Ender's Game
By Orson Scott Card
1985 (1994 July, revised mass market edition, "Author's Definitive Edition;" New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC)
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Ender's Shadow
By Orson Scott Card
1999 (2000 December, first mass market edition; New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC)
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Reviewed by a contributor, August, 2004
Sections
· Religious fatalism
· Biological determinism
· "Ender" stokes the flames of inter-imperialist rivalry
· Some positive take-home messages on children's gender oppression
· Peter and Valentine on the nets: child-targeted Internet censorship
· Surprise, Card slanders Stalin
· Homophobia, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas corresponding to patriarchy
· Movie predictions
· Maoism versus both identity politics and subjectivism
· Guerrilla warfare and Ender's battle tactics
· What's wrong with Volescu: fascism and transhumynism
Some clueless "Ender" fans will ignore the marginalized genocide theme in these books and finish the books wanting to pursue careers in the u.$. military, but I wonder how much of this is based on the books' own politics. It turns out that Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are deeply reactionary, putting forth false biological determinism, homophobia, religious mysticism, and a "compassionate" brand of Euro-Amerikan imperialist politics without providing any alternative to inter-imperialist rivalry. There are some positive themes on the gender oppression of children under patriarchy, but these are overshadowed by the rest of the story and its intoxicating genius theory of history.
It is the future. The aliens have invaded—twice—and been repulsed by a united front of humyns. In preparation for a third war with the Formics and under the pretext of a military academy, the military trains young children to become experts in 3-D military tactics in outer space. Meanwhile, other "smart" children take advantage of the continuing inter-imperialist rivalry on Earth and plot to take over the world after the war with the Buggers ends.
Although filming has not yet started, a blockbuster movie version of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is in the making.(1) In fact, the movie will be based on both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, which covers many of the same events, but is told from the viewpoint of the character Bean. The original "Ender's Game" short story came out in 1977. The same-titled book, reviewed here, originally came out in 1985, and Ender's Shadow came out much later in 1999. Although they are supposed to be parallel stories, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are somewhat different books in their overall outlooks. It is necessary to nip this in the bud before people see the movie without realizing that Ender's Game is the superior book by at least a margin. Of course, Ender's Game is superior only because it isn't as bad. Both of the "Ender" books are steeped in the politics of the imperialist-patriarchy, at best taking a superficially amoral approach to the imperialist-patriarchy.(1.b)
There is a difference between Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow other than their narrative viewpoints. At first sight, Ender's Shadow looks to be promising. Bean, in Ender's Shadow, is in many ways preferable to Ender Wiggin. Essentially, Ender is a cynical, politically ignorant and ultimately willing tool. A clear example of this happens after Ender himself bullies Bean. Ender realizes that he's acting like Colonel Graff, but then tries to justify the bullying (E.G., pp. 166-168). In contrast, Bean's compliance with the system is, at least, partly a manuever to gain power for himself on Earth, and Bean is more enthusiastic than Ender to learn what is happening back on Earth. However, Ender's Shadow ruins what was possibly good in the story by introducing religious and biological-determinist themes. Worse, these two themes are set in opposition to each other in a way that may strengthen both.
Religious fatalism
Ender's Shadow has Bean, the "smartest" character, disagree with Sister Carlotta's Christianity at first, but ultimately agreeing with it. The repeated and strained references to Christianity in Ender's Shadow give the events in both books a fatalistic religious interpretation that is not only useless, but misleading, in the real world. The only redeeming value here is that Ender's Shadow is an example of how not to think. Although it does not actually depict incorrect tactics as a result of religious thinking, Ender's Shadow suggests that there is a risk involved in thinking that future military geniuses are sent down from heaven. While the early atheist Bean superficially sounds more like a Liberal atheist than a Marxist, MIM would agree with Bean's skepticism when he raises certain atheist arguments against Sister Carlotta's explanation of how he made it out of the "clean place," the eugenics laboratory, and was able to study for the tests to be admitted to Battle School.
It was like, she wanted to give God credit for every good thing, but when it was bad, then she either didn't mention God or had some reason why it was a good thing after all. As far as Bean could see, though, the dead kids would rather have been alive, just with more food. If God loved them so much, and he could do whatever he wanted, then why wasn't there more food for these kids? (E.S., p. 62)
The pronounced religious themes in Ender's Shadow weren't too surprising. In the first book, Card repeatedly glosses over the details of how Ender, as a commander, gets his perfect winning streak. This is in the theme of treating Ender as if he were somehow inherently destined to be an admiral. Before Ender is promoted to Commander in Battle School:
More battles. This time Ender played a proper role within a toon. He made mistakes. Skirmishes were lost. He dropped from first to second in the standings, then to fourth. Then he made fewer mistakes, and began to feel comfortable within the framework of the toon, and he went back up to third, then second, then first. (E.G., p. 106)
Like a pendulum in a vacuum. There are many more examples like this, even more extreme (Bean's Tactical School training, very different from Battle School training, is covered in a single page in Ender's Shadow, that sort of thing—Card skips to the action). It may be argued from a dialectical viewpoint that at least Ender succeeds only after making several errors, and that Card does describe some individual skirmishes in detail. However, Card's whole approach to Ender's development as a character is to make him respond reactively and predictably to his environment, whether it be to Colonel Graff or another adult's provocations, or to Bonzo's stupidity on the field or in the locker room. The ending of the story is a result of Ender's anti-hero, underdog persynality filtering down through a meticulously constructed web of tactical Battle Room problems and interpersynal relationships, with little political development in his thinking.
In somewhat of a contrast, Bean develops ideas that are genuinely in conflict with the International Fleet's xenocidal objectives, but he does not share them with other students, and he eventually agrees with the xenocide. Again, what we have here is a story about predetermined conflicts involving politically inert children, on the one hand, and adults dictating everything almost perfectly, and a totally amorphous Formic population whom the reader knows very little about. (By writing a letter, Bean manages to put a kink in the Battle School's recruitment activity, but it is too late. Bean agitates to have the standings scoreboards in the mess halls removed, but this has absolutely no effect in the story.)
Emphasizing art over politics, bourgeois literary critics have their own reasons for criticizing Card's writing style and lack of attention to detail, but Card's hurry in telling the story of how Ender rises through the ranks is a matter of Card's politics, not just his writing style, and of Card's incorrect, individualist "genius" theory of how the world changes. Details are left out because details don't matter. What really matters to Card is not the masses or even actions in general, but persynality. There is a reason why Card is obsessed with character development so much, only to undo it all by talking about Christianity and destiny presumably for the sake of appearing to be complex or profound.
Further confusing his readers, Card opposes to Christianity the "materialism" that Bean is innately very intelligent because of his altered genes. Sister Carlotta starts to move away from her early fatalistic religious theory of Bean's intelligence, only to raise an equally fatalistic and religious theory that God made Bean the way he is by intervening in Bean's conception vicariously through the eugenicist Volescu. As a starting point for understanding why Card may be wrong even before he opens his mouth here, I recommend Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1996), which sets out to disprove the idea of general intelligence as a heritable biological structure. Card presumes to get around the problems of heritable, fixed general intelligence by describing "Anton's Key," the genotype for Bean's high intelligence, as something that works by speeding up fundamental physiological processes. This only ends up making Card look more ridiculous for reasons that are obvious to biologists.
