posted
As some of the forum readers know I'm in the process of most througly reading of Ender's Shadow (ie. translating it).
In Chapter 8, Bean uses his desk with other kids' passwords while those kids are in the shower. In Chapter 10, it is written "They were told to wear their towels when going to and from the toilet in the night, so Bean assumed that it, too, could be tracked". If the towels can be tracked, the system would immediately know that someone can not use his desk while his towel is in in the bathroom, so this is not consistent with Chapter 8.
What do you think?
Posts: 30 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I would guess that they couldn't uniquely track towells. What I mean is that they couldn't tell whose towell was and whose towell wasn't in the shower.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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the only logical explaination that would make it not a mistake would be that the adults wanted Bean to play with the computers(highly likely) mainly because he didnt play the fantasy game and wanted to get inside that brilliant mind of his.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Mar 2004
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The idea that the towels could be tracked was a guess, and not necessarily an accurate one.
Plus, it would take a deliberate effort to track the use of desks in reference to the movement of towels, and most of the time, the teachers simply may not have bothered.
Plus, breaking into the network was actually one of the subtle "games" available to the children. I believe that Ender figured that out in the original book. So even if the teachers cared to track whether or not a child was present to use his desk at any particular moment, the fact that a student was breaking in might not send up any warnings at all — it's just the normal behavior of a clever, computer-savvy child, and one that the teachers want to subtly encourage.
Note how non-upset Ender's first teacher was when Ender started playing God with Bernard. He knew exactly what Ender was doing, and didn't give a crap.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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"Also later in the chapters the teachers tell him that they knew he was messing around in the system" -- not later: already in Chapter 8, Dimak tells him this.
Posts: 30 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Another possibility . . . and one I've actually acted (or rather, not acted) upon as a teacher: just because you know something is going on doesn't mean you want to act on it. Doing so tips your hand, and you might not want to do this over little things. So suppose they can track students by their towels. They want to use this knowledge quietly, or save it for when it really matters. But they would not want to give strong hints about that capability, or it would become useless . . . and so when someone logs on while his towel says he should be away, they make note of this, perhaps spy in subtle ways, but don't necessarily react overtly.
Or Bean could have been full of it. :-p
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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What a chore, chx! Wow - the last thing I tried translating were data collection forms that had been written in Spanish, to English. (quivers at the memory)
posted
Another is how in Ender's Game the Little Doc was a beam weapon... then got transformed into some kind of missle.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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And in Ender's game they started practicing in the Battle Room while they were still Launchies, but in ES they didn't even get Flash suits( or whatever they were called) until they joined an Army.
Posts: 739 | Registered: Dec 2003
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i think it says at some point in enders shadow that the towels werent person specific they just it was almost heat operated they knew someone was in the showers and tehy could watch them but they had no idea who exactly it was..
Posts: 14 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Wow. This is why Papa Moose is in Crystal City
[starts to fret over how we might handle it in a potential video game]
You know, maybe the first incarnation of the MDD, which went to the bugger homeworld, WAS a missile, but then they found a better way to get the same reaction, and shipped off the improved version on subsequent ships ..?
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I'm sure there's a way to back-justify it (a la belt-of-satellites), but let's face it -- it was a mistake. Not a big deal, but one that gets pointed out pretty frequently.
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Only reason I'm worried about harmonizing the two is for possible future adaptations of both works, not for any reason of embarrassment This stuff happens, especially when you wait a good 15 years or more between books.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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One thing that's always bothered me is when Dink(?) is talking to Ender about the Battle Room, and how there are supposed to be several different rooms that rotate in null-G, but for some inexplicable reason gravity is still present in the corridors immediately outside the Battle Room.
It certainly seemed as though OSC was setting up a plot point, but it was never used.
Why can't he be perfect!?! Posts: 9 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Slurpy -- that was explained on the asteroid base. We actually have gravity control, adapted from Formic technology. There was a specific point where Ender realized that the asteroiid couldn't have the gravity it had unless we had the ability to control gravity -- and then he specificaly thought something ot the effect of "Huh. So THAT's how we had gravity in the hall outside the Battle Room. Must not be spinning after all, they just tell us that to keep the technology secret."
That's an extreme paraphrase, as I've not read EG in a couple of years, but I remember seeing that part every thime I've read it. Now if I could just remember the name of the asteroid too. . . anyway -- in the Command School.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Aug 2001
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"You know, maybe the first incarnation of the MDD, which went to the bugger homeworld, WAS a missile, but then they found a better way to get the same reaction, and shipped off the improved version on subsequent ships ..?"
That's actually the reverse of the chronology you need, Geoff. In EG, it's not a missile -- but by CotM, it IS.
