Some stuff I'm pondering. A bunch of stuff, actually.
First, though, an introduction.
I'm a 22-year old college student; my major is political science, but I tend to dabble in lots of stuff.
I only picked up EG and Speaker for the Dead in August. I loved EG (OSC nailed the gifted and the disabled kid; I found myself shuddering at how much of the book brought back my own memories of school.), but SftD I simply couldn't stand, and I put it on my shelf after the first few pages.
ES and the rest of that series are on my Xmas list, for the record.
With that said:
1. I've been nagged by something in regards to the Population Control laws. Namely, there seem to be some situations that would seem to make matters insane.
A. How do adopted kids count?
B. What happens with multiple births (say, you have one kid already, and next pregnancy you wind up with twins; Or you have triplets)?
2. Settling a question from Ansible MOO:
Do Battle School kids have watches?
3. Next question raised by Ansible:
What's the deal with mail and, well, contact with the outside world?
I know Ender had his mail blocked, but how about the other kids?
4. And, finally, questions that nag at me:
A. Just what are the admissions requirements for Battle School? Would, say, a kid born preemie be disqualified (assuming he came out without disabilities)?
B. The curriculum. OK, Battle School has a curriculum tilted towards the sciences, math, and military subjects. But are they getting the usual common core subjects, too? (IE, what about literature, or art, or languages, or...? Well, you name it.)
C. Beyond the Battle School, have we ever learned much about the IF itself? Like, what specialties are trained at each of the schools afterwards?
D. Just how the heck is the IF funded, anyway? Do they have to go before appropriations committees? In the classic vein of such things, would there be any chance of said appropriators coming up to Battle School for an "inspection" (read: Dog and pony show)?
E. Just where IS Battle School, anyway?
Posted by Black Mage (Member # 5800) on :
1. This stuff is never fully explained. However, I think they'd look the other way on multiple births, and adopted kids would probably only go to childless parents.
2. I'd think not. How does this matter, though? I've no doubt that there's some sort of clock on their desks, but I don't see how it's relevant. Explain.
3. The impression that I got is that there is no communication. The hope of communication is given as a comfort to parents and kids, but since these kids have to grow up to be leaders, I don't think they'd be allowed that sort of thing.
4. A. No idea. It's just a certain standard of health and ability, I think.
B. Graff comments in a later book that battle school kids don't understand metaphors or any sort of literary device, because their schooling was so selective.
C. The schools work as levels. It's Battleschool, then Tactical School (in which the battleroom is eliminated; we should assume this is geared more towards pure tactics) and for the high fliers, Command School. The other schools are mostly unexplained.
D. They are funded by the Hegemony. The Hegemony, in turn, is funded by all the nations of the world. Presumably they do go through all that bureaucratic nonsense to get funds, but it is never explained because, frankly, it'd be pretty boring.
E. Outer space. Who knows where?
Actually, considering the time a journey to Battle School seems to take, I'd think it's probably somewhere in inner space. Most likely, it would be either in Earth orbit or orbiting the moon.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
All of your questions will be answered when you read the other books. I can't think of a single point that either isn't addressed later in the series specifically or cannot be worked out logically. Welcome, and i look forward to more queries after you have read all of the relevent subject matter.
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
1)Adopted kids: There are no adopted kids. All unwanted kids either roam Rottingham (and only Rottingham) or get turned into soup. A very delicious soup with garlic, bacon and potatoes.
Actually, adopted kids would not apply to population limits. Obviously, by their existance, the population increased already, which means go ahead and adopt the little ingredients, if you wish. The problem however is that it was socially wrong to have more than 2, which is why the other kids made fun of Ender for being a third.
As for multiple births, do you really think they don't have the technology to determine how many kids there are going to be and do something about that? It's cruel, but ultimately, you know thats what they would suggest. Don't know about enforce, though.
2) Do battle school kids have watches? (PURE THEORY HERE!!) Not traditional clocks, no. In fact, as a way of brainwashing the kids into having longer sleeping patterns of staying awake, they have the day actually go for 26 hours, without telling the kids. People get into the habit of going to bed by a certain time and program that into their schedules.