The genome that allowed a human being to have extraordinary intelligence acted by speeding up many bodily processes. The mind worked faster. (E.S., pp. 172-173)
Card is not simply using Anton's Key as a device to explain how Bean, from the streets of Rotterdam, can become Battle School material. Another child from Rotterdam is admitted to Battle School. It is clear that European Achilles Flandres does not have Bean's Anton's Key, but despite his social conditions, he is also admitted to Battle School.
I am not aware of any writing that directly addresses Card's particular "Anton's Key" idea, so I'll get into this a tiny bit. Keep in mind that MIM does not assume a priori that differences in cognitive abilities cannot have any genetic basis(1.c), but since Gould's The Mismeasure of Man originally came out in 1981, Card could have known better and refrained from playing with the fire of unproved and false genetic theories of intelligence differences.
Biological determinism(1.d)
In scientific terms, what Card is getting at by "the mind worked faster" is that Bean is even smarter than Ender because synaptic transmission is somehow faster in Bean's brain. So, it's not that Bean has a qualitatively different type of brain. His is just faster. The volume, so to speak, has been turned up. However:
Mostly in the communication between brain neurons, signal transmission speed is not crucial. The synaptic transmission in the brain is relatively slow, and is consequently called "slow synaptic transmission." What is lost in speed is however gained in complexity. The synapses between brain neurons are adapted to offer an almost infinite variation of neurotransmitters and levels at any given moment. This enables complex patterns to be established.(2)
Anton hints to Sister Carlotta that his Key may also work by speeding up whole-body "metabolism" (E.S., p. 171), not just neurotransmitter metabolism. This is incredible because as far as metabolism, cognitive processing speed differences depend on how very specific molecules are metabolized in the brain, not just whole-body metabolism.
It is true that neurotransmitter metabolism has a bearing on cognitive processing speed (variously defined and measured). However, it is not so much that more metabolism improves cognitive processing speed, but that problems with metabolism result in underperformance. "The right amount of glutamate helps create the chemical environment needed for the brain to process, store, and retrieve information, resulting in learning and memory"(2.b). In fact, "if too much glutamate is available, too much calcium may be allowed to flow into the nerve cells, and the nerve cells may die"(2.b). As yet, there is no drug that significantly increases cognitive processing speed for the average healthy persyn.
These little bits of detail are important because Card raises the claim, at least within this story, that differences in intelligence are due to genes, and that genes determine intelligence in a fundamentally physiological (metabolism) and quantitative way. Card is allowed to toy with fanciful, vague theories of genetic intelligence differences, but when he tries to justify them by appealing to specific biological concepts when not even racial scientists have started to do this, this is misleading. The authors of The Bell Curve (1994), for example, do not put forth a theory of what the presupposed biological substrate of genetic intelligence differences would be. By pretending that there is such an explanation, the "Ender" books influence readers who may at some point be involved in the already controversial discussion on the relationship between genes and intelligence. Bell Curve ideas are in the upswing since its publication. Even "fiction" books containing such ideas are serious business because at some point, what is perceived as being "scientific" will creep into fiction books, science fiction or not. The Bell Curve came out in 1994, and Ender's Shadow came out in 1999. Anton's Key is a completely unnecessary device in the story.
It is worse that the Anton's Key idea would not seem outlandish to most readers. Bean's brain is not described as being structurally different from other people's brains. Anton's Key just represents an extreme point in the variation of the "volume," or brain processing speed.
Variations on the theme of Anton's Key are why Andrew "Ender" Wiggin and his biological siblings, Peter and Valentine Wiggin, are all so "smart" even though they don't have Bean's own Anton's Key (or Bean's quantitative degree of Anton's Key), and why Card doesn't feel the need to explain their test-taking "intelligence" on the basis of their social conditions. The Wiggins are smart because they were born that way, so the story goes in effect.
Ender's parents had to be given permission to have Ender, as a "Third," due to the two-child population control law. Literally a prized humyn resource, Ender had to be "requisitioned" by the military in Ender's Game (p. 24) because the military needed more of the good stock. Peter and Valentine are considered unsuitable for the International Fleet's purposes only because of how they developed psychologically after birth. Otherwise, they are cognitively suitable. As Ender himself puts it, "It's what I was born for, isn't it" (E.G., p. 26)? "If I don't go, why am I alive?" Absolutely no attempt is made to explain Ender's suitability even at least partly in terms of his early childhood environment. Clearly, Ender is economically privileged, but so is the majority of the u.$. population.
Ender's Shadow, at first, is an improvement over Ender's Game because it suggests homelessness, poverty and child abuse as an explanation for Bean's intelligence in terms of street smarts, but everything is undone when Sister Carlotta discovers the genetic origin of Bean's intelligence. MIM would prefer Sister Carlotta's initial, purely religious explanation for Bean's intelligence over her later ridiculously false, pseudoscientific explanation. At least the purely religious explanation doesn't pretend to be materialist. The religious explanation can be dismissed out of hand from a materialist viewpoint without wasting time wading through and refuting all this "genetic" bullshit.
Card, by proxy of Colonel Graff, even goes as far as raising the possibility that the quantitative difference in intelligence between Bean and the other Battle School children represents what biologists call "speciation."
[Colonel Graff] The difference between humans and chimpanzees is genetically slight. Between humans and neanderthals it had to be minute. How much difference would it take for him to be a different species? (E.S., p. 181)
Since this speciation through the in-vitro conception of Bean is supposedly based on a single characteristic (unitary general intelligence, which is what Anton's Key supposedly acts on), this is like saying that a persyn with extremely dark or light skin, or a persyn with an extremely short grown height, represents a species different from normal humyns. Most people, Card obviously included, do not know what "species" even means biologically speaking, so it is wrong for Card to toy with these false and objectively racist ideas presumably to get readers to "think."
If there is any doubt that Card is engaging in pseudobiology, rather than simply religious mysticism, it is no accident that among the limited number of Battle School students, recruited from all over the world, there is also Nikolai Delphiki, Julian "Bean" Delphiki's genetically identical twin brother except for Bean's Anton's Key. They do not grow up in the same household. Evidently, "intelligence" runs in the family, Anton's Key turned or not.
In Sister Carlotta's discussion with Bean and Nikolai's parents, she finds it "hard to believe there was any genetic material in common" (E.S., p. 254) between Bean and his half-uncle Volescu. Her sole reason is that the persynalities of the Delphikis and Volescu are different.
Card makes a point of describing the character Hot Soup, whose real name is Han Tzu, as being Asian. "Salaam" Alai is Arab. And there is the whole long, drawn-out thing about "Bonito, pretty boy" (E.G., p. 208) Bonzo being Spanish. At the end of Ender's Shadow, is it obvious that the children's nationalities are relevant because their nationalities have a bearing on what may happen militarily when they return to Earth. Card is not trying to be "diverse." Nationality is just a plot point. (The old Bugger war hero Mazer Rackham is described as a "half-Maori New Zealander" (E.G., p. 100), but only to provide a contrast to the all-Jewish top governmental and military leadership. "If Mazer Rackham could save the world, then it didn't matter a bit whether you were a Jew or not, people said.") Card does not mean that non-European nationalities can be very intelligent, too. Nor does he dare to openly say the opposite of this, that non-European nationalities can't be very intelligent.
