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I really really am loathe to point this out. I don't believe I'll ever be happier to be told I'm wrong, so try and find a way to disprove this.
I was just re-reading Ender's Shadow after re-reading Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets and I fear I may have stumbled across some slight oversight. When Bean is talking to Sister Carlotta about the clean place, he mentions that he climbed out of his crib, but that he wasn't the first one. The others climbed out as well. At least some others, in any case.
In Shadow Puppets, Bean and Petra realise that there's no way to test for Anton's Key, and that out of the babies in the clean place, only Bean had the key turned, by virtue of the fact that he sensed danger enough to get himself out before they were killed, and he was the only one.
If Bean wasn't the first to escape, that means others must have sensed the danger as well. The others might possibly be smarter than he is. Remember, this is at 8 or 9 months of age. If Bean said he wasn't the first, that means another 8 or 9 month old infant must have escaped from a crib. At that age, it's highly unlikely that a kid would do so without being extremely intelligent and advanced.
I can see this 3 ways. 1) Either it was an oversight (I hate that way...) or 2) these children are going to come back in some later story. However, if the second option is true, where have they been until now? I would think that 21 babies who look identical to each other, are growing at this point in time extremely rapidly, and are highly intelligent, would be noticed already. Where are they?
The third option is that they never managed to actually escape the building, were found by Volescu and his men, and then killed. This still doesn't detract from the fact that they were extremely brilliant to sense the danger and get out of the cribs, just that they couldn't save themselves in the end, which might still negate the proof used in Shadow Puppets of there not being a way to test for Anton's Key.
quote:"I remember that everybody was upset. That's why I climbed out of bed. All the children were in trouble."
"All the children?"
"The little ones like me. And the bigger ones. Some of the grownups came in and looked at us and cried."
"Why?"
"Bad things, that's all. I knew it was a bad thing coming and I knew it would happen to all of us who were in the beds. So, I climbed out. I wasn't the first. I don't know what happened to the others."
That last paragraph continues, but. . .
From Shadow Puppets.
quote: There was no test. Back when he created Bean, Volescu had simply introduced the planter virus that was supposed to alter all the cells of the embryos, and then waited to see if any embryos live, and which of the survivors had been successfully altered. It happened they all survived. But not all of them necessarily had Anton's Key.
Maybe that was why, of all the nearly two dozen babies, only Bean escaped.
Maybe Bean was the only one with Anton's Key turned.
Also, I would like to emphasize that in Ender's Shadow, what Bean said was "The little ones like me. And the bigger ones." I don't believe anywhere it was said they were all born on the same day. Some of them could have been a couple of months older. And secondly, 8-9 month old children can (and often do) climb out of their cribs. What was done with the purpose of saving his life on Bean's part, may in fact, have been a natural behavior on the part of the rest of the kids.
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It is in my humble opinion that in shadow Puppets that Bean and Petra thought that Bean might have been the only one to actually have Anton's key turned. That does not suggest to me that he thought he was the only one with the key turned, but that due to not having any test to determine if they others had the key turned it would be impossible to know if he was the only one or not. And in reponse to the other children escaping, in Ender's Shadow Volescu had known that one, and only one, had got away. So unless Volescu was lieing, in which it would be where improbable due to the fact that it would not make sense to blurt out that he knew one of his subjects had got away to some nun who at least appeared to be working for the IF. And the second reason it would be illogical for him to lie is that if more than one of them were to escape, the most likely conclusion would have been that the children would be working in consort. Meaning the nun would have known about all the Beans. So it is in my opinion that there was no error, but that Bean and Petra were just questioning whether or not Bean was the only one whose gene manipulation had stuck.
