I thoroughly enjoyed this book, my first sci-fi BTW, (I usually go more into horror genre). I have heard that there will be a movie made and I am afraid to even watch it. There are so many parts of this book that I just can’t imagine being transferable to film!

Also, I know there are more books to follow this one, but I haven’t read them yet. For anyone who has read them I would love a quick critique of what is to come. Are they better than Ender’s Game? Worse?

like the testicals on the laptop?

I read the book in 7th grade some thousand years ago.

All the uberscifi fans will tell you how much it sucks as a book lol, I liked it to be honest

I liked Enders Game, but didn't think the others after that were anything great. They're not bad, but Ender's Game is the best of the series, IMO.

My favourite Orson Scott Card book is by miles and miles Pastwatch:The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. But then, I have always been a huge sucker for alternative histories.

An alternate history for Christopher Columbus? I think I might try that. It sounds very interesting.

I had that one sitting around for a long time before I read it, always had something better to read. But once I picked it up, I was hooked.

The basic plot is that scientists from the future decide that Columbus probably shouldn't have discovered the new world, so they go back in time to change it. It's a little more complicated than that, but I don't want to give it away and ruin the book for you.

I've read Ender's Game, Xenocide, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Shadow Puppets in this series, and many of Card's other works, all of which are listedhere

I have also read the first two 'alvin maker' books, the 'maps in a mirror' short stories, the 'homecoming' series, songmaster, hart's hope, lost boys, and enchantment.

The Ender books are his best work, but most of his stuff is worth reading. I wouldn't bother with 'lost boys', it kinda sucked, but the rest of the above are good. 'Enchantment' was excellent, and the others were good reads, too.

Wow, DD, a really big fan, huh....lol. Correct me if I wrong but isn't Ender's Shadow supposed to be the same book, but from a different POV?

Yes and yes. Card is one of my favorite authors (although I have so many, lol) and yes Ender's Shadow is from a different POV, but until more than halfway through the book, Ender doesn't even show up. The book begins with Bean's life as a kid, and he doesn't meet Ender for a long time. The last section of the book is kind of boring if you have read Ender's Game already, but overall it's very good.

I checked out the list of all his books, and was surprised at how many I had read. In a completely different genre, he has a series called Women of Genesis. He takes an important female from the bible, and writes a story about their lives. I was a little skeptical at first, but I really like the first two. Not overly religious at all, just a darn good story that happens to take place to someone that's in the bible.

They might be considered 'chick books' though, I don't know if guys would like them.

LOL.....well, I am a "chick" but I don't generally like chick books or movies. They do sound kind of interesting though. Thanks for the heads up Duzey.

I'm a chick too, and normally I avoid any book or movie remotely 'chick-like'. I only gave them a chance because Card wrote them.

That's why I was so surprised I liked them.

Welcome, Cameo, to the grand and almost limitless universe of science fiction.

I'm one of those "uberscifi fans" Lysergic warned you about. We never use the term sci-fi; it's always science fiction to us, and we abbreviate it "sf".

Now we've got that out of the way...

You might like to know that most of the conspiracies discussed on ATS, in all their permutations and combinations of detail, are mass-media versions, pablumized for easy mastication, of ideas that first appeared in vintage sf. They're usually much more interesting, and provide more fuel for the imagination, in their original versions. I could provide examples, but I think you will have much more fun discovering them for yourself, so I'll content myself with a few pointers. For government conspiracies, see Philip K. Dick. For big-business conspiracies, try Robert Heinlein and Frederick Pohl. Is God really an alien? Ask Arthur C. Clarke. Some of us are aliens in disguise? Theodore Sturgeon liked to toy with that idea, as did Phil Dick. Reality is an illusion created by invisible powers to keep you in chains? Dick (yet again -- the man really was paranoid), A.E. van Vogt, Harry Harrison and Robert Anton Wilson all played with that one. Yes, Wilson, the inventor of all this Illuminati nonsense, used to be a science-fiction writer. So was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, which is based on ideas he first explored in his (not very good) novels.

