The merciless Flagg, finding the leaders of his opposition delivered so easily into his hands, gathers all his followers together to witness his utter triumph, the execution of these heros by his magical power.

But fate turns against Flagg, as a former minion interrupts the execution, hoping to buy his way back into Flagg's good graces with the gift of a nuclear warhead salvaged from an abandoned Air Force base. In the resulting confusion, Flagg's magic goes disasterously awry, and initiates the warhead's detonation, completely wiping out Flagg and all that followed him.

Is it a Deus Ex Machina?

Obviously not. The themes of prophecy, of fate, of good people working by faith, are clearly extended throughout the book. King doesn't have the good guys win by a miracle because he couldn't think of any other mechanism, but because he was trying to make the point that they had to exercise perfect faith in order for the miracle to occur. And the miracle itself is not an inexplicable event, but a confluence of events that are catalyzed to Flagg's ruin rather than triumph by the faith-inspired action of the heros.

Also, because the miracle is the fulfilment of a prophecy, further miracle cannot be inferred except in fulfilment of further prophecy and following similar faithful action in response. Thus the miracle is subject to rules (albeit the rules imposed by divine will rather than natural law) and cannot be used as all powerful magic in the context of the story, since non of the characters control the will of God.

On the other hand....

A physisist engages in conversation with his brilliant but retiring brother, coming up with a theory of the composition of the universe that allows travel outside of the material universe by simple act of will and reentry into the universe, also by simple act of will. Survival and control of matter at the fundamental level are also allowed outside the material universe, also by simple act of will, and is in fact demonstrated by no less than all of the persons taken on the first trip Outside.

The only limit on what can be taken outside, created there, and then brought back inside is the computational power available to a sentient computer program. But this power is not used to the extent possible within the story, because that would unbalance the dramatic narrative.

For example, why doesn't Jane just send boxes Outside and bring them back full of hyperadvanced computers? After all, one of the main purposes of the first trip Outside is to synthesize a hypercomplex organic molecule that cannot be built using existing human technology, but can only be imagined in theory. She could then assemble them into a network capable of sustaining her despite the effort of Starways Congress to shut down all her other connections. In fact, she could easily manufacture a cybernetic body for herself, or even an organic body, just as easily as Miro did.

In other words, not only is the justification for traveling outside thin, in the context of the story presented so far, but the justification for not using it to save Jane in the most direct and logical method available is nonexistent.

Of course, I very much enjoyed reading Xenocide and Children of the Mind, but....

It seems plain that control is not, in fact, absolute, when Outside. Yes, (the young female scientist whose name I've forgotten) succeeded in creating the recolada, which was foremost in her mind. But what was foremost in the minds of the other two people who traveled Outside turned out not to be what was expected at all. One created a new body for himself, _completely by accident_. Another created two new bodies with their own personalities, _completely by accident_.

Now Jane, to be certain, has considerable control over her own thoughts. She is able to send things outside (and, it turns out eventually, herself as well) without creating unwanted items in the process. But it does not follow that she could necessarily create only what she intended were she to open her mind and make the attempt. In fact, we see throughout the Jane's-perspective segments that Jane is not _perfectly_ in control of herself--only more so than human.

Consider this analogy: I can prevent unwanted thoughts from entering my head by focusing on some trivial idea, say song lyrics, that has a "catchy" tune--ie, there is something about them that makes them easy to repeat and that drives out other extraneous thought. But when I let the lyrics lapse and try to concentrate on something that is not so catchy, I will not always succeed in keeping my mind on track. From CotM, I may wander to some other portion of the Ender saga; to a different space opera tale such as Star Trek; to some aliens I once read about that resemble the buggers; to the possible neurochemistry of transferring memories from one body to another via the descolada; or to many other topics.

Jane was originally a mental construct created as an interactive connection between the Bugger Queen and Ender's mind. She is not technically a computer program, but an entity living in a technological communications grid.

She lived in all computers, in all connections, in a sea of limitless information. Creating a hyperadvanced computer would not solve the problem of the philotic web going down. It would be tantamount to taking a giant squid out of the ocean and putting it in a large fish tank - it could survive, maybe, if taken care of, but its *life* would be altered to such an extent that it's psychology would change drastically. It would become essentially something very different than it had been originally.

Did that make any sense?

So, while Outside space can be used for microcosmic problems, such as creation of a microscopic virus, or creation of individual bodies, it cannot be used to simulate the nigh infinite amount of information and surveillance available through the totally interconnected body of the colonized planets.

So, no, I don't see it as deus ex machina. All the elements to create this "Outside" space were there in the story, and the characters had to work to achieve that state. It would have been different if after all those years of work, Jane said "Oh, recolada? That's easy... here's the way to do it..." But that didn't happen... and what did happen was very limited, to the extent that Jane could only hold in her mind the craft itself - the people in it had to keep their own selves in their own minds (s'why all the changes happened to Miro and Ender... what they saw themselves as became reality).