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posted
Carlotta went to visit Anton in the Garden of Sofia and decoded his attempt at making his way around the implant in his brain. She then went to see Volescu.
quote: "Their bodies, then. Their motor skills." "Small," he said. "They were born small, they grow slowly. Undersized and underweight, all of them." "But very bright?" "Crawling very young. Making pre-speech sounds far earlier than normal. That's all we knew. I didn't see them often myself. I couldn't afford the risk of detection." "So what was your prognosis?" "Prognosis?" "How did you see their future?" "Dead. That's everyone's future. What are you talking about?" "If they hadn't been slaughtered, Dr. Volescu, what would have happened?" "They would have kept growing, of course." "And later?" "There is no later. They keep on growing." She thought for a moment, trying to process the information. "That's right, Sister. You're getting it. They grow slowly, but they never stop. That's what Anton's key does. Unlocks the mind because the brain never stops growing. But neither does anything else. The cranium keeps expanding - it's never fully closed. The arms and legs, longer and longer." "So when they reach adult height..." "There is no adult height. There's just height at time of death. You can't keep growing like that forever. There's a reason why evolution builds a stop-clock into the growth control of living bodies. You can't keep growing without some organ giving out, eventually. Usually the heart." The implications filled Sister Carlotta with dread. "And the rate of this growth? In the children, I mean? How long until they are at normal height for their age?" "My guess was that they'd catch up twice," said Volescu. "Once just before puberty, and then the normal kids would leap ahead for a while, but slow and steady wins the race, n'cest-ce pas? By twenty, they would be giants. And then they'd die, almost certainly before age twenty-five. Do you have any idea how huge they would be? So my killing them, you see - it was a mercy." "I doubt any of them would have chosen to miss out on even the mere twenty years you took from them." "They never knew what happened to them. I'm not a monster, We drugged them all. They died in their sleep and then the bodies were incinerated." "What about puberty? Would they ever mature sexually?" "That's the part we'll never know, isn't it?" Sister Carlotta got up to go. "He lived, didn't he?" asked Volescu. "Who?" "The one we lost. The one whose body wasn't there with the others. I counted only twenty-two going into the fire." "When you worship Molock, Dr. Volescu, you get no answer but the ones your chosen god provides." "Tell me what he's like." His eyes were so hungry.
So you see, Volescu said that they were all small. Every one of them. But Bean later said that some were bigger and some were smaller. So they were all probably small when compared to the average baby at birth, but they all varied in means of smallness with the babies they were with in the clean warm room. I would suppose that some of them were more intelligent than others in the clean room, but they were all more intelligent that anyone else besides them. So, Bean and the other babies that escaped with him were the smartest of the smartest. Volescu didn't say that Bean was the only one to try escaping, he only said that they lost him. This leaves the option of some escaping and being found in the clean room to meet their fiery end open.
I don't think it's a glitch. Hail the Almighty OSC !!
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even if more had antons key it doesn't matter, since Volescu said that he threw 22 bodies into the fire, meaning all but bean are dead. And for the whole antons key thing, i think that bean was just the smartest, just because they are all copies of each other doesn't mean they were the same in smartness.
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posted
Volescu also said their were clones of himself and that they were all boys, when the Delphikis indicated that they were boys and girls. He is a recreational liar.
I remember finding it odd that Sister Carlotta counted that information as confirming of her conclusions, also that there were 23 embryos. Assuming the technology continues to improve as it has done, and that couples of certain religions only use one embryo at a time, most stockpiles of embryos would be constituted of 23.
And not to rub salt in wounds, but recall that OSC forgot that Ender was born in the city and not suburban NC when he wrote SH. So not all incongruities are part of a master plan. It's not like I caught that error on my own. Also, Card doesn't read most of his books over and over like we do.
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quote:Originally posted by Kayla Also, I would like to emphasize that in Ender's Shadow, what Bean said was "The little ones like me. And the bigger ones." I don't believe anywhere it was said they were all born on the same day. Some of them could have been a couple of months older.
Alright, that does seem more plausible.
quote:Originally posted by Kayla And secondly, 8-9 month old children can (and often do) climb out of their cribs. What was done with the purpose of saving his life on Bean's part, may in fact, have been a natural behavior on the part of the rest of the kids.
