posted
I'm not sure if it is an inconsistency but maybe someone else can elaborate, but in the first formic war series it is stated that the formic ship uses a ram scoop drive witch separates the hydrogen and turns it into gamma plasma for propulsion, yet in Ender's series the MD (little doctor) is said to have been derived from the same tech which powered the formic ship while the two seem completely separate in their tech being that also the MD more closely resembles Juke's Glazer. Please forgive my laziness in writing and citation.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Nov 2014
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posted
Or when the stickied thread on the other side can be taken down? In it, it's stated that the Cards have a tight two week deadline. That was back in the middle of July, more than half a year ago.
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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quote: Everyone had learned the wrong lesson from Bonzo's misuse of Ender Wiggin. They all dumped though the door immediately, so that there was no chance to do anything other than name the formation they would use.
But in reality it was Rose da Nose not Bonzo that had misused Ender that way. (Chapter 8):
quote: Rose hooked a finger over the butt of Ender's gun and pulled him to the forcefield that his the battleroom from view.
In EG Battle school students eat as much as they want (Chapter 7):
quote: “Can I finish eating?” “You never finish eating.” It was true. Ender’s tray always had food on it after a meal. Ender looked at the plate and decided he was through. “Let’s go then.”
While in Ender's Shadow (Chapter 6) they have to eat everything served to them:
quote: your portions are scientifically calibrated to meet your dietary needs, and in the future you will finish every bit of what you are served.”
In EG Chapter 11 guns may be let go of:
quote: He selected the smallest boy, Bean, handed him Tom’s gun, and made Bean kneel on Tom’s frozen legs.
While in Ender's Game Alive (around 2:04) it is implied that guns can not be let go of:
quote: We can't drop them, so we wont be getting smacked in the game by lost weapons.
In EG (Chapter 12) it is said that thawing time in practice is 5 minutes:
quote: he thawed in about five minutes, the way it worked in practice.
While in Ender's Game Alive (2:05) it is said to be 30 seconds.
quote: In training mode, the flash suits unfreeze after 30 seconds.
In EG (Chapter 12) it is said that Frozen soldiers can not talk:
quote: One of the frozen Dragon soldiers tried to answer him through jaws that were clamped shut by the flash suit.
While in Ender's Game Alive (2:05) it is said otherwise:
quote: "So a soldier shot is as good as a shot to the heart; it freezes you completely" "But I can still talk, so even frozen soldiers can give warnings."
quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: In Ender's Game, right after Ender is handed his graduation orders from Graff, there is a paragraph from Bean's POV:
quote: He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here.
After looking through Ender's Shadow, I see no mention of Bean crying in the first few days of Battle School and I can't imagine it would've been because of homesickness. Maybe because of Poke's death, but that's not homesickness.
Also, in Ender's Game:
quote: He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help. He would never see Ender again.
In Ender's Shadow:
quote: He bit on his lip, trying to let the pain force the emotion away. It didn't help. Ender was gone.
Insignificant contradiction, but there it is.
Also, are we to include contradictions between the movie and the book?
Bean did cry from homesickness in ES. Or at least, it's implied, with the "his pillow was dry long before morning" on the first night when he's thinking of Sister Carlotta.
I know I'm over a year late to the party, but there is huge discrepancy between the ES series and Shadows in Flight, namely the length of time the babies had before the spaceship. Shadows in Flight references several times that the babies were a year old before leaving, while in Shadow of the Giant, Petra stays in Moscow for a year and then comes home and the babies are JUST over a year old-- so, the spaceship left when the babies were only a few months old.
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2011
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posted
In Ender's Game, Mazer mentions that only a few people really believed the theory on the Hive Queen. However, in Earth Afire - The Swarm, the Hive Queen theory is widely acknowledged and accepted as predominate and supported by empirical evidence.
Also, this little thing has always bugged me. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow record different accounts of the same events, such as Dragon Army's first battle. This does make sense if you think of the difference as variation between two different first-person character accounts, similar to how two people might remember something differently. However, when the Dragon Army officers are transferred to other armies, Ender's Game mentions that all toon leaders and seconds, as well as Bean replaced other commanders who had graduated. In Ender's Shadow, though, the number of commanders graduated was nine, which is inconsistent with Ender's Game because Dragon officers plus Bean is eleven, not nine.
