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Originally posted by Jiminy:
Yeah, he could. We were given no direct information about those years, so yeah, maybe he did. But I defintely remember there being a lot of stuff about Ender feeling removed from the human race in that regard.

And, of course, Ender is a pretty bright guy, and HE seems quite convinced that he is childless.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ginosion:
Ender doesn't need to know he has a child to have one.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Youth ap Orem:
I am ender's love child.

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Whoa... you are too?
 

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Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
 
i think that if ender had a love child, it would destroy his credibility in the later speaker/xeno/mind saga. He seems like such a nice guy, and that would change my opinion of him. kind of like he was leading a double life
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
I wouldn't go that far... people do make mistakes. And maybe if Randi was on the same planet with him she might steal his genetic material.

But I guess we project our own natures onto our heroes. In my nature, such an event wouldn't be impossible, but he wouldn't forget about it or fail to mention it to those he is close with.

It does raise the question for me of whether in the "speaker for the dead"/Starways congress culture abstinence before marriage is seen as the rational choice. Since prior to his arrival on Lusitania, Ender is sort of areligious. Dang, I don't know if i spelled that right.

Speaker for the Dead SPOILERS (one that might make you not want to read the book if you misunderstand them at that but trust me it's not as bad as it may sound if you ignore my warning).

Okay, here is another thing. Population was very tightly controlled on earth before the war with the Formics was won. Then the period of colonization begins. What do such events do to the sexual mores of the culture? In general, though, I think Miro's thoughts on abstinence before marriage are the ones the author sympathizes with. At least, pre-Who-cares-if-you-ARE-my-sister Miro.
 

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Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
 
I highly doubt there would be one all-over Starways Congress culture. More likely there would be thousands of different cultures, depending on the world and the people who settled it. Lusitania just happened to be a Catholic settlement, so it turned out to be a general "abstinence until marriage" culture.

As for me, I would be highly disappointed to find out Ender had some baby from a fling during his wanderings. Stealing of genetic material I could understand, you know, a Xenocide-worshipping cult kidnapping him or something bizarre like that.

I agree with Jiminy and Occasional that signs point to Ender being somewhat an outcast of the human race, not likely to get into a lot of relationships. Plus he's got the whole added burden of finding a place for the hive queen.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
It would be like the last episode with the assistant DA on Law and Order: "Is this because I'm a lesbian?"

What? She's been on for what, 3 years, and we have no clue about this, and then it's the last thing she says on the show?

Finding out Ender had a love child would be like that - surprise by fiat instead of good character development.
 

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Posted by Ramdac99 (Member # 7264) on :
 
Ender has a child.........Jane
 

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Posted by Clarifier (Member # 8167) on :
 
about this whole child thing, i re-read speaker for the dead last week, and i seem to recall a passage when he is talking to Don Chistiano (spelling?, the guy from the children of the mind of christ) where he says either to himself or to them that he is a virgin. i think the context was when they were talking about how they were married but they weren't allowed to have sex.. but yeah, im more or less sure that he said he'd never had sex.. right?
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
Ginosion, you are NOT an idiot <grin>, but you are making some assumptions, based on our present culture, that are not actually all that commonly true.

Today we live in a culture that says "everybody 'slips' from time to time" and so you think it's true.

But I know many, many people - including actual men - who control their libidos and do not, in fact, engage in sex acts outside of marriage.

This used to be far more common than people today realize. For instance, take the 1950s. It was before the pill, before abortions were legal. OF course there were people who "played around," and there were illegitimate babies put up for adoption, but the numbers were surprisingly low. People made mistakes - but not ALL people. (And the level of illegal abortions was also very, very low, even at the most "generous" estimates that have any basis in reality.)

In other words, we had a culture that discouraged sex outside of marriage and encouraged fidelity and family-building.

And guess what? We got a lot more of what we encouraged ... just like today's society does.

Ender is not a child of permissive America. And since the present level of permissiveness is not, in my opinion, sustainable, I'm hardly going to create a future in which promiscuity continues unabated for centuries.

So Ender's world is one in which not everybody sleeps around, and the best people are the ones who do not take sex lightly.

And even if he did, Ender knows that you don't run the risk of creating a child that would then suffer from lack of a father. Not if you're a good guy. And Ender tries very hard to be a good guy.

