Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A brilliant young boy is molded into a military leader to save humanity from an alien threat in this classic work of science fiction.

I was inspired to reread this novel by the release of the long-awaited movie version. The gorgeous visuals fail to convey the emotional complexity of Ender's Wiggin's journey from six-year-old boy to pre-pubescent general, so I was glad I went back to the original to refresh my memory.

It's a classic Chosen One story, much like Harry Potter or Dune, where a special child is the only one who can save his people from total annihilation. Ender is special, so special that he was actually requisitioned by the government in the hopes that he would balance out the traits of his sociopathic brother, Peter, and his compassionate sister, Valentine.

Humanity is united by two previous invasions by an alien species known as the Formics (or colloquially as the buggers). Having barely won the past two encounters, Earth's government sets up a special Battle School designed to train young children to be tactical geniuses.

Battle School is full of games to challenge Ender. The most important of these games takes place in the battleroom (like zero-g laser tag), where children fight each other in armies. The students at the school are brilliant, aggressive, and frightening: Ender is the best of them all. He's manipulated into a precision weapon, proving himself lethally competent to face whatever the adults throw his way. Ender is aware of the manipulations and hates them, but he chooses to fight, recognizing the greater threat.

There are intriguing characters (mostly children), tense and clever battle sequences, a bizarrely unsettling mind game, and an overarching mystery about the true nature of the enemy. It's Lord of the Flies in space, and the perfect intro novel for those who have never read science fiction and want to try it. Its exploration of free will, warfare, and the helplessness of childhood is part of the best tradition of classic science fiction.

Ender's Game stands alone but is the first in a series, and the sequel Speaker for the Dead follows an adult Ender into self-imposed exile. There is also the great parallel series, beginning with Ender's Shadow, that tracks the Battle School life of Ender's second-in-command, Bean. Bean is a unique character, and his story may echo Ender's but ends with very different results.

If you want another sweeping novel about fascinating alien species and child protagonists, definitely try Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep.

Quotable:

"Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."

"Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart."

"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given to you by good people, by people who love you."

Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Idealistic Jim Holden discovers a derelict spaceship and unwittingly ignites a deadly war; meanwhile, run-down cop Detective Miller searches for a missing woman who may have the key to it all.

Growing tensions between Earth, Mars, and the scattered stations of the Belt lead to war in a galaxy where human annihilation is as simple as throwing rocks into a planet's atmosphere. The stars remain unreachable because human curiosity has stagnated amidst age-old societal problems. The ethnic racism of the past has turned into racism based on what level of gravity a person grew up in. Enter our heroes.

The starship Scopuli was empty when Jim Holden stumbled upon it, but someone is willing to start a war that could make humans extinct just to hide the truth behind its vanished crew. In the ensuing chaos, the fate of Julie Mao is easy to overlook. But Detective Miller, once a good cop and now burnt out alcoholic, finds himself drawn to the missing woman and determined to track her down.

This book is a perfect cocktail of horror, noir crime fiction, and space opera. It's science fiction that's all about the characters - an idealist and a cynic - and the disappointing parts of human nature. It's fast-moving, tense, and in places utterly terrifying - which is everything good space opera should be. (It reminded me of Firefly, too, which is awesome!) The story is dark, but because of the balance of likable characters it manages to be optimistic about human potential rather than veering into nihilism.

Leviathan Wakes feels like a self-contained story and can stand alone pretty well, but I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel, Caliban's War, as well as the third book of the Expanse series, Abaddon's Gate.

Final observations:

• The mystery element and world-building made me think of Isaac Asimov's classic The Caves of Steel.
• The authors (James S.A. Corey is actually the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) mention being influenced by the Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter Jon Williams, which starts with The Praxis.
• I would say it's the best space opera I've read since A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
• Vomit zombies

Theodicy

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Father Sandoz, the sole survivor of a Jesuit mission to an alien planet, grapples with his faith as he reluctantly confesses the disastrous consequences of meeting "God's other children."*

This is a book you have to allow to sink into your brain and heart, where it will certainly take root. It is a character study of Father Sandoz and his closest friends as well as a chilling first contact story of the impossibility of entering a truly foreign culture without suffering from dangerous ignorance and misunderstanding.

I admit to feeling impatient with Sandoz as he mopes and avoids telling his story (which is recounted VERY slowly in parallel flashback chapters, told in third person), but by the revelations at the end I was completely on his side - the horrors he suffered are every bit as soul-shattering as his reticence suggests.

Russell sees no conflict between religion and science, and for this I am profoundly grateful: her characters encompass a range of belief (from priests to atheists), but each person is educated, intelligent, and articulate. The Jesuit mission on Rakhat is to learn, not to proselytize, and the portrayal of the priests is human and sympathetic.

There are no other books quite like this one, but science fiction does have more than its fair share of thoughtful books about first contact by brilliant writers: Contact by Carl Sagan, China Mieville's Embassytown, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin...I could go on.

SPOILER(ISH)

P.S. There are traces of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine here, too, for anyone who remembers the Eloi and the terrifying Morlocks.

* This annotation was a joint effort by students, created in class for "Adult Reader's Services" taught by Nancy Pearl (Spring 2013).

Now THIS Is Science Fiction

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two human children crash-land on a planet populated by wolf-like aliens, and they are soon enmeshed in a local war. But beyond the planet an even more desperate war is being waged--one that will determine the fates of entire species and change the fabric of the galaxy itself, but hinges on the doings on the surface of the alien world.

Wow. Reading this book reminds me why I love grand-concept science fiction. It's been a while since I read a story that absorbed me so completely, and to my joy it's a stand-alone (though there is a prequel and a sequel)! There is genocide on a galactic scale, ethnic cleansing on a medieval scale, and a complex, satisfying story in one volume. It's amazing that in telling the story of such huge events, Vinge never loses sight of the individual characters we come to care about.

Human beings are only one sentient race in a galaxy populated by super-intelligent beings known as Powers, which exist in a special area of space known as the High Beyond. Their doings are as unfathomable to us as our doings would be to an ant. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, this does not stop us from messing around with things beyond our comprehension and resurrecting a Perversion, a Power dedicated to the subjugation and destruction of other creatures.

The human survivors crash-land on a planet populated by the Tines, a species of alien absolutely brilliant in concept and execution.

I won't add more, simply because Vinge tells the story so well and spins out the difficult exposition slowly, building tension in the reader as new understanding illuminates this complex and well-designed universe. If you liked David Brin's Uplift trilogy, Orson Scott Card's Enderverse, or even the 2004 Battlestar Galactica TV series, you'll enjoy this book as much as I did. (I do not recommend it as an entry point for non-science fiction readers, however.)

I know I should be working now....

But I'm too busy racing through Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. I've never read his stuff before. It reminds me a lot of Brin's Uplift trilogies in scale - there are a dizzying number of races and expanses of time in this universe.

02/15

page 32

5.0%

Whoa. Just figured out how the aliens work, and I'm hooked. They are mind-blowingly cool: lupine creatures with a gestalt organization to their telepathic packs. One individual, many creatures. If that makes no sense to you, fine. (But it would if you read the book, and that is why this is great science fiction.)

02/15

page 88

14.0%

Get back to the wolves! The "zones of thought" are only slightly less cool than the gestalt packs: basically in our part of space physics works slowly. Brains are dumber, light speed travel is impossible. But the further out you go from the central "Unthinking Depths" (where everything, including intelligence, stops working), the faster and smarter things get - including AI. There are many traps for the unwary there, including malevolent computer intelligences that trick you into writing them...