posted
In rereading "Enders Shadow" the other day I notices that as the last battle begins Bean has the thought that even if the Buggers were not comming back, now they would have to because humanity had proven itself to be too much of a threat.
Could there be truth in that? I think that it is logical to assume that if the Buggers had won Ender's final exam they would have then needed to deal with all the other fleets around their various worlds.
Also once annalyzed they could not ignore the fact that leaving all the hive queens on one world was a losing stategy.
So they would have needed to fight humanity just to keep enough space to survive.
That would make the Hive Queen Ender found nothing more then a contingency in the event of failure. It would also justify the Zenocide somewhat.
posted
That is one thing that has always bothered me about Ender's Game. All of the queens were on one planet, right? But during the second bugger invasion, they brought a hive queen to live at their new colony. Why weren't there hive queens at each of the colonies of the buggers throughout space? Ender and team would have had to use Dr. Device on all of the colon worlds in order to get the effect that they did. Of course, that would not have left any pre-terraformed worlds for humans to go occupy.
So why was it done this way? I imagine because it was convenient for the plot, not because it made sense.
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posted
There were hive queens on all the colony worlds, but they had gone up in ships to command the battle, IIRC.
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And they didn't want to die out, but they didn't want to kill the humans because I think it took them that long to figure out that they were murdering setient beings. Remember Rackhams speech where he theorizes that when they started killing it was like they were just paring fingernails.
When they failed to get into Ender's mind to stop the violence they reseined themselves to being wiped out but left the Hive Queen, who wouldn't be intimidating and would only be found my Ender who I think they knew didn't want to have killed them off.
quote: There were hive queens on all the colony worlds, but they had gone up in ships to command the battle, IIRC.
I don't think that makes sense. Since they have instantaneous communication with their drones (and each other), why would they go up in the ships to fight? It just makes them move vulnerable.
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posted
I do not find the hive queens to be that moral, certainly it is stupid to allow oneself to be killed so one need not kill. Stupid from the point of evolutionary survival.
However if they were resigned to failure why fight so hard? It was clear that they were defending as best they could when Ender attacked them.
Also if they were sure of failure why not flee?
No it was clear that they gave it the best fight they could, attacking Ender with all they had on several levels and they just found him to be too alien to control and too insightful to defeat.
posted
I, too, find it a little stretched. But what I think is that it is emphasized over and over throughout ALL the Ender books that the buggers are NOT varelse, they are ramen. They are capable of sentient (spelling help?)thought and decision. And they are not a cruel sort of sentient species. So yes, in terms of survival letting themselves be almost wiped out is kind of dumb.
But the buggers aren't really on the same scale of normal evolutionary stratagy. Survival of the fittest is not really a factor. We learn (I think in Xenocide) that the workers arent naturally tuned to the queen; that she has to capture them. But still, she makes the decisions when it comes to species preservation, I'm sure. And the trouble is that with the much less individualist thought system, as long as there is a queen they survive. Plus I'm sure there must be something in the fact that, being a rather nice sort of being, she wouldn't WANT to wipe out another sentient species. She would hope to gain time and communicate with Ender, but would not go out with destructive intent. Would you? I wouldn't. Really, it takes a pretty strong and desperate mentality to wipe out some one else when you know that you can continue what matters of your species.
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I am all about live and let live, however the Rules of engagement tell me that when my life is threatened I do onto others before they do onto me.
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