posted
OK As I recall it was Graff who somewhere along the line is credited with having made the arguement that the leaders of the military invasion had to be children.
Do we ever get the whole discussion ? I can't recall it. Any Ender prequel should include (IMHO) the events leading to that decision - which could not have been easy! It's central to the whole theme. Just imagine the milatry resistance.
Unless I have such a faulty memory that I can't remember it already being in the books....
Posts: 15 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I don't know if I'm fuzzyremembering this or if my mind made it up. I seem to remember that Graff insisted on kids because their minds are more flexible. Not only are the more open to new ways of thinking--an absolute necessity when presented with not only a completely alien foe and strategy, but also fighting on a new front (in space)--but they also haven't been hopelessly entrenched in the butt-covering-do-nothingness of the Enderverse military.
Posts: 11 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
It's mentioned several times, both in Ender's Game and in Shadow.
The problem is adult commanders (or any commanders, presumably) become attached to their troops. This is a good thing. However, it's impossible for a sane commander to take losses to his forces lightly, because it's such a personal thing. So what happens is that as the commanders get more seasoned, they become either too timid, worried about losing troops, or too reckless, as in death-wish reckless. Neither of these are good.
Also, it was discovered that the human mind's peak comes as a teenager, before you're bogged down into the system, stuck in a rut. So they combined these two facts and decided that the ideal solution was to train children who could command while never knowing they were commanding.
Of course, this wouldn't have been possible without the ansible. The ansible gave us the extra 30 or 70 years or whatever to find the commander we needed.
[edit: how many m's in commander?]
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
The problem then is the system. What is this "that the human mind's peak comes as a teenage". Commanders just escape the responsibility for what they are doing.There are a lot of cowards in this world. And when you do something you don't uderstand and expect ????????????? you just use someone enough innocent to do it without any guilt.
Posts: 22 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
It has nothing to do with being a coward. If you are a good commander, you have the love and respect of your men, because they know you won't spend their lives lightly. This will eventually hamstring the CO's, because their love of their troops will sway their decisions in battle. It's inevitable.
It's not that adult commanders don't want the responsibility, in fact, in Ender's Game the adults take all the responsibility. The kids were just tools to them. They tell Ender he was a weapon, and they, not him, were responsible for where he was pointed.
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posted
The proof of that is the steep learning curve in most games, which for some odd reason us kids can master at a single try. I remember when I was younger I NEVER read the manual or did the tutorials nowadays I'm at a complete loss without going through it at least once.
Posts: 1567 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Everyone can be a child any time he want but there is a difference between beenig kid and act like kid. Another thing is standing behind a child. Try to forget(or don't remember) all you know and you can see what you are able to learn, think, do. The child is a empty blank. In Ender's Game maybe Ender is a wepon but he is not a machine. He acept all the guilt, that is responsible behaviour. Love and respect differ a lotŠ»
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posted
Part of the science fiction setting of Ender's Game is taking at face value the assumptions about neuroscience that require the heroes to be kids. The scientific dialogue in the field continues to go back and forth.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Thanks for all the comments BUT I still have a difficult time picturing the military leaders agreeing to this.
Questions-
The ships were sent out before Graff could have formulated his plan. Whay was the original plan? What was the backup plan? They could not have known Ender would be found.
Do the soldiers on the ship know who's pulling the strings?
Do the political leaders know the kids will run the show?
If kids were the answer why did no one get to command school until their teens? We were told repeatedly that they accelerated Ender's path through the system. What if he'd been found a few years earlier - would he have trained more slowly? Would they all have been older? If so that shoots holes in the idea they HAD to be so young to beat the buggers.
So many questions - so little time....
Posts: 15 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
"The Polish Boy" in the First Meetings collection has some of your answers.
John Paul Wiggin, Ender's father, was tested at the age of five by I.F. officials, one of which was Graff himself. On page 19 of the paperback, it states in about thirty-five years the already sent fleet will arrive at the Bugger worlds.
The original plan was probably to just start recruiting potential commanders for the fleet. Rackham stayed behind explicitly for this purpose. If not Ender, then some other would have been chosen.
Chamrajnagar, then representing the Polemarch, and a Russian representing the Strategos, are both present at a meeting discussing strategy towards getting John Paul into Battle School, thus implying that of course the political leaders know what's up (besides, the testing is mandatory, because a Captain mentions an initiative, it's obvious the government knows the plan). This was a whole three and a half decades before the events of Ender's Game, so I'd assume everyone by now would be quite comfortable with the age level. On the same note, it's probably true that the ship's soldiers know what is going on as well.
I think that the kids had to be so young to be "indoctrinated" into military routine and groomed to be commanders. Give a kid eight years in Battle School, more in Tactical and Pre-Command, and the kid is now raised to be a soldier. They know nothing else. Perfect commanders.
Now, after John Paul doesn't go to Battle School, Graff has his next plan ready (described in First Meetings)...wait for John Paul's kids. Pair him up with another genius (Teresa Brown, in "Teacher's Pest") and wait.