3) (AGAIN, THEORY ONLY!) Kids can contact the outside world, but it is heavily filtered, and won't be sent if thought to damage the students ability to function as a commander.
A)Requirements? Pssh... if he told you, then he'd have to explain a lot of stuff. It's just better to say that the requirements for Battle School are 1)intelligence 2)mental health 3)ambition 4)creativity 5)social skills. Ultimately, the standard answer is: "Whatever it takes to be a commander."
B)In order to fully understand tactics that are being taught to you from other cultures, you have to understand the culture. Any aspect where you can pick up how to win a battle must be observed when teaching these types of kids.
C)Specialties? Um... ::shrug::
D)Already answered.
E)I personally pictured between the earth and the moon. I don't see any reason for it to be further out expect for tactical advantage in case of an attack.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Originally posted by airmanfour: All of your questions will be answered when you read the other books. I can't think of a single point that either isn't addressed later in the series specifically or cannot be worked out logically. Welcome, and i look forward to more queries after you have read all of the relevent subject matter.
A lot of these questions are never addressed in any of the books.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
the majority of the answers to those questions i considered unsilly are in Ender's Shadow. And the IF stuff is scattered pretty much throughout the whole series. Funding, specifically, is brought up in one of the Shadow books.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
OK. I guess you consider quite a few of them silly.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
yyyyyyyyyyup.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
A lot of these questions are never addressed in any of the books because I didn't find them necessary to the story or particularly interesting to me at the time. It would just make me tired to have to make up stuff now ... and besides, if I did it would doubtless contradict some other obscure reference. It drove me crazy listening to Ender's Game again (the unabridged audiobook) because of so many little contradictions with things I've done in the later books. So I'll probably go back at some point and revise EG to make it fit. There are those who will HATE that (EG is the "true" book!) but it's way easier than revising seven OTHER books to fit stuff I made up on the fly back in 1984.
Some of these questions will be answered in later short stories (remember, I'm writing one for every issue of IGMS) ... so I AM going to use your questions as a springboard. My only answer, though, will be in fiction, not in a list here ...
Now back to writing the screenplay. Mmmm, this is fun. Like the endless retranslations of the one poem in Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot." Fourth time I've attacked this story from page one on ...
Posted by Lucky_Sean (Member # 6223) on :
Enders Game: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... wait a min ... DAMN!
Posted by Penta (Member # 8950) on :
Mr. Card,
Thanks for the response!
I admit, trying to think these through would be...boring as hell for a novel.
I'm thankful you're planning of exploring these, though; For "world-building" for things like role-playing, it's little details like these that help immensely.
(Which is why I wish we'd see an Ender's Game RPG...)
Posted by Soara (Member # 6729) on :
For some reason, I thought Battle School was orbiting the earth. Is that true or did I randomly make it up?
Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
You randomly made it up. Man does not have the capability to even walk on the moon, nevertheless create an entire school in orbit. It's actually a bunker in Arizona. If you look closely on the Enders Game cover art, you will notice that it has nothing to do with the story, therefore is false. Posted by WntrMute (Member # 7556) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: Now back to writing the screenplay. Mmmm, this is fun. Like the endless retranslations of the one poem in Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot." Fourth time I've attacked this story from page one on ...
I thoroughly enjoyed Gödel, Escher, Bach. I couldn't make it past the first couple pages of "Le Ton Beau de whatever." As you may be able to see. He sure hyped it, though, in his 25th anniversary preface to GEB. Whatever, totally off topic.
Oh, one of those things to fix, I suspect (and you have got to have heard THIS one nearly a googolplex times infinity number of times) would be how Dr. Device works. Later books have a bomb kind of doohickey, while EG has a kind of ray thingamabob. (These are highly complex military type terms here, I understand, and so I apologise to any civilians.) Unless that was fixed in the author's definitive-and-ethnic-slur-free version of EG which I, sadly, have yet to purchase.
If only there were a convenient online store where I could purchase such a book....
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