So if he had loved someone enough to sleep with her, he would have married her. Period. And since I explicitly say in Speaker that he NEVER married before Novinha, that should put this to rest. He didn't slip, no not once; and if he had, he would have remembered it and it would have been mentioned, because Ender would have fretted about it endlessly, worrying that there MIGHT be a child somewhere that he had some responsibility for. He would have had Jane find out, and he would have Done the Right Thing.
 

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Posted by Ginosion (Member # 7066) on :
 
w00t, I'm not an idiot.

But I still think that it could be possible. And I know how:

He goes to a planet to speak for the dead. He meets the daughter of who he speaks for, and falls in love (though I know this would hard for Ender, but it could happen). So they fall in love, do the naughty thing, and are about to get married. But then, she finds out that he is just not Andrew Wiggen, the speaker for the dead, but also, Ender Wiggen, the Xenocide. Though she would forgive him for doing such an horrible deed (the Xenocide), she knew her family and freinds would not, and they would hate her, Ender, and Ender's child. So she refuses to mary him to protect Ender and her and his son/daughter. Ender of coures would be crushed extreamly, it would be as bad as when he found out that he killed Bonzo, Stillson, and about the buggers, and he would never want to talk about it. And Jane would undoughtfully find out about the child, but not tell Ender because it would hurt him so much.

See, isn't it possible?
 

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Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
 
Sounds like a romance novel. In Space.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way. A lot of people like romance novels.
 

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Posted by Marcelarrow (Member # 8198) on :
 
I'm one of the only teenagers i know who does not want to engage in intercourse outside of marriage?

This idea is ALIEN to most teenagers my age. A teacher in my class told us that her boyfriend was visiting from iraq and stayed with her. When a few of my classmates infered that they had 'gotten down', she put that to rest by telling them that her boyfriend had slept in the next door neighbors house. The kids were so surprised that they simply didn't understand the concept of chastity. Now, more and more PROFESSIONALS are ENCOURAGING sex outside of marriage, as long as they use protection, are monogomous, blah blah, insert stupid reason here. While i don't care what other people do, i know whats right and whats wrong. There are a lot of risks that good men like Ender don't take. One would be taking advantage of a bereived Daughter and having sexual intercourse with her and taking the risk of fathering a child that he wouldn't might not be around for.
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
No, it's not possible that Ender "slipped" with someone he meant to marry. First of all, being "engaged" or "intending to marry" does not at all imply that the rules about chastity outside of marriage have changed. Not for Ender, and not for me. Second, in Speaker I believe I make it explicit that Novinha is the first person Ender even WANTED to marry. He was a wanderer and knew it and did NOT let himself get involved, period.

It's actually just a little weird for you to be telling the author what his character "would" or "could" do, when the author is telling you he would not and could not.

Marcelarrow, it's just sad that the absolute expectation among high school kids today is that marriage is completely unnecessary for sex. Since exclusivity of sexual content is a core, fundamental requirement for a long-surviving society (that is, men must have assurance of sexual fidelity in the culture for the tradeoff of civilization to make any sense at all); it's as if we've decided, as a culture, to die - we're going to promisc ourselves to death.
 

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Posted by Ginosion (Member # 7066) on :
 
Okay okay okay, he is your character and you can do what you want with him, lol. But I still think it would be cool if Ender had a real child. And I still think its possible, there has to be a loophole somewhere, lol,jk.
 

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Posted by Antony (Member # 7947) on :
 
Quoth Mr. Card:
Today we live in a culture that says "everybody 'slips' from time to time"

present level of permissiveness is not, in my opinion, sustainable

exclusivity of sexual content is a core, fundamental requirement for a long-surviving society
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Wow! You're SO Mormon ^_^
I really enjoyed reading your opinions because I've never really thought of it the way you do!

I also totally disagree... but I like hearing opinions different from my own articulated so well!

I think my own view was a bit more optimistic when I was younger...

to me, at least, it seems that you're coming from the perspective that monogomy is infact the "norm," or at least most natural for humanity. May I ask (to avoid being presumptuous ) if you'd agree that that is the case?
 

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Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ginosion:
Okay okay okay, he is your character and you can do what you want with him, lol. But I still think it would be cool if Ender had a real child. And I still think its possible, there has to be a loophole somewhere, lol,jk.