There are multiple things that could have made the IF speed up its schedule of looking for a commander. First off, they may have been waiting for the firstborn Wiggin, but when he turned out to be questionable, they had to wait. Another factor could be that the fleet arrived at the Bugger worlds sooner than expected. In First Meetings, a window of about five years is their general estimate, about 35 years ahead. But overall, they hit the timing pretty well dead on.
Graff says that people reach peak military commander ability in their late teens. Thus, teenagers going to Command School makes perfect sense. When the IF finally got their expected commander, he was a little late, but good enough that the extra years of training wouldn't matter, and they could just skip him through.
Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: I'm working on a Mazer in flight story right now that should help you spot the time when the plan was formulated.
It will appear in my new online sci-fi/fantasy magazine. More later.
Your new online sci-fi/fantasy magazine? Have you announced this before...or is that what you will tell more about later?
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
Lupus - I am with you whassup with this????
Moreover I am fascinated by the concept of the military accepting the idea that a child would lead them. I know Graff says there is no backup BUT what if there was no Ender or if Bonzo had killed him? They could not have been counting on Bean.
Were there no other outstanding students ever in 35 years?? What happened to them?
I also can't help but wonder what happened to Petra and Bean's as well as Petra and Peter's kids. Presumably geniuses....
Posts: 15 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Bad news ... I meant to have the discussion in the Mazer story, but it ended without that discussion being relevant. So maybe I'll have a sequel where it does get discussed. Weird, how the story took on its own momentum and even though that very discussion was the whole REASON I started the story, there was never a place to put it in without dragging the whole thing to a stop.
Maybe the sequel will be from Graff's point of view.
Petra's and Bean's kids all became opera singers. Something about the combined genes really did something to the vocal cords. Petra's and Peter's kids went off to the colonies so they could find new worlds to conquer, their dad having already conquered Earth.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
So does that mean you've completed the Mazer story? And there's a potential sequel coming? How long is it?
Glad to know what happens to the rest of Bean's children. Also glad to know that opera singing survives through the years. Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Bad news ... I meant to have the discussion in the Mazer story, but it ended without that discussion being relevant. So maybe I'll have a sequel where it does get discussed. Weird, how the story took on its own momentum and even though that very discussion was the whole REASON I started the story, there was never a place to put it in without dragging the whole thing to a stop.
I think I've pinpointed the reason why stand-alone novels turn into eight novel series. Their is always another story worth telling if you create interesting characters. This is why sitcoms can run for 10 years. Every week something interesting happens.
You could write an Enderverse novel every year for the next 30 and I'd still wait eagerly for every one, as would most of your fans (I know there is zero chance of this happening, but play along).
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Hmmmm.... Let's see since Nikolai was smart but not "supersupergenius" I buy the normal kids of Bean and Petra being Opera singers ;-) Their inheritance pattern thus implying that the Anton's key is autosomal dominant but that Bean was heterozygous.
Peter and Petra (the P P 's?) should have had kids like Teresa and Paul - geniuses with ambition. I guess then running the colonies makes sense - although we don't ever hear any details in the "Hegemon" book from any viewpoint about their children. ;-)
I'd still love to hear how the whole set up came about and was bought into by the military. I just can't believe there were NO other teens or kids that were amazing and should have played a role in the bugger wars. After all those years? Not even as trainers? NOTHING?
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posted
They were probably doing behind-the-scenes work. If you think about it, it would work smoother with just one commander. And it was likely easier for Ender to work with people he already knew about. He could use the kids more effectively than strange soldiers, far older than him, that may not respect him as much. As far as trainers go, Ender had the best already: Rackham. And who's to say that some of the Battle School teachers weren't former students?
Posts: 973 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Sid Meier: The proof of that is the steep learning curve in most games, which for some odd reason us kids can master at a single try. I remember when I was younger I NEVER read the manual or did the tutorials nowadays I'm at a complete loss without going through it at least once.
That doesn't prove your mind is ossifying, it proves you are completely without historical perspective. Just over our lifetimes, computer capabilities have increased so incredibly that games have gotten vastly more complicated. Try running HoI on an old 1992-vintage 386, and you'll see what I mean.
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Is it true, though, that on their way they stumble across an old derelict colonization transport ship, roughly tuna-fish-can shaped, being run by a bunch of murderous hyper-intelligent monkeys?
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: Bad news ... I meant to have the discussion in the Mazer story, but it ended without that discussion being relevant. So maybe I'll have a sequel where it does get discussed. Weird, how the story took on its own momentum and even though that very discussion was the whole REASON I started the story, there was never a place to put it in without dragging the whole thing to a stop.
Maybe the sequel will be from Graff's point of view.
Petra's and Bean's kids all became opera singers. Something about the combined genes really did something to the vocal cords. Petra's and Peter's kids went off to the colonies so they could find new worlds to conquer, their dad having already conquered Earth.
Heh. So are you trying to connect Songmaster into the Enderverse as well? :-) Petra's and Bean's kids become the first songbirds! That would be wierd.
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