I initially found the concept extremely hard to swallow, but OSC constructed the overall picture in a more-or-less self consistent manner, which was redeeming.

The best part of Xenocide (the worst of the 4 books, IMHO) is the Path part.

Anyway, let me make a couple of things clear. First, when I suggested that Jane create a new computer network for herself, I of course meant an ansible connected network similar in underlying architecture to the one she was already using, and connected in similar manner to the ansible connections she (and her friends) had physical control over.

Second, on that first trip Outside, Jane had to be present to hold the ship together and allow Ela to imagine a molecule that Jane could then "pull" into the pattern. That's why Ender and Milo were along for the ride.

But this is all secondary. My main point is that Jane accomplishes Travel by act of will alone. It gets even worse in COTM, since in that book, it appears that Jane doesn't even need to have anyone particular aboard a given vessel in order to push it Out and bring it safely back In. She doesn't even need an ansible connection to the ship, or if she does, this is discounted in the narrative, where the ships are repeatedly presented as nothing more than metal boxes that provide an environmental referent for the passengers (besides, in the end she resorts to flipping Peter and Wang-Mu in and out without any need for an ansible).

I hope this makes my point a little more clear. Whatever limitations might have been implied by the earlier book are totally absent from COTM. Jane can do whatever she desires (and the element of unconscious desire can't be all that strong, since Jane, despite her threats, doesn't "accidentally" leave Quara Outside).

So when I ask how this is not a Deus Ex, I really want to know whether anyone genuinely didn't find it completely implausible.

But Epi brings up an interesting point, which I only skirted.

In short, no, I didn't suspend my disbelief.

I liked CotM better than I did Xenocide, and I enjoyed Xenocide more than Speaker... though EG still tops the list as far as the Ender cycle is concerned. The Shadow books are great so far, though, and OSC is supposedly writing a "tie together" book between the two series that takes place after CotM. (Check out the Discussions about OSC forum for details)

As far as suspension of disbelief, I'm easy. I always have been easy. I don't care if the science works in our world, and I will rarely question it - so long as you're consistent within your own world.

I'm a fantasy writer and reader, and science fiction to me is just fantasy with more rules to follow. If the science doesn't work, it becomes "scientific fantasy" instead of science fiction, which is cool with me.

For example, I have mentioned elsewhere (and long ago) that Hart's Hope is probably the most brilliant work of literature produced by Card. It is pure fantasy, at least in the sense that there are no constraints whatsoever of science in the text. And it is compellingly self consistent. And Card follows the rules right up to the end, when the evil queen is overthrown by a magical ritual.

The issue that I'm addressing is not whether the series is "hard" SF, but whether Travel Outside is a Deus Ex Machina, an unconvincing event contrived to resolve the various dramatic tensions of the story in a manner that belies the expectation of moral, mental, and physical effort required on the part of the protagonists (I know this is a clumsy definition, but I believe that it speaks to the central aspect of the Deus Ex).

For instance, what if the combined philotic and xenobiological sciences had resulted in Ela, with Jane's assistance, devising a molecular computer (which is essentially what each descolada molecule is) tied together by philotic twining (already established in the other books as a phenomenon that affects the behavior of DNA)? What if Val and Ender had to use Jane's control over the ansible network to carry out the mission later assigned to Peter and Wang-Mu? What if Wang-Mu and Fei-tzu were to take on the responsibility to synthesizing the retro-viral counter agent rather than having Ela do it for them, all the while dodging Quing-Jao and her masters?

Or how about if there was something, anything, more than just a simple act of will, required for Travel Outside?

The way I remember it, though, is different. Jane has limits. Jane was straining herself and her abilities just to keep the craft as a whole unit in her mind, and those inside it had to fend for themselves. Her assistance beyond that one task could have easily stranded everyone "outside" - or killed everyone through lack of oxygen in the craft.

As for Ender doing what Peter later did, that boiled down to character for me. Peter had the motivation to do, to act, whereas Ender did not.

As far as a deus ex machina is concerned, you could then say that any scientific advances made during a story could be considered as such. We discovered something new, and we're using it to help our present situation - that new technology/idea/philosophy/etc is a deus ex machina, because the characters didn't figure out the problem with the means available to them at the beginning of the story.

The discovered how to go "outside" and once the initial test was done (with many awkward side effects that would have to be controlled in later uses of the discovery), the characters could then use that new discovery to solve other problems. If they hadn't, if that had been a one time event, the story wouldn't have been true to itself - people would have asked why stepping outside wasn't used to fix other things.