I happened to watch an old movie with my granddaughter the other day. A sci-fi movie called Ender's Game. For those who have not seen it, it's basically the story of Earth being attacked by an alien hive type force led by a queen, sort of a cross between ants and bees in this sense, and the fact that they are losing the war, but not telling anyone that truth.
I chose to refer to them as the hive, although in the 1985 "military science fiction" novel by American author Orson Scott Card, it presents an imperiled humankind after two conflicts with an insectoid alien species that they dub "the buggers".
They decide on a hail-Mary tactic - they will take a group of young cadets who have no strong ties to family feelings, and use that lack of empathy to train them into soldiers to take on the hive.
One of their cadets proves to be very good at this - his name is Ender, and in the story version he is about 12 years old, although the movie portrays him as a bit older. In one final battle they put Ender and his group in charge, and tell them that it is a simulation - a war game, and that the outcome is important to their future use as soldiers but not real in the sense of real consequences. Of course they lied. It is a "military" mission after all.
But we should also consider the theme of this tale - that Ender is a type of warrior that gets to strike out and perform genocide on his enemies and yet he remains morally clean - because he was simply following orders, did not know the whole picture, and therefore nothing is his fault. This reminds me of Adolph and his group who were just following orders as well. Or the American pioneers who wiped out the Native Americans in order to take the promised lands. Or the Spanish who did the same in Central and South America - I think you get where I am coming from.
In any event Ender Wiggins manages to win the battle and destroy the hive groups by placing a weapon on the home world of the hive which is a planet killer - the entire world is destroyed forever. The humans win the war. They make Ender a General and that's pretty much how the story ends, at least the Movie version.
The book originated as a short story of the same name that was published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine and published on January 15, 1985. Later, by elaborating on characters and plotlines depicted in the novel, Card wrote additional books in the series.
This story is sort of a sequel to Ender's game, one of those additional parts of the series that never got included in the Movie version. It tells us some of what to Ender after he is made a General.
In the story version it is called "The Gold Bug" and Orson Scott Card is also the author. In this version the human victors settle on one of the planets previously controlled by the hive group, which all perished when their Queen(s) did. They settle colonists on it to develop the planet.
Due to some unexplained Einsteinan shifts of time-space (which I do not subscribe to by the way), General Ender sets out a year after the victory for the same planet and arrives there with his same age plus one (or about 14 yrs old now) to become the second governor of the planet. The acting governor is a scientist.
The scientist finds a multitude of caves, made and not natural. Inside are worm-like creatures that eventually evolve into beetles. They eat rock, plants, meat, whatever they are given, and spit out the gold and valuable minerals in the process. In effect they were trained by the hive to furnish all of the gold, silver, copper, platinum, etc. that the hive needed to build ships to take over other planets. There are literally tons of gold in the cave and they begin to search for other caves with other valuable minerals.
A short time after the war ended Ender was sent to the newly colonized planet, to arrive there 40 years later due to the light speed distance (and it is perhaps a requirement of science fiction that is promoted to become successful, that the authors support the ridiculous theories that the powerful few propagate, no matter how wrong, and the light speed limitation is one of their favorites).
Suddenly, or not so suddenly, one begins to come to the understanding that these "colonists" were actually placed there to become cheap labor. Blue collar workers for mine production and to feed the greed of the owners back on Earth. And Ender is there with a strong but small military force to govern and ensure that things go according to some great plan.
Two things I got from this. The rich will eventually finance other world colonies to extract riches and we will become their semi-slave laborers just as we have on Earth. Will it ever end? No, it never ends. At least not according to their plans. After their hand-picked, docile scientists are paid to do their thing, and the humans are conned into going on a one-way trip to this planet as the new "colonists", the military steps in to make sure that the wealthy receive their cut. So giving up their family and friends forever, in some galant show of patriotism, was just as much a con as telling Ender that an alien extermination was merely a "game" and had no consequences. Not that I would vote to save the "buggers", but it's the way they shape the history that "bugs" me.
And secondly, the ending pages describes the scientist's thoughts of how unfair it is that he has to die before he can uncover even more secrets and goodies. He sincerely wishes to live much longer to find the answers to those hidden mysteries. But for whom? For him to publish and the wealthy to exploit? I don't believe he was considering making the lives of the workers longer. Just the rich, the scientists, and perhaps a few Generals.
So now we can see why this second story never made it into a movie sequel - too much of the game is given away here.
Perhaps you believe I am paranoid, or that I am reading things into this that are not there.
But consider why it is that only certain very short stories make it into major motion pictures, and only after
the information is massaged into something that does not reveal the true desires of those who herd the sheep.
To the idea that I might be paranoid, please consider that the book has become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps.
Is it a good story? Fair to medium good. Not bad but I have read others that are better. But I am equally sure that my opinion is shaped by the fact that it is a teen novel and not written for adults per se. Stories that agree with the agenda of the sheepherders seem to find a welcome audience - or at least a manufactured success beyond what might be normal, since Amazon tells us that this series is the "Best of the Century: Best Books of the Millennium Poll" so perhaps it really did win some poll that was open and fair, much like our political voting in recent years
- . We might wish to entertain the idea that popularity in print, art, movies, song, etc. is just as much a process of psychological bending as other tactics. Propoganda does not always "advertise" as such - it's often shady, subliminal and discreet.
There are other stories with other themes, including other teen novels, that have not been made into movies. But perhaps those other authors were expressing ideas that were much closer to the truth, and must therefore remain hidden by history and not made into movies of popular fiction.
I saw this on Wakipedia: Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers.