When average 8-9 month old children learn to climb out of their cribs, they do so regularly, leading to the caretaker to most likely take precautions against it. They all climbed out roughly around the same time, which leads me to believe that they sensed the danger as well.
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quote:Originally posted by LockeTreaty It is in my humble opinion that in shadow Puppets that Bean and Petra thought that Bean might have been the only one to actually have Anton's key turned. That does not suggest to me that he thought he was the only one with the key turned, but that due to not having any test to determine if they others had the key turned it would be impossible to know if he was the only one or not. And in reponse to the other children escaping, in Ender's Shadow Volescu had known that one, and only one, had got away. So unless Volescu was lieing, in which it would be where improbable due to the fact that it would not make sense to blurt out that he knew one of his subjects had got away to some nun who at least appeared to be working for the IF. And the second reason it would be illogical for him to lie is that if more than one of them were to escape, the most likely conclusion would have been that the children would be working in consort. Meaning the nun would have known about all the Beans. [Smile] So it is in my opinion that there was no error, but that Bean and Petra were just questioning whether or not Bean was the only one whose gene manipulation had stuck.
I appologise. I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding what you mean. Would you mind running it by one more time? The idea may be a good one, I just don't understand.
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quote:Originally posted by wieczorek So you see, Volescu said that they were all small. Every one of them. But Bean later said that some were bigger and some were smaller. So they were all probably small when compared to the average baby at birth, but they all varied in means of smallness with the babies they were with in the clean warm room. I would suppose that some of them were more intelligent than others in the clean room, but they were all more intelligent that anyone else besides them. So, Bean and the other babies that escaped with him were the smartest of the smartest. Volescu didn't say that Bean was the only one to try escaping, he only said that they lost him. This leaves the option of some escaping and being found in the clean room to meet their fiery end open.
First of all, I wouldn't take too much stock in what Volescu says about the babies. By saying they were small, he's trying to excuse their murder. It's only the genetics that is believable, because that's what he's proud of.
Second, alright. So Bean was the only one to escape. That doesn't answer the question in Shadow Puppets, when Petra uses that information to deduce that there is no test. She would not have been able to make that assumption if she had known (or the author had remembered) that Bean was not the only one who tried to get out. They may have all had Anton's Key turned, or at least the "little ones" that Bean talked about.
The reference to size could have meant which ones were the smartest, the smaller ones being smarter than the bigger ones. Or it could have meant different stages in development. We don't know which sized kids actually climbed out of their cribs. If the smaller ones all climbed out, either before or after Bean, and none of them escaped aside from him, then we can assume that Anton's Key worked only some of the time, and there still might be a test for it. If a mixed group climbed out, they could either be older or have the Key turned, which still doesn't prove anything. We can't say that only the biggest climbed out, because Bean was one of the small.
So the problem still remains. Bean wasn't the only one who tried to escape. There still might have been a test for Anton's Key. Therefore Petra's assumption was incorrect (or at least too hasty).
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quote:Originally posted by pooka And not to rub salt in wounds, but recall that OSC forgot that Ender was born in the city and not suburban NC when he wrote SH. So not all incongruities are part of a master plan. It's not like I caught that error on my own. Also, Card doesn't read most of his books over and over like we do.
It's tough being a SciFi writer, isn't it? All those nasty fans reading everything too carefully . . .
Seriously, it's only in the genre of SciFi that the fans are so careful about storylines, paradoxes, mistakes, omissions, and things like that. At least from what I've seen. I believe it represents a greater need for detail and consistency in the people who read it. Perhaps a higher intelligence as well? Posts: 66 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Nah, we're just the nerds living in our parents basements with nothing better to do than pick apart a book that was meant as entertainment, not the meaning of life. We really should get a life. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Speak for yourself, Kayla. I'm... well, I'm not... I mean... oh never mind. To the original topic, though:
quote:Criticisms. OSC has no illusion that everybody likes all his books equally. But he likes all his books. So perhaps a signing is not the occasion to tell him which of his books you did not care for. After all, you would hardly say to a parent you just met, "I really love all your children except Bucky. He's ugly and he smells." It might be true, but the parent does not want to hear it. (Besides, what exactly can OSC do about it? The book you didn't like has already been published.) If, on the other hand, you found a specific typographical error, internal contradiction, or historical or scientific error in a book, it would be kind of you to write a note about it and give it to him so that he has it in writing and can pass it along to the editor of the next edition.
