ENDERVERSE.com

OSC has been busy; between coordinating the pending comic book, video game and movie franchise, he’s been flushing out a new corner of the Enderverse. Can’t tell you much about it, since it hasn’t been released yet; but it will go on sale November 11, 2008.

From the Amazon.com product description for Ender in Exile:

Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel.

At the close of Ender’s Game, Andrew Wiggin – called Ender by everyone – is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered Earth Hegemony. He is offered the choice of living in isolation on Eros, at one of the Hegemony’s training facilities, but instead the twelve-year-old chooses to leave his home world and begin the long relativistic journey out to the colonies. With him went his sister Valentine, and the core of the artificial intelligence that would become Jane.

The story of those years has never been told… until now.

Cool.  I’m going to pre-order my copy at Amazon here.

Tags: News, Books by Jane
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Ever had a hard time reconciling your feelings about Ender’s Game,  the author who wrote it, and the ideas that he expounds in other venues?  Did those ideas somehow shape the content of the book?  And if so, is it appropriate to appreciate a book out of the context of which it was written, or can it stand alone and transcend the author’s political views?

Matt Blum @ Wired dealt with OSC’s position on same-sex marriage, asserting that “We need a way to gauge the quality of a person’s work against whatever repugnant thing(s) they’ve done.”

I’ll let you be the judge on that one; make your own analysis on the arguments outlined in either of these articles.  Is his analysis on OSC’s arguments correct or fair?  Are OSC’s outlined implications for democracy just a thinly veiled disguise for an ideological attack on gay rights activists? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.  But regardless of the truth of this particular argument, even if OSC were a gay-bashing religious zealot that only used language to manipulate his readers with red herrings to further his agenda, would that mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater?

I think it’s a fair question.  Can we judge a work out of the context in which it was created; or can we reinterpret the work in it’s more modern context, apart from the author’s evolving policial ideas?  If the story stands alone as a work that can be applied to the world we live in, shouldn’t we take all the other stuff with a grain of salt? Or are we better off seeing the whole picture, even if it’s distorted by the layered lenses of perception?  After all, the real power of storytelling, whether it come from a bible or a science fiction eipc, is in it’s osmosis-like ability to help us learn about and navigate the world around us.

So if Ender’s Game teaches us about the world we live in, what are the lessons?

Tags: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Out of the Enderverse, Books by Jane
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According to OSC, sure looks to be that way.  Last April, he had this to say:

A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.

Sure sounds familiar. But is that a fair assessment?  Leave your comments below.

Tags: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Out of the Enderverse, Books by Jane
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Random House keeps a list of what they consider to be the 100 Best Novels of the “Modern Library”; Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game comes is listed at #59!  “Cult Classic” my butt.

Tags: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Books by Jane
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It was pretty difficult to find it online; we tried searching for “ender’s comics”, “enderverse comic”, “ender’s game comic”,”gold bug”, etc, but found very little information about it anywhere, including Hatrack.com, the defunct Dabel Brothers site, or even on the Marvel Comics catalog site. But we finally tracked it down. The Enderverse Comic “Gold Bug” was in fact published by Marvel Comics this summer, but not as a stand-alone comic. That’s probably why it’s so impossible to find through Google; there’s no dedicated product page for the Gold Bug title. Instead, it was printed inside of an Alvin Maker title: “Red Prophet: The Tales Of Alvin Maker”. We’re placing our order today; we’ll post a review as soon as we can.

In the meantime, you can read more about it here at Amazon.com:

Tags: Out of the Enderverse, News, Books by Jane
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Found in an article in the Daily Hearald (Central Utah) reporting on a lecture Orson Scott Card gave at BYU.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Card’s best-selling science fiction novel, “Ender’s Game.”

Tags: Orson Scott Card, News, Books by Jane
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IncWell, a site billing itself as a “free online fiction magazine for readers 10 to adult”, has announced that they are publishing the “original version” of Ender’s Game online.

If you’ve never read the original short story, this is your chance; although we’re not crazy about the web browsing format they use here, they do seem to offer an iPod or iPhone format. We haven’t tried that yet, but that might be fun: I wonder if OSC ever imagined that students might someday read Ender’s Game on an actual “desk”?

Tags: Orson Scott Card, News, Books by Jane
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In July 2007, Hatrack River announced that Jake Black (Enderverse comics) will be the primary author for an upcoming book entitled The Authorized Ender Companion.

From the announcement:

“The book will contain an encyclopedia-style listing of all characters, locations, events, and devices that have any significant mention in the books and stories of the Ender series.

This will include Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, First Meetings, A War of Gifts, and the Ender stories in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show.”

Apparently, it’s not too late to post your own suggestions (read: it’s a long way off kids, like every other project we’re impatiently waiting for):

“We invite participants in the Hatrack River site to post suggestions in the forum if you can think of anything you’d like to have included in the ultimate book about the Ender universe.

In particular, if you have questions you’d like to have answered - serious or tongue-in-cheek - post them in the forum and we’ll look through them to see which ones we think will work in the book.”

Peeking at the forums doesn’t reveal much in the way of an organized method for making sure your suggestions are read, but if you’ve something to share, the forums are over here. Or, the PhiloticWeb forum has a thread about this here.

Or, feel free to post something in the comments below.

Tags: News, Books by Jane
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