tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post8768224655550424445..comments2023-11-05T04:09:53.857-05:00Comments on Something Short and Snappy: Speaker for the Dead, chapter four, in which Ender only has secret friendsErika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-85942684304944158482014-02-09T11:27:33.948-05:002014-02-09T11:27:33.948-05:00HEAD. CANON.HEAD. CANON.Ana Mardollhttp://www.anamardoll.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-50179068447657078172014-01-24T00:07:05.291-05:002014-01-24T00:07:05.291-05:00There are a good many of these books I haven't...There are a good many of these books I haven't read, with the result that when I'm discussing them, it frequently occurs that I don't know what I'm talking about. So this is just an idea of mine which has nothing that I know of to do with anything in the <i>Ender</i> series: maybe the Ministry presides over a united, monoglot, hybridized world in which fewer and fewer people have a stake in or emerge from a distinctive culture of their own as opposed to the catch-all composite "general" planetary culture, but in which the few people who do so emerge treasure the differences which set them apart from the wider population and seek to emphasize those differences whenever possible. This causes the Ministry to scent potential trouble and to wish the niche-culture types off the Earth. Luckily for the Ministry, the Ministry has the means of sending them off the Earth (yay) — these are the people whom the Ministry incentivizes by encouraging them to colonize one-culture worlds of their own. They can do their own thing to their hearts' content if only they do it as many lightyears away from home as it takes. The great durations involved in space-travel will prevent their return for the foreseeable future — problem solved.bekabotnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-7056531408966930982014-01-23T23:51:01.354-05:002014-01-23T23:51:01.354-05:00"Because if you're a non-human intelligen..."<i>Because if you're a non-human intelligence worried about humans killing you in self-defense, Ender is obviously the person you most want to hang out with. He's so good at not killing things!</i>"<br /><br /><br /><br />Yeah, but he's <i>real</i> persuadable. Maybe that's what Jane glommed on to.bekabotnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-53237840161197343772014-01-23T23:46:18.427-05:002014-01-23T23:46:18.427-05:00OK, so maybe in the Enderverse Einstein's theo...OK, so maybe in the Enderverse Einstein's theory is wrong, and maybe the Spaceways Congress people have come to realize it in the course of their star-travels. But that isn't what these passages suggest; what they suggest, more than anything, are those Fridge Horror Moments which happen when a popular-culture consumer realizes that thus-and-such a character <i>was awake the whole time</i>. (Eeeeeeeeeeeeekkkk!!)<br /> <br />Ya think?bekabotnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-88527207328740727072014-01-23T21:38:32.863-05:002014-01-23T21:38:32.863-05:00I don't know, why were two teenagers so incred...I don't know, why were two teenagers so incredibly persuasive that they conquered the entire Internet and then one of them was elected President of the World? Why did Ender's anonymous fanfiction about the Hive Queen become the One True Religion of the settled human planets? All the Wiggins kids are just magic, you can't question WHY what they do works. It's magic!Lady Viridisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-638565596636816972014-01-23T21:17:18.297-05:002014-01-23T21:17:18.297-05:00I got it too! I just reread the Animorphs series l...I got it too! I just reread the Animorphs series last year and was impressed anew by how good a series it is and how much moral complexity they manage to fit in books that are barely over 100 pages each. That series needs more love.<br /><br /><br />I want to discuss what's going on in Speaker, but honestly, all I can come up with "WHAT" with the Whatnapple repeated many times in my mind. Plus general confusion as to how I missed any of this when I read these books in college. I'm usually good at picking out inconsistencies! How did I miss the fact that NONE of this book makes sense?? I'm just shocked at Past Me's total fail on this one.Lady Viridisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-39372894561962807252014-01-22T21:56:58.114-05:002014-01-22T21:56:58.114-05:00I think it's Shadow of the Giant that finally ...I think it's Shadow of the Giant that finally makes it explicit that each colony ship is filled with people only of a single demographic slice, like Portuguese Brazilian Catholics, or Han Chinese (no religion filter for that one), or what have you. The Ministry of Colonization apparently decided this would reduce tensions on the far side, having subscribed to the belief that the primary cause of racism is diversity, and not, as some would have you believe, racists.<br /><br /><br />Sigh.Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-29906845664242477182014-01-22T21:52:49.005-05:002014-01-22T21:52:49.005-05:00Half of Card's planets are clones of some Eart...Half of Card's planets are clones of some Earthly culture. The only one I can think of that isn’t is the planet where Ender was governor. This book has a Norwegian planet and a Brazilian planet; the next one has a Chinese planet; the one after that has a Samoan planet. And <i>Ender in Exile</i> ends on an Indian planet. What’s more, all these cultures seem to have reverted to an archaic form, centuries in our past!Steve Morrisonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-22792793591808586322014-01-22T00:17:28.650-05:002014-01-22T00:17:28.650-05:00Regarding the Cthulhu summoning...