Identifying possible mistakes, while it can be fun, doesn't really serve the author unless there's another release of the book, in which those changes might be made. I was told in the past by his assistant Kathleen that if a story is already out in paperback, it's probably not going to be changed for a reprint. That's certainly not the case every time, though (Ender's Game, for example, has been re-released with changes, and many of his novels have been recently re-released in trade paperback -- I don't know whether they were changed or not).
Anyway, um, what was my point? Oh yeah -- my parents didn't have a basement. My brother lived in the garage for a little while, though -- does that count?
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I have mixed feelings about trying to find faults or proving them incorrect or even trying to prove your own idea in books. It can be very fun at some times, especially if you're the one who's trying to prove that your idea is correct. But it can also be frustrating. e.g., when you are trying to look for an excerpt from a book and you look up at the clock and realize you've been hunting for an hour...hehe . But I certainly will admit that it's very fun and puzzling. Frustration, I think, (I hope you understand this) can also be interesting. When you find a way to prove yourself correct, you feel even happier if you've been frustrated throughout your "project's" entirety. And what's even more fun is when you think that you've proven your idea and someone else presents it in another way that contradicts your idea...
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down"
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quote:Originally posted by Kayla Nah, we're just the nerds living in our parents basements with nothing better to do than pick apart a book that was meant as entertainment, not the meaning of life. We really should get a life.
I live in the attic. Do I count as pathetic?
quote:Originally posted by Papa Moose Identifying possible mistakes, while it can be fun, doesn't really serve the author unless there's another release of the book, in which those changes might be made. I was told in the past by his assistant Kathleen that if a story is already out in paperback, it's probably not going to be changed for a reprint. That's certainly not the case every time, though (Ender's Game, for example, has been re-released with changes, and many of his novels have been recently re-released in trade paperback -- I don't know whether they were changed or not).
Well, mostly I'm trying to find out if it was a mistake or not. I could be wrong about the whole thing, and there's a real reason for it.
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quote: When average 8-9 month old children learn to climb out of their cribs, they do so regularly, leading to the caretaker to most likely take precautions against it. They all climbed out roughly around the same time, which leads me to believe that they sensed the danger as well.
Well, that's speculation, not fact, and therefore unreliable. Why do people try so hard to find errors in books? Do you think it makes you look smarter? Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Nick Well, that's speculation, not fact, and therefore unreliable.
Speculation, but with roots in psychology. A child, when he learns a new trick, will do it whenever he wants. He's not bound by any rules of when to or when not to perform his new stunt. If a child would do something like climb out of a crib, especially in a hush-hush environment like that, the adults would find a way to make sure he did not get out again. Seems pretty reliable to me.
quote:Originally posted by Nick Why do people try so hard to find errors in books? Do you think it makes you look smarter?
Have you never seen something out of place and it bothered you? Not neatness, but something just . . . off? It bugged me, so I asked. If you read what I wrote at the top, I hate pointing out mistakes in books, especially of great authors. Gods are not supposed to make mistakes. Posts: 66 | Registered: Feb 2003
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So it is in my opinion that there was no error, but that Bean and Petra were just questioning whether or not Bean was the only one whose gene manipulation had stuck.
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. But I certainly will admit that it's very fun and puzzling. Frustration, I think, (I hope you understand this) can also be interesting. When you find a way to prove yourself correct, you feel even happier if you've been frustrated throughout your "project's" entirety. And what's even more fun is when you think that you've proven your idea and someone else presents it in another way that contradicts your idea... ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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