In Ender's Game, however, Card mentions a "really small black kid who had a top bunk near Ender's" (p. 40). They're both just launches/launchies (the Battle School equivalent of "recruit" or "private") at this point, and that is the last we hear about the "really small black kid," in fact, all we hear about him. It is tempting to say that Card depicts a black (lowercase because Card doesn't care to specify his nationality) child among this psychologically suitable cognitive elite for the sake of "diversity." We see the same thing in the Harry Potter movies so far, which depict African or Black children among the Hogwarts students. The difference is that the Harry Potter books and movies are openly anti-fascist, while the two "Ender" books under discussion take an amoral approach to imperialism for reasons that we will get into later. So, in the biological-determinist context, we must question why it is that Bean, Ender and other European children are promoted over oppressed nationalities in the Battle School. The Arab child Alai does not count as "diversity" because when the Ender's Game book came out in 1985, the imperialist united $nakes was still allying with Arab countries against Soviet social-imperialism.
"Ender" fans who confuse the appearance of different nationalities in the "Ender" world with "diversity" simply don't get it. Not only do the books not even achieve ideals of Liberal diversity, the books toy with false racial theories of intelligence. It is even worse because people still believe in these theories, but Card can always excuse himself by saying that he is just writing "fiction." Fine, then there is a difference between science fiction (Isaac Asimov, who at least understands the scientific principles behind his imaginary fictional inventions) and pseudoscience fiction (Orson Scott Card).
In addition to explaining why the Battle School students are so smart in terms of tests, the biological determinism is used to explain some of Bean's persynal behavior.
He had never seen any child show any desire or emotion that he himself had not felt. The only difference was that Bean was stronger, and did not let his fleeting needs and passions control his actions. Did that make him alien? He was human—only better. (E.S., p. 183)
Obviously, MIM is opposed to the idea that style of work has anything whatsoever to do with genes. One would think that Card is moving from his totally naive species concept of persistent differences in intelligence, but earlier in the book, he has Bean thinking that the kill-or-be-killed orientation common among the children in the story is "human nature." In this context, Bean is some supposed to be some kind of superhumyn. He is "better" than humyn. While the "Ender" books can be interpreted as a story about the possibility of overcoming humyn nature, this particular humyn nature is still an assumption in the books and shapes Card's genius theory of history.
"Ender" stokes the flames of inter-imperialist rivalry
The "Ender" books can easily afford to rely on the idealist theories of white nation chauvinism for plot points because the books are already influenced by the imperialist politics of the Euro-Amerikan nation. The fact that the first book, Ender's Game, came out in 1985 and is strongly informed by the Cold War politics of the united $tates hardly needs mentioning except for people who have not read a few pages of either of the books. Although the story is set in the future, there are several references to the Warsaw Pact by name (barely disguised as the "New Warsaw Pact," "Second Warsaw Pact"), "Russian hegemony," allusions to the United Nations, and the need to achieve "Pax Americana" (E.G., p. 132), instead of Russian imperialist hegemony, by "peaceful" means, of course.
The problem here is that no alternative is presented to inter-imperialist rivalry after the end of the war with the Buggers. It is either North Amerikan (Kanada and the united $tates) hegemony or Russian hegemony, or "diplomatically" achieved North Amerikan hegemony as a third option. The bully Peter Wiggin's interest in the third option is presented as his "compassionate" side, his bad side being his violent interpersynal behavior.
Bean fails to distinguish himself from Peter and, after brief consideration, buys into the same line that the Russians need to be stopped (E.S., pp. 401-402), that a world government needs to be created, and that China shouldn't dominate this world government, leaving only the "Euro-American nations" (E.S., p. 403) to dominate. By "Euro-American nations," Bean means North Amerika (Kanada and the united $tates) and the European oppressor nations of the European continent. Realistically, this means domination by the united $tates, and maybe Britain secondarily. Britain is almost never referred to in the "Ender" books. (Card uses "Euro-American" in a sloppy way. By "Euro-Amerikan," MIM specifically refers to the European settler nation currently occupying the Aztlan, Black, Hawai'i, First Nations and other oppressed-nation territory in what is now called the "United States of America.")
What's really disturbing here is not that Bean is so utterly incorrect and naive, but that he is supposed to have the most intelligent and sophisticated thinking. For example, we are told that the only time Bean is wrong about the International Fleet's true anti-Formic strategy is when he doesn't have enough information, that Bean always has the best theories possible. This just goes to show that what is important in deciding correct ideological and political line is not sheer intelligence in any sense, and (contrary to Bean) much less character or persynality, but politics. Albert Einstein's "Why Socialism?" notwithstanding, intelligence doesn't mean correct politics. But Card would be a little less stupid if he actually checked out some of Lenin's writing before taking cheap shots against him (see "Surprise, Card slanders Stalin" below). Some intelligence can't hurt. To his credit, Card suggests that there may not be too much difference between "Locke" and the more jingoist "Demosthenes," but Bean still goes over to the side of Locke. It's as if we might as well accept either one of these flavors of imperialist politics (or support Russian imperialism) since there is no consistent anti-imperialist position to refer to in the "Ender" books.
There is a comment in Ender's Shadow about China becoming a "dominant world power, economically and militarily, having finally reunited itself as a democracy," before the first Bugger war. Nothing substantial, and certainly nothing substantiated. After all, "all the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious." The "reunited" part is interesting but ambiguous. Bean also thinks about the "Muslim world" as a rival of Russian of hegemony, but Bean's position on the Middle Eastern and North African countries isn't developed further than that.
MIM does not say that the Chinese comprador capitalists have false consciousness when they choose social-fascism as a strategy. However, an end to social-fascism might improve the standard of living for the typical persyn in China if foreign monopoly capital is hampered. Disturbingly, Bean finds the prospect of Chinese imperialist "democracy" to be threatening. He is not concerned with imperialism as such, but with his racist perception that "the Chinese simply took it for granted that they were and should be the center of the universe" (E.S., p. 400). What Card is really putting forth is the labor-aristocracy and objectively fascist false line that Chinese productivity is a threat to u.$. workers' standard of living. In contrast, MIM is "against U.S. imperialism in China as it oppresses the Chinese people [and benefits the people of the united $tates], and we point to the extent of Amerikan involvement in Chinese affairs as a demonstration of the corrupt nature of the Chinese regime. Concern with economic favors from the United Snakes and a lack of concern with Chinese self-sufficiency characterize Chinese revisionism, which cares more about the supposed expediency of trade than about building a healthy national economy"(2.c).
So, more interesting than the first book's Amerikan imperialist politics, from the viewpoint of looking at what is new ideologically speaking, is why Card chose to put out Ender's Shadow in the late '90s as if the revisionist, social-imperialist Soviet Union still existed. There is something anachronistic about reading these books today. However, inter-imperialist rivalry still exists, and readers (and movie viewers) will probably not have too much difficulty thinking about contemporary Russia or China when they read about the incipient "Russian hegemony" and even "Russian imperialism" in the "Ender" books. They will plug in today's Russia and maybe China when they read "Second Warsaw Pact"(3).
