST, much less relate a new movie to it. Even if the "enemy" looks the same, I would think that the selling point would be the plotline, not the animations.
That brings up a second question as well, how will the ... Formics ... (shudder) be shown in the movie? I'm not knowledged on the current technology, but I picture something like the way creatures in Signs were shown. They seemed humanlike but edited texturewise electronically. (That's my favorite movie, by the way. I leave it to Ender's Game to surpass it.)
Posts: 62 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Though this is the first post, this is not my first visit here. Apparently, back before the current module, my old userid was deleted. But onto topical issues!
Addressing the insectoid adversaries in science fiction: it is theorized that if we were to encounter developed life elsewhere in the Universe, it would be of an insectoid nature, due to evolutionary biology.
In terms of the nature of aliens themselves, it is usually as Frye wrote about the Other--the aliens in a book represent the darker side of ourselves, or, more often, the deeper nature we possess. Most of the time, this can be seen rather pessimistically when the aliens are primitive, barbaric, et cetera. These aliens are the sort that represent the innate savagery of the human race, and the conflict is usually symbolic of the competition between modern and ancient mankind.
Benevolent aliens, on the other hand, represent the wisdom of the human race--the "lighter" side of our psyche, if you will. These aliens tend to represent the hope we have for the human race, of enlightenment and attainment of wisdom.
Aliens are introduced, as said before, to tell us about ourselves. They have symbolic meaning, beyond looking cool or serving as a convenient plot device (why not have humans from another planet instead of these insectoid things?).
Anyways, I hope this helps to settle some questions raised by those about aliens, and their incorporation in science fiction.
Posts: 57 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I like aliens that are just that- alien. Neither benevolent nor savage, just incomprehensible. I think that's why I like insects. They are truly alien and they live in an alien fashion to sentient mammals like us. Not all alien stories are projections. The really good ones are about us and what we are when we meet the Other, no matter what form that Other takes.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
I always thought of the Formicks as being menacing buglike creatures as feirce looking as the "bugs" off Aliens. As to the Formicks, I hope that by making them furry that they don't appear like cuddly teady-bears. Or "beautiful" as Ender saw them. He was just in love with them and was a xenophile! But seriously, I hope that they do look decently scary to the general public because only a handful did not find them frightning. So Card, as a plea on behalf of the public-please don't kill your movie and our image of the Formicks in our mind by making them all furry and cuddly. And from me.....don't make them walking carpets like that thing from star wars! Adios for now!
Posts: 112 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Meh, what does ya all think?
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but I guess some insects have those stiff, bristly hairs on their abdomens, so maybe the "fur" will be analogous? (<--sry, need spell-checker ^^)
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