Skip to main content

Great Novels: Ender's Game

Ender's Game follows Andrew "Ender" Wiggin and his two siblings Peter and Valentine, though you may be able to guess from the title primarily Ender. Ender is a child prodigy in warfare who is brought to an academy for children to learn to be soldiers.  Its 
required reading in a lot o of schools but I don't recall it being in mThis is partine, though i can't say i would u have read it if it were.
Ender's Game is set in a future in which a united earth has narrowly repelled an invasion by an insect like race of aliens known as the buggers.  Earth has spent the last several years preparing for the next invasion.

 Ender is put through a series of lessons/tests by his "teachers" all in the form of games.  Starting with video games and progressing to a zero gravity competition between different "armies" of children.  Ender is quickly made a commander one of these armies pitting him against much older kids.  Things are unfairly stacked against Ender by his teachers all to make him a better commander.  Ender eventually is sent to a command school where he plays through a series of simulated battles.  The rest would probably be considered to much of a spoiler...

 Ender's Game helps give us an idea of what happens when war and killing is filtered through the guise of a video game.  The more like a video game war becomes the easier it is to distance yourself from the decisions that are made.  This is becoming more and more of a reality but this book makes me have to ask if it should be.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Years Resolutions 2014

  I don't normally do new years resolutions.  I typically keep a long list goals in my head; I'm sure some of them fall out every once in a while.  But I figure it is not bad to write  some of these goals down and put a 12 month deadline on them.  Writing down, publicly stating and setting deadlines for goals is like some kind of weird magic sauce that makes you actually want to get shit done. Pay mortgage down to $110k   Having a 30 year mortgage with a 0% down payment we essentially started out behind and only making slightly more than the minimum monthly payment has not given us much progress.  Even with adding on to our house we are still under water. As it sits now the mortgage is at about $129,700.  I'd like to get that number down to $110,000 by the end of the year.  That will set us up nicely to be able to refinance and start saving for another house.  According to my lender if we keep making the normal payment I will b...
Post a Comment
Read more

What I learned from being a stay at home, homeschooling, dance dad.

  I was recently subjected to some kind of a sick experiment, in which all my free time was completely taken away, my rights to privacy relinquished.  I survived at the mercy of an oligarchical panel of tiny despots.  Yes, I was a stay at home parent.   It isn't as easy as I thought. I don’t know about other homeschooling parents but I have a very picturesque view of how things should go.  Children gathered around listening intently to unabridged classic literature. My six year old asking thoughtful questions about historical figures and the times and places in which they lived. With the utmost patience and joy my kids sounding out words of poetry, naturally learning phonetic rules in beautiful rhythm.  We'd have nature walks every afternoon with plenty of time for music and art.   By now you can probably tell, I don’t do most of the schooling in my house.  Turns out my fantastic idea of how homeschooling should be was jus...
Post a Comment
Read more

Giving to those in need this Christmas?

    One of my favourite missions organizations, Gospel for Asia , has an excellent Christmas catalogued , for giving to those in need in Asia.  You can give an animal, which as Alton Brown says is like giving someone a small business .  People can sell eggs from chickens, milk from goats, etc. Also you can give blankets, fishing nets, even a well.     One thing that I love about Gospel for Asia is that they promise to send 100% of your donation to the missions field.  So if you worry about middle men pocketing money this is a good organization for you to give to.  Everything that you give to GFA goes directly to people working in one of the areas that is most untouched by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Post a Comment
Read more