Less clear is who the Buggers (Formics) correspond to in the real world, in 1985 or 1999. Although inter-imperialist rivalry in outer space is not inconceivable and already exists in some very real ways(4), Maoists do not waste time on alien-invasion scenarios or other such conspiracy-theory material. Suffice it to say, MIM would organize to build an appropriate united front if the humyn species' survival was actually threatened. In fact, this is what it is doing when it organizes a united front against imperialism. Imperialists, former social-imperialists, and comprador capitalists, "the five established nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain—possess enough nuclear warheads to obliterate the world many times over"(5), although "the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that [imperialist] Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185)"(6) (parentheses in original). Crucially, however, Maoists do not see genocide or xenocide (xenocide is specifically the physical destruction of a whole nation or, differently, a country's population) as a solution to imperialist-country parasitism. It is unfortunate that Amerikan and British imperialists do not think the same way about Iraq, Korea and Viet Nam as enemies, of European imperialism. Regardless of what Card himself intended by writing the book's "Speaker for the Dead" chapter, Ender's Game must be praised for portraying genocide/xenocide as being an incorrect tactic in all contexts. The bad thing here is that this theme comes off as only an afterthought, and only at the end of Ender's Game.
Regarding Israel, Card says that "since the I.F. was formed, the Strategos [general or commander] of the military forces had always been a Jew" (E.G., p. 99), and there is a remark about "magic Israeli generals" (E.G., p. 108). During the second Bugger war, all the top leaders were Jewish. Rose the Nose mocks himself as "Jewboy" to discourage (huh?) anti-Semitic attacks on his persyn. We can't really say that there is a worked out anti-Semitic position going on in either of the "Ender" books, but it is clear that Card has the relationship between imperialist Israel and the imperialist united $tates ass-backwards. Card could have done more to distinguish his ideas (the "narrator's" ideas) from National Alliance ideology.
If the xenocide of the Formics is a subtle commentary on the (a)morality of the united $tates' nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Britain and the united $tates' area bombing of Dresden, Pforzheim, and several other German cities, or the united $tates "strategic" bombing in Korea and Viet Nam, then it needs to be pointed out that the nuclear bombing was a terrorist act against the Soviet Union(7), and that the Soviet Union had nearly liberated Dresden(8). The question of whether genocide is necessary is moot and distracting. Genocide is typically an imperialist act against the world's exploited and oppressed.
This reviewer has talked with a white college student who dreams of becoming a CIA agent and considers Ender to be an inspiration. Maybe this was a fluke, but in his 1991 introduction to Ender's Game, Card recognizes a u.$. soldier as being legitimately inspired by Ender—in a bad way; Ender's Game was a morale-booster. On the Internet, there are similar reports of military-minded people, including youth, being inspired by Ender. Hell, let's let Card talk for himself: in addition to being a story about gifted children, Ender's Game "is also a story about soldiers" (Ender's Game, p. xxv).
If Card actually wrote good books, he can't be blamed for their being misused for imperialist purposes. In fact, despite the extremely repetitive, humiliating and ostensibly pointless "ass," "bugger-lover," "butt hair," "catamite" and "fart-eating" talk in these books (see "Homophobia, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas corresponding to patriarchy" below; apparently, Card is under the impression that these are among the typical "childish" insults), at least one gay white youth in North Amerika considers Bean an inspiration, but says that he does not support the u.$. occupation of Iraq. Card must be criticized for being deliberately ambiguous and supposedly not taking sides (how about the side of the world's exploited and oppressed?) in the struggles depicted in the "Ender" books, but the ambiguity has the potential to break off some youth from the labor aristocracy or neutralize them. That said, Ender's Game is not a good book just because it gets its readers to "think." The question is, what do they think?
Some positive take-home messages on children's gender oppression
A recurring theme in the two "Ender" parallel novels is that correct ideas, tactically speaking or otherwise, should be upheld regardless of who else upholds them. It doesn't matter that Ender is inexperienced or younger than unusual when promoted, etc., or that Bean's body is extremely small in size. Maybe this goes without saying, but MIM has received supportive letters from primary school students before(9), and many people would dismiss their correct ideas out of hand because of age. But the truth is that their politics are probably more advanced than those of 99% of imperialist-country populations. Moreover, it is possible for primary school students to teach correct political ideas to even younger students. There are reports of Little Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution as young as seven years. Although Ender is never concerned with political education, he is shown instructing even younger student in battle tactics, and this does not represent an impossibility. Hopefully, we won't be seeing five-year-olds in boot camps (children have a unique biology to some extent), but children are capable of teaching each other and often do so.
This is actually Card's best point about the oppression of children under patriarchy: socially constructed children are systematically excluded from positions of authority for unscientific reasons. When men and wimmin tolerate what they call "talking back" from children, they are mostly patronizing children. Colonel Graff and Captain Dimak tolerate (but do not take) criticism from students only to the extent that such criticism fulfills, or does not interfere with, Battle School objectives.
Although MIM would not go as far as saying that adults are necessarily incorrect in whatever they say or do from positions of authority (which would be an identity politics position), Dink Meeker is correct when he tells Ender that the teachers are the enemy (E.G., p. 108). "They decided I was right for the program, but nobody ever asked me if the program was right for me" (emphasis in original). They are the enemy in the sense of being gender oppressors, and the enemy in the sense of being representatives of the imperialists taking the line that the Formic alien nation needs to be physically liquidated.
Also, Bean starts to think of Sister Carlotta as the enemy and even as a gender oppressor. In specific terms:
After [Bean] got used to what hugging was, he didn't really want to do that either. He let [Sister Carlotta] hug him. But he didn't ever think of hugging her himself. It just didn't come into his mind [one of the features of the oppression of children under patriarchy: unequal exchange of emotional benefits] . . . . He knew that sometimes she hugged him instead of explaining things to him . . . . she thought he was too stupid or ignorant to understand if she tried to explain. (E.S., p. 64)
Bean goes on to contemplate how he can't trust Sister Carlotta to make the right decisions if he gives information to her. And before he departs for Battle School:
Bean knew that whatever Sister Carlotta was doing, it wasn't for him. She was using him. He didn't know what for. It might even be something he would have chosen to do himself. (E.S., p. 79)
The idea that people with female biology can be gender oppressors shows up elsewhere, in Ender's Game. Petra describes herself as "the only girl in Salamander Army. With more balls than anybody else in the room" (p. 75). Bean thinks that Petra "looked like a boy" (E.G., p. 81). But like Petra points out, girls are excluded from the Battle School for reasons that have nothing to do with biology. Also, Bonzo physically assaults Petra, but gives her "permission" to be naked, and "Bonzo get[s] mad if you [are naked and] skin by Petra" (E.S., p. 80). In a pathetic attempt to explain why there are so few female Battle School students, Colonel Graff says that "too many centuries of evolution are working against them" (E.G., p. 24), which suggests that people with female biology are born cognitively inferior to males. Once again, Card toys with biological determinism under the pretext of writing science fiction.(10)
One of Card's weaker points about the oppression of children under patriarchy is that adults don't fully appreciate the abilities of extremely "smart" children. Although this is true and there are, in fact, children as young as six, seven who have reportedly learned calculus, etc., it is not really important for MIM's analysis that the youngest children be able to do this or that task as well as the average adult. In truth, it probably takes an extraordinary amount of leisure time to get to the point where a child can coordinate a military fleet better than a supercomputer or several adults working together, so an argument against the oppression of children under patriarchy can't rely on something like that. Whether or not most children technically can be made as smart as the average adult has absolutely no bearing on the physical and sexual abuse of children as children, or the confinement of children to domestic work and sex work effectively. People who defend patriarchy on the basis of children's "stupidity" and see no alternative (like multiple-parenting or cooperative childcare) to current family forms, are reactionaries within the gender struggle. Card's emphasis on geniuses and savants sets up his correct points about children's gender oppression to be undermined. Card's orientation toward gender struggle is even more precarious given what else he says about gender (see "Homophobia, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas corresponding to patriarchy" below).
