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First of all, sorry if this has already been asked. I didn't see anything explicitly answering my question, but this is my 1st post here, so I could have easily missed it. In Ender's Shadow, Achilles comes to Battle School. One chapter (I don't have the book here in front of me so I don't remember the exact page, but I believe it was after 300, maybe around 330, near the 3rd page of a chapter, left side page, toward bottom) talks about how "the universe always seemed to open itself up to Achilles," or something very similar. Achilles was talking about how Bean helped Achilles, then the doctor that healed his leg, etc. However, Achilles says something about the Buggers, and I don't have a clue how he would have come up with this. I believe it was along the lines of "and that was the great power of the buggers. They were one mind, controlled by the hive queen..." How would he have POSSIBLY known that?! No one, except Mazer, who couldn't have possibly passed the information on to Achilles, no one knew that, not even Bean. I'm wondering, maybe the narrator stepped out of the Achilles point of view and was simply stating from a 3rd party point of view why the buggers were so strong? If anyone else has any thoughts about this, please feel free to share. Thanks.
Posts: 35 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
That's a good point. They never show you Achilles getting told that the Buggars have a hive mind but that part wasn't a secret in the IF. No one knew about the Ansible save a few important people but even the "vids" showed a sort of reacting-before-possible behavior that first showed humans that they were mentally connected. I think it was more to highlight Achilles' need for total control over those around him. He admires the Queen's ability to totally overmaster her subjects. Then kind of control Achilles will never possess, yet always strives for.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Good point about his admiration toward the ability to overmaster one's subjects, as the Queen did. That's exactly what Achilles does in the book, such as Poke and with his surgeon. I definitely like how Card put Achilles back into the story. Not only does it prove just how clever Bean is (with his trap and whatnot), but it shows the sort of final test that Bean had to go through, parallelling Ender and his fight with Bonzo. So much symbolism in the book, too. Anyway, I'm now reading Speaker for the Dead, and I'm liking it so far, even though it's a bit slower than Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.
Side note (unrelated to this topic): After reading those 2 so far, and even though I'm only about 100 pages through Speaker, I have to comment on how Card does such a spectacular job with endings. I don't just mean the end of the book, I mean endings as in the last time we see a character, or the last time we see someone at Battle School, etc. For example, just think back to the 1st chapter of Ender's Game. I mean come on, a 6 year old is smart enough and has the will to beat the crap out of a kid twice his size, scare the living crap out of anybody else who might have wanted to hurt him at school, but deep down inside he had no real desire to hurt the kid. Yet, he knew what needed to be done and because of that, he realized the results would benefit him and that was enough to persuade him to carry out the one thing he never wanted to do (sorry for the run-on). And of course, as previously mentioned, how Ender and Bean leave Battle School; each of them overcome bullies again, showing their wit and will. And the end of Ender's Game, how Ender not only does his personal penance for having killed all the Buggers, but also inhabits the former Bugger world, finds the monster's skeleton and the castle (that was a frickin sweet twist), finds the cocoon, and (one of my favorite lines of the book from Valentine), that even though they might be adults by day, they're kids at heart and can have pillow fights at night when no one would know about it. It's just such a good ending. And the end of Ender's Shadow, how Bean and Nikolai go back home to Bean's father and unknowing mother, despite the doom that seems to be imminent (the after-effects of Anton's key, unless there's something in another book I haven't read yet), we are still happy to see Bean finally has a family, something he never really had before. And finally, from what I've read, Ender's departure from Valentine in Speaker for the Dead. Even though it's so sad to see the two of them split from each other, it's amazing how Valentine's grief turns into pride and admiration for Ender once Plikt uncovers the truth about Ender and Valentine.
Sorry for going on so long, but it's just amazing and I wanted to say it Posts: 35 | Registered: Jun 2005
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It's exciting to hear the perspective of someone reading Speaker for the Dead. I would love to have a chance to read the Ender quartet for the first time again. Keep reading Speaker, You'll love it. Then promptly read Xenocyde and Children of the mind. OMG sooooo good. And yes, Achilles is basically Beans Peter/Bonzo. It seems that OSC can pull the most virtuous traits out of a character by juxtaposing them with some sort of nemesis. I'm not going to ruin anything for you but fear not, Val and Ender will meet again. The thing I really love about the book you're on and the two after that is: due to relativistic effects, the acts of Ender and the acts of The Speaker For the Dead are absorbed by humanity. Card really shows how the things the reader loves about Ender are the same things The Hundred Worlds loves about the Speaker for the Dead. The knowledge of Ender the Xenocyde being the same man as the original Speaker for the Dead is what the reader can carry as omniscience.
another side notes: Jane is the best character Card has ever developed, and Speaker, Xeno, Children really reveal the nature of Jane and how she came about. Keep reading and keep posting. The rest of the series is incredible.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
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We all know that Achilles is an incredibly smart person. Yes he's insane, but smart. Why couldn't he have noticed from the formations the same thing that Mazer and Ender noticed?
Posts: 46 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Because he didn't have access to the types of videos that Ender had. Ender was in battle school, where he had access to more videos than the general public. Not only that, but Achilles spent most of his life on the street or in a school (if I remember correctly), NOT in Battle School. He was only up there for about, what, maybe a month or two at most? Ender and Bean had to study them time and time again to understand the Hive Queen. Achilles couldn't just KNOW it, he would have had to have learned it from somewhere. I thought about the possibility that he just knew it from watching videos, but I simply don't think he had access to the videos Ender and Bean had access to.
Posts: 35 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Hold on... but (correct me if I'm wrong) weren't the vids Ender had in Battle School basically the same ones the public had-- I seem to remember that Ender mentioned that they had been watered down (to take out all the strategy), but later learned that there was little more than what he saw.
Perhaps Achilles saw the vids while he was recouping from surgery, before he killed the doctor, of course. I think he knew about battle school and wanted to get there, so he studied up as much as he could about it.
Posts: 84 | Registered: Jun 2005
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True, but I just can't imagine the general public sitting there for hours on end, studying Bugger flight plans, especially when they weren't being trained for combat. Also, even though you bring up the point about Achilles in the hospital, remember that Ender and Bean studied the vids for quite sometime before they even started coming up with the idea that all the Buggers had a common mind.
Here, put yourself in Achilles' shoes: You are lying in a hospital bed, recovering from surgery. The crazy, insane self that you are, you start thinking about how you are going to kill your doctor. You come up with ideas, ones that don't work and ones that you could get away with. On top of that, you have to study to get high enough test scores to get into battle school. Even if you want to get into Battle School, do you really imagine that you would be able to pick up on Bugger flight paths in the matter of a few weeks? I mean, Achilles definitely had to have major physical therapy, something that would have taken a substantial amount of time out of his days. I would imagine that he simply didn't have near enough time to pick up on this.
I'm not saying anyone's wrong; I still think it's a possibility that he could have formulated the idea, but I think there's too much that opposes that idea.
Posts: 35 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Before finishing Ender's Game, I had already guessed that the buggers were controlled in a hive mind by a queen...
OR... maybe what Volescu told Randi was true. Maybe Achilles is smarter than Ender, and he DID give Ender the insights needed to defeat the Buggers.
OR... maybe the buggers tried to contact both Ender and Achilles. It said in SftD that the buggers formed a mental link with Ender, right? Why not Achilles too?
OR... maybe OSC just made a mistake.
Posts: 14 | Registered: Apr 2005
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When Mazer points it out to Ender, he says the idea of the Hive Queen is one any scientist would laugh at and call him childish for. Think the environment Achilles grew up in. Not exactly rich in formal, accurate education. Who says he doesn't carry some of those traces with him?
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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