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It is also possible that the entire story was simply a dream that Peter had after eating some bad Chinese food or Ender is really a cyborg built by a secret government agency. But I doubt that is the case, and I don't think that Ender could have sneaked off and had sex while OSC wasn't watching. Generally, fictional characters only do what the author tells them to do.

As for sex, I think it depends on the groups you run with. Quite a few of my friends believe in waiting until marriage (we are in our 20's). Of course, many of us met at church. In general, most of the people who I know that wait until marriage are Christian...though I can think of one exception (an Atheist who thinks that people should wait...for emotional and prevention reasons).

quote:

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Wow! You're SO Mormon ^_^

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quote:

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But I still think it would be cool if Ender had a real child. And I still think its possible

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I don't.

Because EVEN IF Ender WAS that kind of guy, think about it:

He was married to Novinha for a LONG time.
We know that Novinha doesn't believe in using birth control.
We also know that Novinha can have children, since she has six already.
Ender and Novinha want to have children together (as per the end of Speaker), yet they never do.

The obvious conclusion is that Ender can't father biological kids for some reason.
 

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Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
 
hmm, maybe he really was a cyborg made in secret. That could explain his lack of kid. If I was going to make a cyborg as smart/tough as ender I'd want to make sure he couldn't have descendants that could take over the world.
 

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Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
 

quote:

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The obvious conclusion is that Ender can't father biological kids for some reason.

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Yet even then, [Ender] had married a woman who turned out to have little interest in having more children.

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quote:

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So Ender's world is one in which not everybody sleeps around, and the best people are the ones who do not take sex lightly.

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quote:

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But if they're not using birth control... kids tend to happen, as a result of marital relations.

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quote:

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It's actually just a little weird for you to be telling the author what his character "would" or "could" do, when the author is telling you he would not and could not.

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Whose character is it - the author's or the reader's? He doesn't exist without both.

Regardless, I'd say Ender could do whatever he so chooses.
 

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Posted by Jiminy (Member # 7917) on :
 
Nonsense. We are on an OSC forum discussing OSC's brainchildren. The Ender everyone in this thread has been talking about is the one that was born as a fictional character in OSC's mind.

When a character's creator TELLS YOU what his character would do, this is new information to be integrated as it would be had the information been included in the novel. Whatever character exists in your head that does not incorporate all information given you by the author is not the character we are discussing in this thread.
 

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Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
 
I think we are discussing the character Mr. Card wrote about in his books, but that was born as a fictional character in Ginosion's mind and our minds while reading those books. Mr. Card does not have sole authority to interpret this Ender or decide what he could or could not do, especially not beyond the bounds of what was already written.

He IS the only one currently with the authority to write and sell more books, but even then if he writes something in which Ginosion's Ender is acting in a way that Ender would not act, Ginosion is probably going to put down the book for being false. Even then if the writer claims something untrue about his character, the reader can reject it.

Now, OSC does have a good point regarding Ender's character and the likely future of the world's moral values... and particularly about Ender not remembering the hypothetical kid in question. If such an thing actually happened, I think it would have left a major impact on his thinking and worrying - and that doesn't appear anywhere in the novels.
 

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Posted by Omega M. (Member # 7924) on :
 
OSC, what do you think it will take for people today to realize that "the present level of permissiveness is not sustainable"?
 

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Posted by Ramdac99 (Member # 7264) on :
 
Tresopax, good call. In Aesthetic Theory we call that "purposiveness without purpose". the art itself is independent of the artist. And while I agree that this allows every reader to draw his or her own conclusions, you have to concede that this thread is about what "happened" in these novels and to that, OSC is the expert. Your Ender can be different from my Ender but the actions Ender took in his life are committed to paper and although you can draw what ever possibilities you like, it won't change what "occurred" in the novels.

Children of the Mind Spoiler
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maybe this is just another hurdle that Ender-as-peter will have the strength to overcome that Ender-as-Ender was too guilt-ridden or perhaps to complacent to Novhinia to accomplish. I mean Ender-as-Peter having a child with the "mother of Path". They'd be an all-star.
 

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Posted by Jiminy (Member # 7917) on :
 
What do you imagine is the difference between the information you are given by OSC via novel, and the information you are given by OSC via message board post?