I don't fault Mr. Card. I believe he is a gifted writer and fully deserves his decades of success. I fault those who chose which stories make it into the movies and into expanded publication. His just happen to fit with some narrative that they appreciate, and so it is furthered. Good for him.
I chose to refer to them as the hive, although in the 1985 "military science fiction" novel by American author Orson Scott Card, it presents an imperiled humankind after two conflicts with an insectoid alien species that they dub "the buggers".
They decide on a hail-Mary tactic - they will take a group of young cadets who have no strong ties to family feelings, and use that lack of empathy to train them into soldiers to take on the hive.
One of their cadets proves to be very good at this - his name is Ender, and in the story version he is about 12 years old, although the movie portrays him as a bit older. In one final battle they put Ender and his group in charge, and tell them that it is a simulation - a war game, and that the outcome is important to their future use as soldiers but not real in the sense of real consequences. Of course they lied. It is a "military" mission after all.
But we should also consider the theme of this tale - that Ender is a type of warrior that gets to strike out and perform genocide on his enemies and yet he remains morally clean - because he was simply following orders, did not know the whole picture, and therefore nothing is his fault. This reminds me of Adolph and his group who were just following orders as well. Or the American pioneers who wiped out the Native Americans in order to take the promised lands. Or the Spanish who did the same in Central and South America - I think you get where I am coming from.
In any event Ender Wiggins manages to win the battle and destroy the hive groups by placing a weapon on the home world of the hive which is a planet killer - the entire world is destroyed forever. The humans win the war. They make Ender a General and that's pretty much how the story ends, at least the Movie version.
The book originated as a short story of the same name that was published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine and published on January 15, 1985. Later, by elaborating on characters and plotlines depicted in the novel, Card wrote additional books in the series.
This story is sort of a sequel to Ender's game, one of those additional parts of the series that never got included in the Movie version. It tells us some of what to Ender after he is made a General.
In the story version it is called "The Gold Bug" and Orson Scott Card is also the author. In this version the human victors settle on one of the planets previously controlled by the hive group, which all perished when their Queen(s) did. They settle colonists on it to develop the planet.
Due to some unexplained Einsteinan shifts of time-space (which I do not subscribe to by the way), General Ender sets out a year after the victory for the same planet and arrives there with his same age plus one (or about 14 yrs old now) to become the second governor of the planet. The acting governor is a scientist.
The scientist finds a multitude of caves, made and not natural. Inside are worm-like creatures that eventually evolve into beetles. They eat rock, plants, meat, whatever they are given, and spit out the gold and valuable minerals in the process. In effect they were trained by the hive to furnish all of the gold, silver, copper, platinum, etc. that the hive needed to build ships to take over other planets. There are literally tons of gold in the cave and they begin to search for other caves with other valuable minerals.
A short time after the war ended Ender was sent to the newly colonized planet, to arrive there 40 years later due to the light speed distance (and it is perhaps a requirement of science fiction that is promoted to become successful, that the authors support the ridiculous theories that the powerful few propagate, no matter how wrong, and the light speed limitation is one of their favorites).
Suddenly, or not so suddenly, one begins to come to the understanding that these "colonists" were actually placed there to become cheap labor. Blue collar workers for mine production and to feed the greed of the owners back on Earth. And Ender is there with a strong but small military force to govern and ensure that things go according to some great plan.
Two things I got from this. The rich will eventually finance other world colonies to extract riches and we will become their semi-slave laborers just as we have on Earth. Will it ever end? No, it never ends. At least not according to their plans. After their hand-picked, docile scientists are paid to do their thing, and the humans are conned into going on a one-way trip to this planet as the new "colonists", the military steps in to make sure that the wealthy receive their cut. So giving up their family and friends forever, in some galant show of patriotism, was just as much a con as telling Ender that an alien extermination was merely a "game" and had no consequences. Not that I would vote to save the "buggers", but it's the way they shape the history that "bugs" me.
And secondly, the ending pages describes the scientist's thoughts of how unfair it is that he has to die before he can uncover even more secrets and goodies. He sincerely wishes to live much longer to find the answers to those hidden mysteries. But for whom? For him to publish and the wealthy to exploit? I don't believe he was considering making the lives of the workers longer. Just the rich, the scientists, and perhaps a few Generals.
So now we can see why this second story never made it into a movie sequel - too much of the game is given away here.
Perhaps you believe I am paranoid, or that I am reading things into this that are not there.
But consider why it is that only certain very short stories make it into major motion pictures, and only after
the information is massaged into something that does not reveal the true desires of those who herd the sheep.
To the idea that I might be paranoid, please consider that the book has become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps.
Is it a good story? Fair to medium good. Not bad but I have read others that are better. But I am equally sure that my opinion is shaped by the fact that it is a teen novel and not written for adults per se. Stories that agree with the agenda of the sheepherders seem to find a welcome audience - or at least a manufactured success beyond what might be normal, since Amazon tells us that this series is the "Best of the Century: Best Books of the Millennium Poll" so perhaps it really did win some poll that was open and fair, much like our political voting in recent years
- . We might wish to entertain the idea that popularity in print, art, movies, song, etc. is just as much a process of psychological bending as other tactics. Propoganda does not always "advertise" as such - it's often shady, subliminal and discreet.There are other stories with other themes, including other teen novels, that have not been made into movies. But perhaps those other authors were expressing ideas that were much closer to the truth, and must therefore remain hidden by history and not made into movies of popular fiction.
I saw this on Wakipedia: Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers.
I don't fault Mr. Card. I believe he is a gifted writer and fully deserves his decades of success. I fault those who chose which stories make it into the movies and into expanded publication. His just happen to fit with some narrative that they appreciate, and so it is furthered. Good for him.
