The Beginning Of The Enderverse

Regular readers of this blog know, having been told over and over (and assuming that they were paying attention), that Ender’s Game by Scorson Ott card…let me re-type that, I’m so excited!…by Orson Scott Card, is my Desert Island Book. Assuming, that is, that they give you a book on top of the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare.  If not, I might have to take it as my luxury item instead of the giant vat of Vaseline I had set my heart upon.

Vaseline is fabulous:

• Lubricant: to grease rusted screws from washed-up airplane parts that I can turn into three-storey homes and life rafts
• Skin softener: to protect me from the harsh elements
• Lip salve: Vaseline’s most vital function in my own universe: have you ever tried smiling at strangers when your lips are cracked?  Don’t.  It frightens them
• Frying grease: I’ll need all my fat stores, obviously, because I can’t hunt or grow vegetables.  My best hope will be to eat suicidal sharks.  I’ve eaten shark.  It tastes fishy.  But I don’t do sushi, hence the Vaseline.  Fat stores are the reason I don’t diet – in case of desert island castawaying.  I find a good precaution is never wasted
• Sore sealant: it’s what they put on boxers’ cuts to stop the blood obscuring their vision as they pound each other to pulp.  Which brings me back to Ender’s Game:

My beloved eldest son (this month’s favourite child as a result of what I’m about to tell you) sent me a link yesterday: the film of the book is FINALLY made!

The book was written in 1985 and is beloved around the world, but various attempts to film it were defeated because the Battle Room was just too difficult to turn into hard copy.

Thankfully, CGI is now so sophisticated, the dream has become reality. Imaginary reality, of course, but you get my drift.  Remember – the enemy’s gate is down!

I’m sure it won’t be the only book in the series to be filmed, but I do hope they go the Bean route rather than the Ender route.

You don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t care: I’m happy in my own little world.  Unlike poor Ender, a lonely child soldier.

Dystopian futures – I love ’em.  Ho!

 

 

Broken Promise

Image by Myles! via Flickr

Who is the character from a book that has made you feel so close to him/her that you simply can’t stop thinking what’s gonna happen next?

Gonna?  Really?  In what purports to be a serious question?

I’m annoyed: I had taken up Nancy’s challenge not to make fun of the WordPress prompter for a stretch but, really, ‘gonna’?  Now I have to start all over again.

Gonna have to cut&paste an old post for some of my answer because I’m too irritated to write anything new:

Desperate for something to write about, I turned to Plinky Prompts again. It asked me ‘What book would you read over and over again?’

I would have to say, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. It started life as a short story that became a novel and then a series of books, the Ender Saga and the Bean Saga (Bean is a minor character in the first book). I prefer the Bean Saga because they are more like Ender’s Game; the Ender Saga is dreadful, apart from the first book.

Ender’s Game is the story of a child trained to save the world; but also the story of a child who has to survive the world. When my boys came up against bullies, I gave it to them to read. I must confess, however, that putting your enemy’s nose through his skull is not a path I hope they take: it is the philosophical angle I hope they will consider.

Above all, it is the story of negotiating childhood. In space.

Here’s a review from I know not who on Amazon:

Whenever I talk about this book, it’s hard not to make it sound like I am a science fiction junkie. I love and defend sci-fi, but I am not limited to the genre. Neither, I think, is this magnificent book. To label it simply a sci-fi classic would be like labeling “Moby Dick” a great book about boats. All great books, regardless of the genre, say something truly profound about the human condition.

Ender is a good child trying to do the right thing, but circumstances forced upon him make him a killer.  He is sweet and vulnerable and ruthless.  I love him. 

It’s such a shame that the rest of his story is dull dull dull.  He deserves better than OSC gave him.

There are constant rumours that there’s going to be a movie of Ender’s Game.  Now that technology has caught up with Card’s imagination, I’m hopeful that eventually the rumours will prove to be true.  This is probably the only instance, however, where I hope that if they do film it, the sequels don’t follow the book’s sequels. 

Ender deserves better.  Ho!

Let’s Get Serious

Image via Wikipedia

What do you want to accomplish with your blog? What is it for?

To make you laugh.  S/he who laughs last, lasts.  People who laugh live longer.  Unless they get hit by buses while doing it.

Laughter isn’t the best medicine (if it was, I could stop donating to Cancer Research), but it’s the best coping mechanism.

When I started my blog – to stop Tory Boy’s nagging – I was simply looking for an outlet for my writing.  I had no focus.  I wrote about my life and tried to make it funny, bunging in the occasional poem or cartoon.  Then I discovered that the funnier I was, the more comments – and visitors – I received.  Because people like to laugh.  I elbowed the poems, changed my tag line, and learned to do with less sleep as I sweated over finding the funny in everything.

To celebrate being thirty three percent done with Post a Day/Post a Week, share your top three favorite posts that you’ve published since starting the challenge.

I posted 78 times in April alone; I have no chance of recalling a favourite.

Instead, I’ll tell you my favourite things about blogging:

• meeting all you wonderful readers and your delightful blogs
• learning the art of sucking up
• finding interesting titles – not always, as today’s title shows
• sharing searches that find me
• reading comments – you always surprise me
• feeling like Sally Field at the Oscars – you like me; you really like me!

 

Looks like Orson Scott Card had it wrong, by the way: the dirtiest word isn’t Third.*

*A preview of a future prompt.

And one final thing I love about blogging:

• having a place to disgorge random thoughts and knowing that you can’t understand all of the Tilly, all of the time, but you don’t seem to mind

On T’Ender Books

I love the latest Madam & Eve cartoon:

*

There’s not much happening here in TillyBudLand.  The weather is turning colder and Tilly Bud is getting older.  That’s it, really.  Desperate for something to write about, I turned to Plinky Prompts again.  It asked me ‘What book would you read over and over again?’  I would have to say, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card.  It started life as a short story that became a novel and then a series of books, the Ender Saga and the Bean Saga (Bean is a minor character in the first book).  I prefer the Bean Saga because they are more like Ender’s Game; the Ender Saga is dreadful, apart from the first book.

Ender’s Game is the story of a child trained to save the world; but also the story of a child who has to survive the world.  When my boys came up against bullies, I gave it to them to read.  I must confess, however, that putting your enemy’s nose through his skull is not a path I hope they take: it is the philosophical angle I hope they will consider.

Above all, though, it is the story of negotiating childhood.  In space.

What’s your favourite book?