Of COURSE you get to interpret the character. You get to interpret whateeever you want, as long as you take into account all the factual information you are given. If you choose to ignore any of it, then you have wandered onto a different character. Similar enough to be a ripoff should you choose to write about him, but different nonetheless. That's fine. We all have a different Ender in our heads, and noone is harmed when we go through the mental exercise of deciding what our own Ender would do. But when OSC tells you what Ender did, that's what he did, and if you say he didn't, then you are talking about some Ender other than the one in Orson Scott Card's "Ender" books.
 

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Posted by Roseauthor (Member # 148) on :
 
Being realistic, Ender Doesn't EXIST! Card has an uncanny ability to create a believable character that many can relate to. HOWEVER, there is nothing in the Character of Ender that would indicate that he would have a child in some secretive manner. A Good example of this would be the creation of Bean. Even if Bean chose NOT to have a child by not involving himself in premarital relations, the idea that there were unimplanted children, was enough for him to fight for his children; for his seed!

This tells you the mind of the writer/author and the characters he creates. Anything outside of that is absurdity.

Ender was built on the same premise but different motive perhaps. Just my perception.
 

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Posted by Bekenn (Member # 6602) on :
 
Tammy, Ela, Cat-fearing-lady... thank you. Living here in SoCal, I'd begun to doubt that intelligent, geeky women with the same view on abstinence that I have even exist in and around my generation.
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 
*cough*
 

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Posted by Bekenn (Member # 6602) on :
 
Whoops, sorry! Didn't mean to leave you out, it's just we've never actually, y'know, met and all, and you didn't post in this thread, see, and I don't have time to read every thread, so I never really got a clear picture of your personality, even though I love Jewish women, just love 'em, even if I am thinking of an old, out-dated stereotype better informed by Fiddler on the Roof than by actual human contact and I don't think I'd like Streisand all that much even though she's a great singer and all, but man, she's loony and I probably shouldn't have said that just now, and I'm sorry I missed the latest SoCal gathering but I was busy even though I can't remember right now what I was doing, but I lost track of the thread anyway but, hey, maybe I'll see you at one of the signings, but not at ComicCon, because it turns out I can't go again this year due to work and one of my cousins is getting married on Saturday which is great but it means I have to be there on Friday which totally conflicts with the OSC appearance at Comic-Con and I'm not sure I'll be able to make it to Vroman's Wednesday on time but maybe I can get to the Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach tomorrow even though it would mean missing practice for the southern gospel group I'm in, which is a lot of fun even though southern gospel's not one of my favorite types of music but the people are wonderful, and some of them even like science fiction but I don't think they've ever read any of OSC's books and maybe I should suggest that to them and I just said way too much and there's no way I'm getting out of this in one piece, uhh, sorry please don't kill me!

<breaks down in tears>

[ July 12, 2005, 02:57 AM: Message edited by: Bekenn ]
 

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Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
 


I mean this in a completely chaste and platonic way, but I love you, man!

As far as me and Fiddler, two stories.

1) I was trying to explain to an online friend in another country, who has never met an Orthodox Jew, what it means to be one. She's a HUGE movie fan, and knows an incredible amount of movie trivia. She asked me: "Jewish like Anne Frank? Or Jewish like Fran Drescher's character in The Nanny?"

I said, "Neither! Jewish like Fiddler!" That she understood.

2) A few years back, I taught at a non-religious private school. I attended one of the performances they put on of Fiddler. (A black Tevye took some getting used to, but the production was VERY well done.) A parent of one of my students came up to me afterward. I had spoken to her on the phone previously, but she had never met me in person. Yet she was able to pick me out of a fairly substantial crowd. Not too surprising, as I pointed out, given that I was the only one in the audience who looked like I could fit in onstage.

As far as Streisand goes, I like much of her work. However, last night I watched The Way We Were, and I want those two hours back!

And I'll be at the Wednesday night signing. If you are too, great. If not, catch ya next time.
 

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Posted by DemonGarik (Member # 7793) on :
 
There is another thing about this... and I don't have any of my books at work (though since I always post from work maybe I should bring them in?) but in either Xenocide or Speaker, when talking about the Children of the Mind of Christ, Ender indicates he had practiced complete celebacy until he got married. I don't remember anything more then there was a quote or a page about it. but if someone could help find it, that would end the speculation
 

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Posted by ChaosTheory (Member # 7069) on :
 
What's next? "Ender: boxers or briefs?"
 

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Posted by DemonGarik (Member # 7793) on :
 
Boxers man...
Everything else in his life was so constricted needed some freedom!
 

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