*flips more ta...Regarding the Cthulhu summoning...<br /><br />*flips more tables*<br /><br />The Little Ones fit none of the requirements of varelse. NONE! <br /><br />From the Enderverse wiki, presumably from this book, since our kind host quoted the first sentence. <i>"the true alien, which includes all of the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purpose or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it."</i><br /><br /><br /><br />People talk to the Little Ones. At least one Little One has learned human languages. That is conversation. That also proves intelligence. They're also clearly self-aware. Okay, maybe the people who've never interacted with them could - if they're being misled by the ones who have - innocently believe this, but there is no fraking way that Pipo innocently believes that. There's no way he can actually believe that at all. It requires willfully ignoring all the data he's collected.<br /><br /><br />(And that middle sentence is an overly wordy way of saying "we don't know why they do what they do" which applies to, oh, any freaking person or culture you haven't bothered to get to know. Guess everyone's varelse. Let the slaughter begin. *rolls eyes*)depizannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-69512227108730439522014-01-21T23:07:12.341-05:002014-01-21T23:07:12.341-05:00Ender is indeed the closest. There are no Speakers...Ender is indeed the closest. There are no Speakers on Lusitania itself, and Trondheim is the nearest inhabited planet to Lusitania.<br />Also, still treating Little Ones like they are animals and non-sentients.<br />Va snpg, gur Yhfvgnavnaf ner nyy gerngvat gur crdhravabf nf <i>ineryfr</i>. Naq gurl xrrc qbvat fb hagvy n pregnva irel fcrpvny fbzrbar grnpurf gurz gung gurl fubhyq abg.Steve Morrisonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-426455118376880922014-01-21T18:27:18.688-05:002014-01-21T18:27:18.688-05:00I think Jane runs and effectively controls quite a...I think Jane runs and effectively controls quite a lot of Hundred Worlds Online. (The counter-evidence from later books seems to reflect Card's confusion about how computers work.)<br /><br /><br />In general, the first four books make more sense if humans at the beginning had already surrendered most of their judgement to programs that became part of Jane's intelligence. This allows the Hive Queen to be telling the plain truth - adults abused and manipulated Ender - while still allowing them to need him - they could have used their own native intelligence, but they somehow forgot it existed. Everything they did stemmed from the computerized answer to a badly-phrased question or three. But this comes close to contradicting everyone's glorification of Ender in the present book. And we'd better outright ignore the claim that the Hive Queen thinks <i>faster than light</i>, or she could be dumber than humans on a per-thought basis and still kick Ender's ass. Though I guess she did out-think him in a sense?hfnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-19893967773466653672014-01-21T18:12:32.063-05:002014-01-21T18:12:32.063-05:00So remind me how the formics lost the war, again? ...<i>So remind me how the formics lost the war, again? Because their queens <br />are obviously insanely superintelligent,* what with the ability to <br />individually pilot thousands of mindless workers through complex group <br />tasks like agriculture and starship-building. Now they're mentally <br />immune to time dilation too?</i><br /><br /><br />THANK YOU.hfnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-86631574331970559262014-01-21T17:51:46.602-05:002014-01-21T17:51:46.602-05:00Spider Robinson has an unplanned AI (with an expli...Spider Robinson has an unplanned AI (with an explicit shout-out to Heinlein). I wouldn't call that a counterexample because A. I think it postdates this book, and B. the story is about SF readers fearing AI.hfnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-49059727790702851062014-01-21T17:51:41.723-05:002014-01-21T17:51:41.723-05:00Oh, no, the varelse category is greatly useful. At...Oh, no, the varelse category is greatly useful. At least if your aim is to depersonalize the enemy. That is, however, the only possible use I can think of for such a category, at least as it's being demonstrated in this book. Could I imagine Starfleet having a category for "alien we're pretty sure is sapient, but hell if we can figure out how to communicate with it, so we're going to ponder that and not mess with them in the meantime"? Sure. That is pretty clearly not even remotely how Card's interstellar whazit operates.depizannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-65782203317802962322014-01-21T12:29:36.767-05:002014-01-21T12:29:36.767-05:00Someone gets the Animorphs reference!Someone gets the Animorphs reference!Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-35268980459230767322014-01-21T12:22:46.149-05:002014-01-21T12:22:46.149-05:00Props for the Animorphs reference!
My biggest ...Props for the Animorphs reference! <br /><br /><br /><br />My biggest problem so far is every time I see aliens described as ramen, it makes me think of the noodles. Aliens shouldn't be food. Also, Stark just makes me wonder if Iron Man invented the language. Inventing a language and naming it after himself is the sort of thing Tony Stark would do.<br /><br /><br />As you can see, I have nothing useful to add to this conversation, but I am enjoying this.Frenchroastnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-61342915137938912942014-01-21T10:11:47.176-05:002014-01-21T10:11:47.176-05:00I like to think that Valentine always uses that wh...I like to think that Valentine always uses that when she addresses him: "Would the lord of a hundred fishing vessels mind putting his dirty socks in the hamper?" "Move over, lord of a hundred fishing vessels; you are hogging the blankets." "The lord of a hundred fishing vessels has spinach between his teeth."Ledasmomnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-81743683843846071592014-01-21T02:11:00.919-05:002014-01-21T02:11:00.919-05:00On another note,
The formics were considered va...On another note, <br /><br /> The formics were considered varelse as well, and now they're thought of as ramen.<br /><br />Even the formics weren't really considered varelse, were they? We thought we <i>did</i> understand their motivation--they were genocidal jerks who wanted to colonize Earth and didn't value human lives. We understood something about their intellectual capabilities, since they had spaceships and shit. Communication and further understanding was clearly extremely difficult as a practical matter, and was less of a priority than wiping them out before they could do the same to us. But it's not like they were abstract Lovecraftian horrors whose mere contemplation would drive humans to madness.<br /><br />I mean, this "varelse" category is frigging useless. Human scientists try to communicate with <i>bacteria</i>. Humans empathize, albeit imperfectly, with a fly stuck in a spiderweb. Humans talk to their pet rocks. If a creature shows any hint of intelligent, complex behavior in the first place, it doesn't matter how weird it is--some people are going to try to figure it out and some people are going to try to exploit it and some people are going to try to be nice to it. Even if Demosthenes tells them not to bother.<br /><br />(And while I'm grumbling, why are "Framlings" automatically ranked as more foreign than "Utlannings?" Half of Card's planets are clones of some Earthly culture. Norwegians have way more in common with Trondheimers than they do with Bushmen.)Anton_Matesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-57932149287310457972014-01-20T21:16:14.622-05:002014-01-20T21:16:14.622-05:00Ah, I see what you're saying--but no, that'...Ah, I see what you're saying--but no, that's not quite what the resolution of the paradox means. It isn't that acceleration <i>causes</i> time dilation (as that page notes, the physicists solving the problem tended to eliminate the acceleration step and just assume instant velocity gained) but that time dilation will be experienced by the body that also experiences acceleration (multiple inertial reference frames). Otherwise there's a paradox because from the frame of the accelerating twin, the 'stationary' twin appears to be the one who travels at lightspeed, yet they don't experience time dilation. But once we say dilation only occurs for the twin who experiences multiple reference frames (stationary and travelling) it all sorts out again.Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-18805635120796625442014-01-20T20:56:17.565-05:002014-01-20T20:56:17.565-05:00I just meant that acceleration itself causes time ...I just meant that acceleration <i>itself</i> causes time dilation, as I understand it, beyond what you would calculate with special relativity by just noting the dilation factor from the instantaneous velocity. That's how you resolve the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox" rel="nofollow">twin paradox: the spacegoing twin accelerates and decelerates, while the earthbound twin does not, and so the spacegoing twin gets time dilated as a net result.</a>Anton_Matesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-14100988430648305132014-01-20T19:10:49.070-05:002014-01-20T19:10:49.070-05:00True. I was thinking more in terms of popular con...True. I was thinking more in terms of popular consciousness. Poor HAL, memetically evil.<br /><br /><br />Which just goes further to show that Card's idea that Jane's knowledge of all fiction ever would show her only evil AIs is bunk. And he should've known it was bunk.depizannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-9652211433786367292014-01-20T18:17:03.966-05:002014-01-20T18:17:03.966-05:00HAL wasn't particularly evil; he was just will...HAL wasn't particularly evil; he was just willing to kill a few people if it helped him preserve his own life and continue his (mutually semi-contradictory) missions. In the film version, I'm not sure he even planned to kill anyone until he realized that the humans were going to disconnect him. In the later books, he's instrumental in saving both Earth and Europa.Anton_Matesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-11871931714852288552014-01-20T17:06:03.981-05:002014-01-20T17:06:03.981-05:00So, Ender now has the personification of the Inter...So, Ender now has the personification of the Internet and the last remaining Formic queen in his party of super-special unique protagonists. At this point, Jane and the queen should probably ditch Ender and use their combined power to find an appropriate world for the Formics to repopulate themselves. That way, they'll stay out of the way and then wait until it's time to join the Federation.<br /><br />Also, what sort of contrivance has Ender, at least two decades away, as the Speaker that will come? Is he the closest? Because I would think that a cult that has managed to survive for three thousand years would have clerics and practitioners scattered everywhere, including possibly accompanying colonists to new worlds.<br /><br />Also, still treating Little Ones like they are animals and non-sentients. Without explanation.Silver Adeptnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-69870706725157231302014-01-20T16:07:39.930-05:002014-01-20T16:07:39.930-05:00But it's Totally Not Racist At All to take par...But it's Totally Not Racist At All to take parts of a language he doesn't speak and cram it into a culture he doesn't understand!! It's the future! Maybe they are names in the future, right? Even though nothing else about society or language changes at all.boutetnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-59302216193010726042014-01-20T13:44:02.446-05:002014-01-20T13:44:02.446-05:00Mm, whether Card used that word specifically or no...Mm, whether Card used that word specifically or not, it's certainly the same concept, and the same misconception. Saying the queen is aware of the passage of time regardless of spaceflights is nonsensical in exactly the same way; time dilation isn't some mysterious property of space travel, it's a mysterious property of time itself. Card writes about Ender as if he's skipping through time, when he's just passing through less of it compared to people who spend most of their time attached to planets. If the queen experiences time consistently, unaffected by speed or proximity to spacetime wells like stars or planets, then Ender's protracted life in transit should make more sense to her, not less. There's no reason at all for her sense of time to be arbitrarily bound to a planetary scale.BrokenBellnoreply@blogger.com