So perhaps the military decided that they wanted a Little Doctor that could shoot around corners, and converted it to missile form? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: So perhaps the military decided that they wanted a Little Doctor that could shoot around corners, and converted it to missile form?
This is the most likely scenario. Heck, the fleet was launched in Speaker for the dead, this was 3,000 years after Ender's game.
It is understandable that the technology had changed in 3,000 years. It seems to be an advancement, rather than a flaw. To make it clear that it was not a flaw, future works could always mention the missle as an advancement over the beam. I remember in CotM the guy launching the missle had a thought process on how easy the missle made it, something about not having to drop out of lightspeed for very long. Perhaps a beam takes more focus...and more time.
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ok I might be mistaking but I recently re-read Ender's Shadow and I remember since Bean knew the ships were real and that this was actually the final battle, he said the pray to all the ships. And then when they were trying to get into the planets atmosphere, he said "Set it off in your ships" Wouldn't that imply that it would be a missle and not a beam. I mean it would be hard to point the beam or something at your own ship. And if it was a beam, then they wouldn't have the problem with it burning up upon entering the atmosphere. This are just thoughts and I might be wrong.
quote: k I might be mistaking but I recently re-read Ender's Shadow and I remember since Bean knew the ships were real and that this was actually the final battle, he said the pray to all the ships. And then when they were trying to get into the planets atmosphere, he said "Set it off in your ships" Wouldn't that imply that it would be a missle and not a beam.
Yep, I just got to that point in my rereading of ES, and sure enough, they treat it like a missle...talking about launching the Dr. Device (and as you mentioned setting one of them off inside of a ship). Where in EG Ender refers to it as focusing the weapon (as if it is a laser) instead of launching. Lol, and we can't use the advanced technology reasoning, since it is the same battle.
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Well, I always though of the MDD as a charge that was launched initialy with rockets, but was so large that the rockets couldn't keep that up that pace for long. I always thought that it's path can't change once it's been launched and it just floats to it's destination. Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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I was recommended to read Ender's game by a friend. When I came to the bookstore I thought I bought the book, instead it was Ender's Shadow. OSC appeared to have written some more books!
If found it very funny to see that the beginning took place in Rotterdam and even in the district Schiebroek where I am born. Boy Bean was born a 100 meters from the place where I went to school. This part of the book I found quite enthralling. The struggle for life of the groups of children is very well written. The latter part in the spaceship is unfortunately indeed rather inconsistent and illogical. The kid's development suddenly drops down, he even has difficulties in learning Greek! Furthermore I began to suspect osc of a rather conservative and simple view of the world. So sad and bad.
However... 1. The Rindijk street ---> de Ringdijk (De straat waar mijn school heeft gestaan.) 2. Bean tells a Ducheval that his name means two horses in French. Sic! A writer has to be smarter than the smartest person he writes about. I guess osc could better write about mediocre gifted people, repeatedly Bean does things which don't agree with his proposed intelligence.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Check the intro to chapter 7. It's explains how the tracking system works. It's pretty much a counter. It doesn't track specific students... just entrances and exits from various locations. It also doesn't tell them where specifically the student is. It just knows a student left the dorm, then, say, entered the dinning hall 7 minutes later.
Posts: 4 | Registered: Jun 2004
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@IComeAnon: Very well! Dutch is quite like German.
@Rohan: I told the friend who recommended me Ender's Game (and whom I by accident gave a sad looking Graemlin) about the coincidence that the Shadow's beginning was in the same place where I was raised and about the little faults it contained. He then mentioned this site. So that's why.
As I wrote, the Shadow began very good. When the Bean was in space it gradually became a story for young people, with black-and-white personages and an obligate identification with the smart kid.
No problem, what somehow worried me was the attack of the Terrans at the Aliens and the proposal as this being the only defence. As in USA attacking Iraq. The motherplanet with all the pregnant mother aliens and all the mother children was destroyed, the aliens being inferior, and osc saw that it was good. The mostly young and influenceable readers of this book are learned that the Machiavellian "Attack is the best defence" is the best way by conflicts. C'est tout Posts: 2 | Registered: Jun 2004
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you need to read speaker for the dead, xenocide, and children of the mind if you think that.. the rest of the ender series is all about how they try to make up for jumping the gun and killing the aliens without ever trying to see if there was another way... Hopefully if you read those it will redeem him a bit in your mind...
However that said OSC is very conservative and a supporter of the war in Iraq.. cure with one hand and kill with the other i guess, neh?
Posts: 4 | Registered: Jul 2004
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friend. When I came to the bookstore I thought I bought the book, instead it was Ender's Shadow. OSC appeared to have written some more books!![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
Dutch is quite like German. 