But I may be scaring you. Sf isn't really for paranoiacs; that's only one corner of an incredibly wide field. Frank Herbert's Dune is, among many other things, a study of what happens when a messianic movement confronts realpolitik. Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness is about culture shock and sexual attitudes. Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is about the rise and fall of civilizations and the persistence of humanity in all its incompatible forms. Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus is about the effects of colonialism on the colonists and the colonized. Of course, these books are about other things as well: they're tales of derring-do, love stories, growing-up stories, space opera and a whole lot more besides. I could go on like this for pages but I don't want to bore you, and besides, I have a character limit.

Anyway, for my money, the best science fiction is that published between 1950 and 1980 -- roughly speaking. The stuff published before that tends to be mostly of historical interest: clunky, big on technological whizzes and bangs and peopled with characters of pure cardboard. I'm overgeneralizing but I think most old sf fans will agree with me. As for the stuff published after1980 -- well, the real world was catching up too fast; truth was becoming more outlandish than fiction.

Even so, there were exceptions. Iain M. Banks, one of the best writers ever to turn his hand to science fiction, got his start in the Eighties and is still producing fine work. Gene Wolfe, a writer so great he demands comparison with Proust and Joyce, has done most of his best writing since 1980. His novel The Book of the New Sun is one of the great works of modern literature -- but be warned, it will take multiple readings over a period of decades to wrap your head around that particular masterpiece.

I must say I've never liked Orson Scott Card much. His work seems over-egged and a bit simplistic to me -- though I must say, in fairness, that I have read very little of it, and very long ago. Of the current crop of writers, I prefer Dan Simmons, who seems to be creating a fictional universe of his own, rather like Banks's Culture. Simmons's Hyperion is excellent, The Fall of Hyperion even better.

But my favourite is Iain M. Banks. I like his Culture novels so much I re-read them whenever I have nothing else to read (which is, admittedly, not often). I recommend them as an antidote to the whole UFO/abductee cult thing; compared with the stuff Banks comes up with, all those skinny grey mannikins and offworld proctoscopy seem so unimaginative...

Once more, welcome. I envy you; you've got so much good stuff waiting for you to discover. Unlike poor jaded old me; I've read the lot and must now wait till the next great luminary swims into my ken... wait in hope and all-too-frequent disappointment.

I read it years ago - and it really messed me up. I'm a highly visual person when it comes to books and this one - well, it took the cake.

I read all the follow ups to Ender's Game and liked them. The politics of what happens after the war is simplistic but nonetheless cool.

And Iain M. Banks' stuff is brilliant, I absolutely recommend it. But my favourite SF author at the moment is Bruce Sterling. An astonishing prose stylist and the possessor of an astonishing imagination.

I used to really like Greg Bear - Slant is still one of my top SF books ever, and if you liked Ender's Game you might well like the Eon series.

Anyway, for my money, the best science fiction is that published between 1950 and 1980 -- roughly speaking. The stuff published before that tends to be mostly of historical interest: clunky, big on technological whizzes and bangs and peopled with characters of pure cardboard. I'm overgeneralizing but I think most old sf fans will agree with me.

I must say I've never liked Orson Scott Card much. His work seems over-egged and a bit simplistic to me -- though I must say, in fairness, that I have read very little of it, and very long ago.

Astyanax,

You're obviously well read and I agree with the 1950 - 1980 time period, but you left out an obvious; Roger Zelazny. The Library isn't complete without "This Immortal or "Isle of the Dead" (both Hugo Award winners). I thought "Ender's Game" was good, but not his best work. For some reason "Songmaster" seemed to be a bit more of a page-turner.

Whadaya think?

He's definitely very good -- I loved "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" -- but my list wasn't intended to be comprehensive. I left out Brian Aldiss, James Blish (A Case of Conscience is a must-read), Harlan Ellison (who can forget The Deathbird?), Michael Moorcock (one of my great personal favourites), Robert Silverberg and many of the other 'greats'. I have no hesitation in adding the inventor of cyberpunk, William Gibson, to that list. I'll never forget the impact Burning Chrome had on me when I first read it: something entirely new to this even-back-then jaded sf fan.