Card starts to really move away from a correct view of the gender oppression of children when he says in his 1991 introduction that "Ender's Game is a story about gifted children" (E.G., p. xxv), rather than children in general. True, the children depicted in the "Ender" books are different from most children because of their acquired abnormal thinking abilities and test-taking skills, and their disposition toward retributive genocidal violence instead of struggle (which is what makes both Achilles and Ender psychologically suitable for Battle School). However, they are still oppressed as children. Things start getting confused in the story when Dink Meeker makes this revelation to Ender: "I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares" (E.G., p. 109). What Dink is getting at is that the Battle School students aren't children socially speaking. However, the culture and relationships at Battle School show that the Battle School students are socially constructed children, just treated as nearly promoted chess pawns in the adults' plans, pieces to be protected.
Peter and Valentine on the nets: child-targeted Internet censorship
Card was writing Ender's Game in 1984, when the World Wide Web hadn't been invented yet. The newsgroup system Usenet was invented in 1979, so the "nets," which Peter and Valentine Wiggin use to create a fake line struggle between the persynas of "Locke" and "Demosthenes," may refer to Usenet. Regardless (and putting aside the fact that Locke and Demosthenes represent two factions within Amerikan imperialists, which makes their particular access to the nets look bad from a Maoist viewpoint), Card makes a remarkably prescient point about the exclusion of children on the Internet. Legally, Peter and Valentine can only use restricted student accounts to access the nets, and they have to convince their dad to let them use his "citizen's access." Child/student access only allows "audience mode," without the ability to participate in the discussions that are interesting to Peter.
In the real world, politicians are already discussing "a benefit of having kids surf only in the .kids domain. International entities will have to have permission to use .kids and their material will be periodically reviewed"(11). You can bet a million dollars that Web sites with real Communist content wouldn't be allowed in this domain.
Surprise, Card slanders Stalin
As an example of a turning point in history, the October Revolution is briefly mentioned a couple of times in the "Ender" books. Lenin is even referred to by name when Peter is ranting and lists some influential leaders.
"See? This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin for instance. Bismarck. Lenin." (E.G., p. 128)
This illustrates some of the relationship between objective and subjective factors in history, but misses the points of mass line and organization. Card's idea(12) of historical change is one where great thinkers, ideological geniuses, inject themselves into the world with no intention of ever changing their preconceived ideas or plans. This is the basic story of the Peter Wiggin subplot. The military aspect of history is conceived in the same way.
[Colonel Graff] But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. (E.G., p. 35)
It is strange that Mao Zedong is never mentioned as a military strategist. Strange, but not completely unexpected since we are told that the history of the Soviet Union "is so sweetly sad—all the tragedies, and yet nothing is learned" (E.S., p. 169). Since Card never seems to look past the pages of the pop military histories he uses as reference books, we don't expect Card to get into the details of anti-imperialist or Communist military strategy or organization. And we naively think that we might be able to make it through reading the "Ender" books without seeing any ad hominem launched against Lenin, Stalin, or Mao, but no. In a neurotic fit of megalomania, Bean's enemy Achilles compares himself to Saddam Hussein and Stalin in the same breath, without distinguishing between the two:
If you intend to rule, you don't shrink from killing. Saddam Hussein knew it—you have to be willing to kill with your own hand. You can't stand back and let others do it for you all the time. And Stalin understood it, too—you can never be loyal to anybody, because that only weakens you. Lenin was good to Stalin, gave him his chance, raised him out of nothing to be the keeper of the gate to power. But that didn't stop Stalin from imprisoning Lenin and then killing him. (E.S., p. 384)
Worse, Achilles is the only character in the whole story who possibly wants to gain power for the right reason, but he is described as a megalomaniac and a serial killer. "Then there would be perfect justice in the world, not this miserable system that left so many children starving and ignorant and crippled on the streets while others lived in privilege and safety and health" (E.S., p. 376). In Rotterdam, "papa" Achilles comes to genuinely care for the several younger children in his crew and initially rejects an invitation to go to school in the Netherlands (E.S., p. 34).
To Card's credit, at least he doesn't raise the false Lenin's Testament argument against Stalin's persynality(12.b), but that just shows that Card is ignorant of the slanderous anti-Stalin lies that are actually credible among Trotskyists and other anti-Communists. Card resorts to outright making up shit about Stalin that not even fringe Trotskyists believe(13). Lenin died from a stroke, or maybe neurosyphilis according to the latest news(14). Lenin had been ill for two years before he died. Either way, Stalin could not have induced Lenin's illness. Communists must not let Card get away with this bullshit lie, "fiction" or not. Many "Ender" fans are impressed by Card's military so-called knowledge, so it is possible that they are taking what Card says about Stalin as the truth, too.
Homophobia, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas corresponding to patriarchy
Although the title of Ender's Game and Card's name were familiar, I will admit to knowing absolutely nothing about Orson Scott Card persynally, not even his brand of Christian religion, before reading Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow to do this review. In fact, this is desirable because the books should be reviewed as they stand without recourse to talking about their author's identity. However, there is so much child nudity, accompanied by an extreme revealed anxiety about the anus, in these books, that the sexual aspect of the books is somewhat inexplicable unless we know about what else Card has written.(15) Other reviewers caught up in articulating romance culture prefer to focus on the heterosexual intimate relationships depicted in the "Ender" books, but these relationships are not substantial.
In Ender's Shadow, there seems to be an intimate relationship between Achilles and Poke, but this relationship isn't developed at all. Bean just worries that Poke may have had to have sex with Achilles to put off Achilles killing Bean back in Rotterdam. We never find out the truth.
At first glance, there seems to be something going on between Ender and Petra due to their persynality conflict, but they aren't interested in each other as intimate partners.
A remark is made to the effect that Bonzo is sexually interested in Petra, but no there is no further development of this idea.
There is some vague talk about the Rotterdam street children's interaction with molesters, but the topic is trivialized. Sister Carlotta's short-term solution is just to keep the child sex offenders away from Bean, which deals no blows against patriarchy as a system. Nothing new here.
This leaves the inordinate amount of child nudity depicted in the books, Card's repetitive and almost obsessive sexualization of the Battle School boys' bodies, and Card's intentionally repulsive use of "ass" jokes and insults, as the only substantial sexual content in the books. Far from being pointless as they seem to be on the surface, these three elements exist in the books for a particular reason.
It is made obvious that in Battle School, nudity is common, especially at night, when the students don't need to wear their jumpsuits, uniforms, or flash suits (for example, Ender's Shadow, p. 176). Card makes a point of describing the typical state of dress at night, and at one point, Bean and other boys are ordered to carry their suits to practice, still naked (E.S., p. 226). They are mocked by other students. It it tempting to let the whole "bugger"/"Bugger" (the colloquial name for the alien Formics) thing slide as being just a laughably bad choice of words, and the casual nudity as just a matter of the Battle School children being junior-high-age and younger. However, Card makes a point of putting nude boys in humiliating situations, and sexualizing the Battle School boys' anuses, and also of censoring the penises of boys with authority as if we were watching a show on TV. For example: "The Commander of Rat Army law sprawled on a lower bunk wearing only his desk [a light, portable computer]" (E.G., p. 99). Later in the story, Bean is put in a similar position with the desk.
