Ender's Game
Ender's Game (1985) is a military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled mankind that has barely survived two conflicts with the "Buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet creates a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world's most talented children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed. |
Statements by Orson Scott Card:
“[C]hildren are a perpetual, self-renewing, underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves.”
“I felt like a person all along-the same person that I am today. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than an adult’s emotions or desires.”
“I felt like a person all along-the same person that I am today. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than an adult’s emotions or desires.”
Heroes vs. Villians
Locke and Demosthenes
"He and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up one society distinct from all other creatures. And were it not for the corruption, and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations".(Second Treatise, Chapter 9).
"The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man's life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel." Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Civil Government. 1690. “To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” ― John Locke |
“Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence...The difference... is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging.”
― Demosthenes “Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.” ― Demosthenes “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” ― Demosthenes |