Will add any more if they occur to me.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Jan 2017
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posted
In response to BrokeNDerty's post, in the First Formic War series, they hadn't yet been inside a Formic ship when they were discussing what potentially powered the Formics' flight capabilities. And I don't think Victor Delgado would have had time while on the scout ship to look at what type of engine they were using, and if he did, he probably wouldn't have been able to understand what he saw. Or, as an alternate theory, the scout ship used a different type of engine than the main ship did. However, this theory is flawed because the scout ship broke off from the mothership, so they would have used the same engine.
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I suppose it's possible that this thread remains stickied in order to collect data points until the revised edition is revived(?).
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
In Children of the Fleet's author's note at the end, he mentions the project was going on while he was writing this book, and since the book was written in the year before May 2017 (the date of the author's note), that indicates it's still alive.
It's related to something OSC mentioned on the podcast he does with Rusty Humphries - that the "n-word" version of Ender's Game had somehow gotten re-released. I think that's put some kind of problems with the reconciliation version.
Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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I'm reading "The Swarm". There are multiple situations, when characters, who aren't necessarily military, for example Wila, page 190:
THE SWARM:
quote:If the Hive Queen knows how to communicate instantaneously across vast distances from her mind to the mind of one of her own, why couldn't she do so with other creatures as well?
Remember the conversation Mazer had with Ender when they were on their way to Eros?
EG:
quote:Graff: "The oddest thing of all was that they also don't have any communication devices on their ships. No radios, nothing that could transmit or receive any kind of signal.
"They communicate ship to ship. I've seen the videos, they talk to each other"
"True. But body to body, mind to mind. It's the most important thing we learned from them. Their communication (..) is instantaneous. (...)
[there's more, you remember, probably]
"So they knew about their defeat the moment it happened," said ender. "I always figured - everybody awlays said that they probably only found out they lost the battle twenty-five years ago."
"It keeps people from panicking," said Graff. "I'm telling you things you can't know, by the way, if you're ever going to leave I.F. Command. Before the war's over".
Ender was angry. "If you know me at all, you know I can keep a secret"
Years, or months even, befor the Second Invasion two people on a spacecraft, with no security clearance, speak freely on how Formic communications are instantaneous. More so, they consider the possibility that they are not varesle (the word is not uttered, but we already know what the idea is) and that humans could communicate with formics. But Ender, a military mastermind and the only hope of humanity, learns about it only weeks prior to the final battle? It's top secret? While it was common knowledge a century before?
To be honest, for me it is a really big... mood-killer. The whole idea in "Ender's Game", the title, even, is that he thought it was a game. Granted, he already knew of ansible before playing the simulator (and let's face it, pretty dumb for a genius not to know it was real). But it couldn't have possibly be a secret in EG if it was common knowledge a hundred years back, with Wila writing a dissertation on it, and having hundreds of people read it, and it being on the forums, and everyone in "The Swarm" talking about it. And it's highly doubtful that such information could be contained after the second invasion was over.
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Sorry for the lenghty quote, but it's crucial to my point.
quote: "The video is a very tightly kept secret, Ender."
"I know. I've pieced it together, partly. You, with your tiny reserve force, and their armada, those great big heavy-bellied starships launching their swarms of fighters. You dart in at one ship, fire at it, an explosion. That's where they always stop the clips. After that, it's just soldiers going into bugger ships and already finding them dead inside."
Mazer grinned. "So much for tightly kept secrets. Come on, let's watch the video."
They were alone in the video room, and Ender palmed the door locked. "All right, let's watch."
The video showed exactly what Ender had pieced together. Mazer's suicidal plunge into the heart of the enemy formation, the single explosion, and then--
Nothing. Mazer's ship went on, dodged the shock wave, and wove his way among the other bugger ships. They did not fire on him. They did not change course. Two of them crashed into each other and exploded a needless collision that either pilot could have avoided. Neither made the slightest movement.
Mazer sped up the action. Skipped ahead. "We waited for three hours," he said. "Nobody could believe it." Then the I.F. ships began approaching the bugger starships. Marines began their cutting and boarding operations. The videos showed the buggers already dead at their posts.
"So you see," said Mazer, "you already knew all there was to see."
"Why did it happen?"