Further raising the prospect of homosexual sexual assault, without doing the same for heterosexual sex:
[Rose the Nose] " . . . I hear you're [Ender] a genius programmer. I don't want you screwing around with my desk." . . . It took Ender a moment to understand why. Rose had programmed his desk to display and animate a bigger-than-lifesize picture of male genitals, which waggled back and forth as Rose held the desk on his naked lap. (E.G., p. 101)
The launchy Bernard makes fun of Shen's butt even when it's covered with clothing. "Look how he shimmies his butt when he walks" (E.G., p. 49). The protagonist Ender sticks up for Shen by putting down Bernard with homophobic insults. Ender hacks the computer network to send this message to everyone: "Cover your butt. Bernard is watching. —God" (E.G., p. 50). Later, Ender spoofs Bernard: "I love your butt. Let me kiss it. —Bernard" (E.G., p. 51). Ender himself is called a "fart-eating insubordinate traitor" (E.S., p. 129) and "walking rectum" (E.S., p. 130) by Bonzo. At one point in Ender's Shadow, Bonzo disparages Ender as being the favorite "little Wiggin catamite" (p. 284) of the teachers as if to blame child sexual abuse on abuse survivors, and then Ender is threatened with death. All of these remarks pass without criticism by any of the characters or the narrator.
"You're a Third, turd. You've got no rights."
Valentine came in, her hair in a sleepy halo around her face. "Where's Mom and Dad? I'm too sick to go to school."
"Another oral exam, huh?" Peter said.
"Shut up, Peter," said Valentine.
"You should relax and enjoy it," said Peter. "It could be worse."
"I don't know how."
"It could be an anal exam." (E.G., pp. 17-18)
This kind of stuff (several times more) goes on and on throughout both of the books to the point where it stops being "childish" or funny and actually becomes a strange distraction, and we must ask what is going down here. Even people who have not read Card's false(16), subjectivist arguments against gay marriage have picked up on the homophobia in the "Ender" books; although, such homophobia in language is certainly nothing unusual today, and some "Ender" fans don't discern any difference. They don't "get" it, they say. They don't "see" it. Yet, others do see it, so we must look at whether there is actually an objective basis for this perception.
If Card wants to write a rational(ized), openly negative article against homosexual intimate relationships, fine, but there is a big difference between that and writing books that underhandedly provoke the hysterical playground-bully repression of queer youth. This fact should not obscure the positive elements of the books, but must be openly acknowledged if people are going to continue buying and reading these bestsellers, and putting them on primary school required reading lists in the united $tates. When a book becomes compulsory reading under reactionary rulers and without any commentary, it becomes even worse to let its problems slide.
It would be wrong to criticize the homophobia promoted by the "Ender" books (the latest of which was written in the late '90s) without providing an alterative. J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series is an example of a ridiculously popular fiction series that contains clear allusions to queer themes, but does not end up whipping up preverbal hostility toward queer youth(16.b). Boys feature prominently in the "Harry Potter" series and in a boarding-school context, but Rowling is not compelled to make "ass" insults the characters' favorite type of insult. One of the clearest examples of character homophobia is channeled into criticizing homophobia, not reinforcing it. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, extremely dislikable Dudley presumes to insult Harry by suggesting that he has a "boyfriend." Harry does not retaliate in kind, and then "Dudley seems to have a homosexual panic attack when Harry takes out his wand"(16.b).
To give some more historical context, Jost Hermand(17) discusses in detail how sexual humiliation, sadism in general, latent and open homophobia, age-diverse male groups under patriarchy, intolerance of criticism, and minimal political education, come together in the youth groups of fascist armies to achieve these armies' objectives. With the exception of Bean and maybe Dink, both of whom do some library research on what's going on back on Earth, Battle School students learn little beside military history and tactics, and visceral hatred for the Formics (again, barely anything is said about the Formics as a society). All of Hermand's elements are present in Battle School. Comparing the Battle School in the "Ender" books to the Hitler Youth in the real world may seen inappropriate since some "Ender" fans liken the Formics to Nazis or the Japanese fascists. However, these organizations, Battle School and the real-world Hitler Youth, are both the youth groups of armies that are dominated by imperialists. The humyn united front in the "Ender" world is unambiguously led by imperialists; there should be no confusion about this. Things would have been done differently with an anti-Formic united front led by the world proletariat.
The difference between Card and Hermand (other than the obvious fact that they are writing in completely different genres) is that Hermand criticizes sexual oppression, fascist military training, and imperialist military discipline. Card does none of this except to say that Bonzo's open thuggery is "stupid." This is what it boils down to. The narrator has every opportunity to criticize the homophobic and sexually humiliating practices of the characters, but chooses not to, and instead channels the reader's feelings into further homophobia. Moreover, Bonzo's thuggery is described as humyn nature, which makes Ender's moderately better Dragon Army into something exceptional and improbable throughout history.
Recognizing that the Young Pioneers and Red Guards weren't characteristically military organizations, there is a big difference between the Battle School in the "Ender" world and the Hitler Youth in the real world, on the one hand, and the Soviet Young Pioneers and Chinese Red Guards in the real world. Although there is no such thing as a military without politics, political education is indispensable in revolutionary armies and throughout the revolutionary forces. The practices, especially the teacher-encouraged training in interpersynal violence in preparation for genocide, depicted in the "Ender" books are right out of the Hitler Youth and are not common to all political or military youth groups. Card should not take his amoral there-is-no-good-or-evil-here approach to the problems he depicts.
Movie predictions
There is only so much that a one- or two-hour movie can hold. I predicts that the planned Ender's Game movie will leave out the subplot about Peter Wiggin taking over the world(17.b). Whether this would be a good or bad omission depends on how the writers want to portray Peter's politics. Since they are imperialist, they should be openly imperialist, rather than just "totalitarian." Bean's Rotterdam story will probably get only a couple of minutes of screen time. The nudity will be left out for reasons more prudish than feminist, and "Formics" will be favored over "Buggers" to make the homophobia less obvious to today's moviegoers. Some parts where Bean and Ender engage in introspection will be left out. The whole thing about the fantasy game on the desks may be axed. This won't be a comedic family movie like Spy Kids (2001), etc., but probably will not be as dark as the Lord of the Flies movies (1963) (1990) and will definitely have an action-flick feel to it, obscuring the politics.
In a combined edition of the "Ender" books published in a socialist people's republic (combined because there should actually be a line struggle and effective criticism going on within the story, not just a conflict between different immutable persynal perspectives), Formics manage to communicate with the humyns and express their intention not to invade Earth again; colonization isn't worth it for the Formics after seeing their first two defeats. The North Amerikan-dominated International Fleet cancels the Battle School project, but figures out that it would be in their own imperialist interests to destroy the Formic population anyway. Bean figures out that this is bullshit and tells Ender. Without supporting Formic imperialism over anti-imperialism and the struggle against revisionism, they organize against the International Fleet's genocidal war on the Formics. Bean and Ender are called traitors along with everyone else who doesn't support the genocide. Achilles and Ender, who is closer to Achilles than to Bean in terms of violent behavior, make self-criticism for killing their opponents and not struggling with them enough beside reciprocating ad hominem. They follow the example of Bean, who struggles with Fly Molo and eventually wins him over (E.S., pp. 248-249). Ender's brother, Peter, openly goes over to the side of united $tates imperialism in his writing as "Locke" and calls for the assassination of Achilles, Bean, and Ender.
