I was rereading Ender's Game the other day, and followed it up with reading the Ender's Shadow series, and I found what looks like a tiny mistake, but my version of Ender's Game is older, so it may have been fixed since then.
I don't have page numbers (I'll add them in later), but after Petra had her little collapse and came back, it says that two others had collapses too, and one of them was Vlad, who was, I think it said something to the effect of 'and unlike Petra, he was out for the duration.' Petra was only out for the one battle, then got some sleep and came back. Vlad on the other hand was supposedly catatonic, but in subsquent stories, and in the end of Ender's Shadow (I think), it says that he came back for the final battle.
Maybe I'm just taking "duration" too literally, but I'd think that'd mean that he's out for the rest of the time there, or else why bother to make a distinction between his collapse and Petra's lesser one?
I'll get page numbers and follow up when I get the chance over this weekend.
Posted by dubloe7 (Member # 11881) on :
the exact quote from ender's game is: "Petra wasn't the only one to blow out. Vlad went catatonic and couldn't be roused from his bunk. It took three days for the doctors to get him awake again, and unlike Petra, he was out for the duration. He just couldn't concentrate."
from my reading of that, I think that means for the rest of the invasion sequence, though I don't know about the references in the other books for sure.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
It's a pair of huge, sprawling, interconnected series, peppered with short stories, written over a period of decades. If I were the one writing it I can almost guarantee you that there'd be more continuity errors than there are with Card doing the writing.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Oh I'm not criticizing. I can't even imagine the continuity errors I'd have if I wrote a series of similar scope and size.
I just wasn't sure if I was reading it wrong, and were I an author, I'd like someone to point out even tiny things that I'd missed so I could fix them later when I put out new editions. I didn't mean to word the thread like I was saying "oh look he screwed up!" as a criticism. I apologize to OSC and to anyone else if it came out that way.
Posted by Josh Cooper (Member # 11533) on :
I know more about Ender's Game than a personal probably should. My friends would certianly think so... In Ender's Game, it doesn't say who the others were, just that there were two other that dropped after Petra. Then later, it only mentions him laughing in the final battle when Bean said "The Enemy's Gate is Down." Both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow mention him laughing after that quote. Dubloe's quote is actually in Ender's Shadow shortly after that battle. I think what happened was that Card wrote Ender's Shadow more specific, listing people to fit the roles of those who dropped. Then later on, when he got to writing the final battle, he remembered or looked up what overlap there would be and just wrote it again. The thing is, there are always errors. In Ender's Shadow, Bean and Sister Carlotta visit Greensboro and the way that he writes it, it sounds like Ender is from there. Talking about how it was the same path Ender walked and all but Ender never actually ever so much as saw the house. He was born in a city that's never mentioned. He does address the point in Ender in Exile as it was in Ender's Game, but it's there such as it is. There's others but there's really no point in fixing them because the story is still what it is. It still flows fine and whatever errors come up don't really matter all that much. As long as there are no big ones then it's fine.
Posted by neo-dragon (Member # 7168) on :
quote:Originally posted by Josh Cooper: In Ender's Shadow, Bean and Sister Carlotta visit Greensboro and the way that he writes it, it sounds like Ender is from there. Talking about how it was the same path Ender walked and all but Ender never actually ever so much as saw the house. He was born in a city that's never mentioned.
Actually, that's in Shadow of the Hegemon, and it's fixed in the paperback edition. One of them, I can't recall if it was Carlotta or Bean, points out that Ender never actually lived in Greensboro.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Mrs. Wiggin does, if neither of them do. She specifically says that they moved there after he went to Battle School and never saw the house.