"Nobody knows. I have my personal opinions. But there are plenty of scientists who tell me I'm less than qualified to have opinions."
"You're the one who won the battle."
"I thought that qualified me to comment, too, but you know how it is. Xenobiologists and xenopsychologists can't accept the idea that a starpilot scooped them by sheer guesswork. I think they all hate me because, after they saw these videos, they had to live out the rest of their natural lives here on Eros. Security, you know. They weren't happy."
"Tell me."
"The buggers don't talk. They think to each other, and it's instantaneous like the philotic effect. Like the ansible. But most people always thought that meant a controlled communication like language -- I think you a thought and then you answer me. I never believed that. It's too immediate , the way they respond together to things. You've seen the videos. They aren't conversing and deciding among possible courses of action. Every ship acts like part of a single organism. It responds the way your body responds during combat, different parts automatically, thoughtlessly doing everything they're supposed to do. They aren't having a mental conversation between people with different thought processes. All their thoughts are present, together, at once."
"A single person, and each bugger is like a hand or a foot?"
"Yes. I wasn't the first person to suggest it, but I was the first person to believe it. And something else. Something so childish and stupid that the xenobiologists laughed me to silence when I said it after the battle. The buggers are bugs . They're like ants and bees. A queen, the workers. That was maybe a hundred million years ago, but that's how they started, that kind of pattern. It's a sure thing none of the buggers we saw had any way of making more little buggers. So when they evolved this ability to think together, wouldn't they still keep the queen? Wouldn't the queen still be the center of the group? Why would that ever change?"
"So it's the queen who controls the whole group."
"I had evidence, too. Not evidence that any of them could see. it wasn't there in the First Invasion, because that was exploratory. But the Second Invasion was a colony. To set up a new hive, or whatever."
"And so they brought a queen."
"The videos of the Second Invasion, when they were destroying our fleets out in the comet shell." He began to call them up and display the buggers' patterns. "Show me the queen's ship."
It was subtle. Ender couldn't see it for a long time. The bugger ships kept moving, all of them. There was no obvious flagship, no apparent nerve center. But gradually, as Mazer played the videos over and over again, Ender began to see the way that all the movements focused on, radiated from a center point. The center point shifted, but it was obvious, after he looked long enough, that the eyes of the fleet, the I of the fleet, the perspective from which all decisions were being made, was one particular ship. He pointed it out.
"You see it. I see it. That makes two people out of all of those who have seen this video. But it's true, isn't it."
If contradiction was to be prevented, conversation above would have to be deleted in its entirety.
This conversation is one of the most important parts of EG, where Ender gradually begins to learn about Formics, the Queen, the Ansible. Now that I finished The Swarm, I can with all confidence say: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to eliminate these contradictions, and major ones they are.
***SWARM SPOILER***
Bingwen sees the birth of a Hive Queen. He, hours after boarding the asteroid-slash-factory, and multiple IF officers, discuss how there are Hive Queens and Adolescent Hive Queens. How ansible-mental control they have over formics varies, depending on distance, when it's full control, when just loose commands.
It is not doable to make these contradictions go away. I look at EG like it's the canon of all canons. Sure, some minor things can be changed. But now it would be full chapters that would need complete rewrites.
This is beyond contradiction, this renders both prequel trylogies non-canon. This is the only way one can enjoy them.
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Agree 100%. I made this point after Formic War: Burning Earth actually. Those comics and later the First Formic War books require a virtually complete rewrite of the EG backstory
posted
This is a continuity problem that's bothered me so much that I've registered on this forum just to complain about it. It doesn't involve "Ender's Game" specifically other than as source material, so it has nothing to do with any revised editions. I'm also being deliberately lazy and not looking up the specifics. It's just a general 'I've read these books so many times they're permanently on my mental hard drive' sense.
Specifically, the timeline doesn't work with Virlomi compared to, well, almost anybody else, but most especially with her reference to not having a high opinion of Han Tsu back in Battle School when he proposes to her.
Virlomi was close to graduation when she met Petra, and that was only because she kept track of the new girls in Battle School. As I recall, Virlomi was never even a toon leader and didn't even go to Command School, so she'd have never met Petra again if not for their experiences in India after the war.