Maoism versus both identity politics and subjectivism
The above section discussing homophobia in the "Ender" books will anger "Ender" fans who think fictional literature stands above politics. They might not even contest the idea that there is homophobia in the books, but will object to pointing it out.
There is no denying that many people like the "Ender" books a lot. Ender's Game has won prestigious science fiction awards. Both books are bestsellers and have made it onto required reading lists. So, the books are important at least empirically speaking. Subjectively, there is something enjoyable about seeing a child protagonist gain a token of power in a world that is dominated by gender oppressors and imperialists, so other reviewers may let many of the deeply incorrect ideas in these books slide for the sake of talking about how the books are useful for combatting bullying or whatever. Others will say that because the "Ender" books are fiction, they are just art and have no politics. Maoists call this out as a scheme to smuggle reactionary politics into people's minds. "In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics"(18). Artistic and political criteria are both important, but politics is principle over art, and even within a work of art or literature, artistic elements are subordinate to political elements. The "Ender" books could conceivably be brilliant works of art, but be deeply reactionary, which means that the artistic elements support the political elements.
In fact, this is why this review deliberately refrains from talking much about character development in the abstract, and Bean and Ender's development into "good leaders" in some kind of ahistorical, universal sense. Such discussions of "good character development" border on emphasizing art over politics, and tend to ignore politics.
There were "good," extremely effective leaders among the Hitler Youth, too. The truth is that if open thuggery appeared to be the best leadership style (which it often is in fascist and other imperialist armies that doesn't face the exact same risks of internal political counterrevolution), Bean would go for that, too. To do anything else would be "stupid" in Bean's view.
Certainly, Bean is more consciously political than Ender, which would be a positive element of Bean's persynality universally speaking. The question is, are his politics good or just a brand of imperialist politics, which they are. So, just because Bean is in some ways more likeable than Ender, that doesn't mean that he isn't wrong. These books are exciting, fast-paced, and subjectively enjoyable even for this reviewer, but they contain profoundly incorrect ideas—which have real impacts as people read the books and go back to school or work.
MIM's opponents among "radicals" who have genuinely wishy-washy lines on gender-oppressor culture and can't see homophobia for what it is, are inevitably going to have problems with the above discussion on the objectively homophobic language in the "Ender" books. Straight or queer, they might not persynally "see" what the big deal is when male erogenous zones are regularly, irrationally joked about in negative sexual contexts and without any adjacent criticism. They might even say that this review practices identity politics or "political correctness" despite the extensive evidence given that shows that homophobia is systemic within the books and is not just a matter of an accidental inflection of language or Card trying to make the Battle School students look still "childish." What they forget is that under the dictatorship of the proletariat, fewer new movies and books will be targeted for criticism and censorship (in the sense that maybe 95% of today's new movies would have to be substantially changed or restricted, but increasingly less after the seizure of power) because socialist culture will try to discourage reactionary works from being created in the first place. We have to do these exercises in proletarian literary criticism and ask ourselves now, do the people really need this shit in the "Ender" books or not? For subjectivists, the answer is who cares; it's just art. For Maoists, such an attitude is just gender oppressors' own identity politics in disguise. The truth is that MIM's opponents who put down any analysis of homophobia in language viscerally take offense to any consistent argument against the repression of queer people. For them, there is no connection between homophobia and the imperialist-patriarchy except that homophobia may be just another capitalist device to divide the Amerikkkan working class, or a simple or even accidental by-product of wimmin's oppression.
Guerrilla warfare and Ender's battle tactics
It is important that people not read the "Ender" books as primarily some sort of lesson in innovative military tactics or even military leadership styles(19). Three reasons. 1) That is just another smokescreen for the book's imperialist politics. 2) With the exception of First Nations' defensive border struggles that are already developed, armed struggle is generally not correct right now in imperialist countries. 3) If revolutionaries waging people's war in the Third World have to rely on fiction books for military education, we have bigger problems to worry about. However, the "Ender" books are useful for showing what guerrilla warfare is not.
As in the real world, none of the Battle School training "armies" have all their soldiers under the direct command a single leader. The armies are divided into "toons." From what we can tell, these are roughly equivalent to what are called "squads" or "platoons" in the real world, keeping in mind that Battle School students do not engage in real battles in the story. Battle School armies are so puny (a few dozen soldiers—about the size of a tiny company) that none of these designations really make any sense unless Battle School "armies" are considered to be smaller units.
What is interesting is that Ender dislikes the use of rigid "formations" and prefers to delegate more control to subordinates, giving them more independence and freedom to improvise. At one point, Ender assigns Bean to command a special squad dedicated to surgical operations. As a result of Ender's strategy, his army sometimes behaves in apparently random ways. His army's behavior is adaptable, flexible, and fluid. Readers with a crude understanding of guerrilla warfare may confuse Ender's strategy with the strategy of guerrilla warfare, so it is necessary to distinguish them.
What Ender is doing still fits neatly into orthodox warfare, especially when he is able to see the whole playing field at all times and instructs his subordinate commanders all at once.
In orthodox warfare particularly in a moving situation, a certain degree of initiative is accorded subordinates, but in principle, command is centralized. This is done because all units and all supporting arms in all districts must co-ordinate to the highest degree. In the case of guerrilla warfare, this is not only undesirable but impossible. Only adjacent guerrilla units can coordinate their activities to any degree. Strategically, their activities can be roughly correlated with those of the regular forces, and tactically, they must co-operate with adjacent units of the regular army. But there are no strictures on the extent of guerrilla activity nor is it primarily characterized by the quality of co-operation of many units.(19)
In other words, guerrilla warfare is not a conducted orchestra or symphony, which is what Ender's game is in essence. In fact, the only really independent toon in the "Ender" books is Dink Meeker's in the Rat Army, and this is only by virtue of the fact that Dink's tactics are more effective than the army commander Rose the Nose's. Also, Dink seems to have a persynality conflict with Rose the Nose. His independence relative to the other toons, inside and outside Rat Army, is an accident, rather than a matter of strategy.
In contrast, "the fountainhead of guerrilla warfare [the fundamental type of guerrilla unit] is in the masses of the people, who organize guerrilla units directly from themselves."(20) Guerrilla units are deliberate, and they are genuinely independent. At the same time, there is some broad coordination, but with the knowledge that there are highly restricted lines of communication. "Unorganized guerrilla warfare cannot contribute to victory and those who attack the movement as a combination of banditry and anarchism do not understand the nature of guerrilla action."(20)
The tactically decentralized organization in Ender's Dragon Army is not guerrilla organization, but clearly an artifact of what Ender perceives to be individuals' different persynalities and skills. Ender organizes his army on the basis of his assumption that effective improvisation will always happen when needed. But in practice, he selects people to be toon leaders on the basis of their specific, individual improvisation styles and expects them to behave in highly predictable ways (and it turns out that they always win).