Petra had at least a couple of years on Ender by the time he was assigned to Salamander Army, much younger than any other soldier and possibly still the youngest soldier in Battle School. Ender was transferred to Rat Army for a while and eventually became a toon leader in Petra's army (whose name I have forgotten and am too lazy to look up.) Eventually Ender was given command of Dragon Army where none of the soldiers was older than him.
Virlomi didn't have a high opinion of Han Tsu because she graduated Battle School back when he was crawling on the floor in China with a monitor in his neck. It's entirely possible that's where Han Tsu was when Ender joined Salamander and met Petra. It's theoretically possible that she was physically in Battle School when Han Tsu got there as a Launchie, but the odds of her noticing him (or vice-versa) are astronomical.
Even the most generous view of the timeline means Virlomi was easily pushing 20 when the jeesh came home after the war and was quite possibly older than that. I like the way it was handled in the books, but come on, she could have won easily by just grabbing a few of the jeesh and Peter. "Get over here, little boy! I'm going to make you a man."
Posts: 4 | Registered: Jun 2019
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posted
Can't help it, started rereading the books. At the start of Chapter 14 of "Shadow of the Hegemon":
"Even though she was considerably older, so her time in Battle School overlapped Petra by only a year, in those days Virlomi took notice of every girl in the place."
Most likely Virlomi noticed Petra as a launchie. But let's say she didn't notice Petra until she was assigned to Salamander Army. Ender was still a a launchie, assuming he'd even gotten to Battle School yet. Dink is older than Petra, so he probably got assigned to an army first, but he probably wasn't yet a toon leader in Rat. Notice how we have to assume that by-the-books straightforward soldiers like Petra and Dink were still in their first armies [Salamander and Rat] when Ender first met them.
Virlomi is long-gone by the time Ender's career starts, there's no way to avoid that. A chunk of "Ender's Game" passes and then Dragon Army forms with no soldiers who are older than Ender, including Hot Soup.
So the ages break down to: Virlomi is several years older than Dink who is at least a little older than Petra who is a few years older than Ender and probably about the same age as Carn Carnby. Alai and Shen are a couple years older than Ender who is older than his five toon leaders and Suri, then finally Bean.
None of this is meant as negative criticism by the way. Keeping track of these things is hard. I think OSC said somewhere on this website that he can't be bothered to keep track of the ages of his own children, so why would he do that for fictional characters? I'm a writer and get where he's coming from. It's only as a reader that I go 'HEY, THAT'S TOTALLY WRONG!' and care enough to go back and look.
posted
Yeah, you beat me to it. That's a long time. I got married since last year's milestone. Any big changes in your lives?
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Good morning everyone. This is the first time I am posting and I created this account specifically to receive confirmation on what I think is a continuity error between Earth Awakens and The Swarm.
I have not read the books, but rather have listened to the audiobooks while I work so I am not completely confident about my conclusion since I don't have a paper copy for reference. This is such a minor conflict that I shouldn't be hyperfocusing on it, but my ADHD mind won't let it go. Anyway, onto the conflict that my mind won't shut up about:
In Earth Awakens, Benyawe was selected by Lem to join the scout ship tactical strike team formed by Victor, Mazer, Shenzu, and the selected MOPs members.
Now the conflicting statement occurs in The Swarm in the chapter "Unraveling" when Lem and Benyawe are approaching the scout ship to test Wilasanee's hypothesized application of the NanoCloud to act as a Formic hull breach weapon. Lem is daydreaming about how much easier things would be if they had a laserized gamma plasma weapon when Benyawe sees the scout ship and is in awe of how massive it is. Lem responds with "I had forgotten you haven't been here before."
Correct me if I'm wrong but Benyawe played a critical role in disabling the very ship that Lem is claiming she has never been to before; and he was the one that sent her there. Am I missing something? Am I imagining things? Someone, anyone, please either confirm or refute my conclusion so I can stop thinking about it.
Posts: 1 | Registered: Aug 2019
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quote:Originally posted by alexiajia: I am not completely confident about my conclusion since I don't have a paper copy for reference. This is such a minor conflict that I shouldn't be hyperfocusing on it, but my ADHD mind won't let it go
What do you mean exactly, Alexiajia? Something you posted earlier?
EDIT: Or are you a bot, because it's your first post... eh.
Posts: 723 | Registered: Dec 2004
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