Ender's strategy is not conceived as a strategy targeting a specific problem, although, of course, the Battle School has a certain objective. Ender's strategy is presented as being just universally good strategy, something that all militaries should practice. (Even when the size of Ender's problem increases considerably after he enters Command School and resupplying his army is impossible, his strategy remains the same.) But the strategy of guerrilla warfare targets a specific problem: how to defeat an overextended imperialist army in a war of resistance and with technically inferior equipment.
"All guerrilla units must have political and military leadership."(20) The political aspect is completely lacking in Battle School, even in Bean's army. Of course, just because Bean is conscious of his politics doesn't mean that they are correct, so we don't see him teach his army about what he thinks is really going on. That's the way imperialist armies work even if 80%+ of their soldiers would agree with the openly reactionary politics anyway. One of the reasons why political education is less important in these armies is that they originate in a society where culture is already dominated by reactionary politics.
Assuming for the sake of argument that Ender's strategy is guerrilla warfare, which it isn't, he is wrong to make it his whole strategy. "These guerrilla operations must not be considered as an independent form of warfare. They are but one step in the total war, one aspect of the revolutionary struggle."(20) In fact, guerrilla units are converted to orthodox units, especially those guerrilla units that originate locally in the masses. Regular army units sometimes form details for guerrilla warfare, but the regular army units are still needed.
Guerrilla warfare can be the best strategy when used in the appropriate context, under the right conditions. Although guerrilla warfare could not have been used against the Formics (who are completely on the defensive and concentrated at their own home planet), Bean is wrong to despair:
No matter how courageous and spirited the fight, victory almost always went to the side with the greater power to inflict damage. Sometimes David kills Goliath, and people never forget. But there were a lot of little guys Goliath had already mashed into the ground. Nobody sang songs about those fights, because they knew that was the likely outcome. No, that was the inevitable outcome, except for the miracles. (E.S., p. 346) (italics in original)
Volescu and transhumynism
A recurring theme, in Ender's Shadow, is that Bean is better than humyn and humyn nature, at least in character. Card's false biological determinism throughout both "Ender" books has already been exposed, but when Bean describes himself as better than humyn and considers this desirable, this alludes to a movement confined to European oppressor nations which is called "transhumanism"(21). While related, biological determinism and its eugenic applications do not necessarily equate with transhumynism, so these have to be dealt with separately.
Recent examples of transhumynism in movies include Gattaca (1997) (http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/long/gattaca.html), the Mecha in Artificial Intelligence (2001) (http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/long/ai.html —however, this review of Artficial Intelligence correctly interprets the Mecha as being Third World humyns), and the Machines in The Matrix (1999) (http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/review.php?f=long/matrix.txt). Although he does not go beyond religious condemnation, Card is correct to demonize the eugenicist Volescu, whose illegal work probably would have been appropriated by imperialists regardless of his own intentions.
The existence of advanced in vitro fertilization in the "Ender" world to determine the sex of a child is very briefly mentioned in Ender's Game (p. 24). This technology is already a reality.(22) Ideologically and relationally, the practice of individual old people paying money to determine a baby's sex is consistent with the ownership of children(23) by gender oppressors. In Ender's Shadow, Sister Carlotta discusses with Bean's parents how they not only had to have a baby through in-vitro fertilization, but purposefully selected certain fertilized eggs to be cloned (p. 254).
Notes
1. "Ender's Game (2006)," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400403/ ; "News about Ender's Game: The Movie" http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/endersgame_update.html
1.b. I realize that Ender's Shadow is not a sequel to Ender's Game in the conventional sense. Card describes them as parallel novels. Also, Card wrote a few books, set in the "Ender" world, between the two "Ender" books, Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. These two books are being reviewed together because they are closely related, and because they are the basis of the upcoming movie. I also understand that Card may have moved away from his politics as expressed in the "Ender" books. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are being reviewed as stand-alone books. Many people read these two books first and do not go on to read the rest of the novels set in the "Ender" world.
1.c. "Bell Curve Lessons : IQ Against the Oppressed," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/mt9bell.html
1.d. Strictly speaking, biological determinism refers to any theory that purports to explain people's locations in society principally on the basis of biological factors. So, not all biological theories of cognitive differences are biological-determinist. However, in the "Ender" world, intelligence is important in determining admission to Battle School, and important within Battle School, and differences in intelligence are described as having a genetic basis. Virtually all biological theories of variation in "intelligence" are to some degree biological-determinist in context. In the "Ender" books, character is sometimes described as being more than intelligence, but Bean and Edner are still the smartest. At one point, the smartest character, Bean, is described as being the leading factor in games that are ostensibly commanded by Edner. It is true that military outcomes are partly decided by smarts, but the whole "Ender" story is characterized by a theory of genius. Peter and Valentine don't make it into Battle School due to perceived persynality weaknesses, but all else equal, they would have been admitted. In fact, in the story, they go on to decide the course of history on Earth.
2. "Nerve Signaling – An Introduction," http://www.nobel.se/medicine/educational/synapse/intro.html
2.b. "How NAMENDA Works," http://www.namenda.com/treating/how.asp
2.c. "China's capitalist-roaders dance with Amerikan imperialists: legacy of the counter-revolutionary coup," MIM Notes 124, October 15, 1996, http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=124
3. "The United States is Driving Russia and China Together Again." http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?ctype=article&item_id=218
4. "Should the United States 'Weaponize' Space? Military and Commercial Implicatons," http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-427es.html
5. "The world's nuclear arsenal," http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/733162.stm
6. "Israel – Germs, Gas And Nukes Fingers On All The Buttons...," http://www.rense.com/general35/buttons.htm
7. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/rail/fliers/gramterla.pdf
8. Not only that, but the fire-bombing of Dresden may, like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been a terrorist act against the Soviet Union. "However, RAF briefing notes indicate that one of the motives was a demonstration of strength for the Soviets. The notes mention a desire to show "the Russians when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do." "Bombing of Dresden in World War II," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
9. For example, see "A Young Supporter" in MIM Notes 75 (April, 1993), http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn.php?issue=075
10. The only thing Card has going for him is the ambiguous empirical finding that the average female underperforms slightly on visual-spatial tests, but research was never clear on this point. Card will probably excuse himself by saying that he was just writing a fiction device, but since such reactionary thinking was already in the upswing in the '80s, Card should have criticized it. "Why Aren't There More Women Engineers? : Women Focused Explanations," http://web.odu.edu/engr/womengineers/bank_8a.html ; "She Brains - He Brains," http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html
11. ".kids: Safe Sites for Kids," http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/01/washtech_shimkus0725.htm
12. That is, Card's idea in these books. It turns out that Card has an even more ridiculous theory of history in which "human beings exist on earth in order to achieve the purposes of a benevolent God." See "Statement of Beliefs," http://www.hatrack.com/research/beliefs.shtml
12.b. "Forgery of Lenin's Testament," http://www.mltranslations.org/Russia/LeninTest.htm
13. "Did Stalin kill Lenin? Trotsky thought so...," http://antitrot.tripod.com/humor/murder.htm
14. "Soviet Icon Lenin Died of Syphilis–Experts Say," http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=featuresNews&storyID=5717843§ion=news
15. "Homosexual 'Marriage' and Civilization," http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html
16. "Prenuptial Jitters," http://slate.msn.com/id/2100884/
16.b. "Queering Harry Potter," http://www.alternet.org/story/16314 ; "Queering Harry Potter," http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Sept2003/bronski0903.html
17. Jost Hermand, A Hitler Youth in Poland : The Nazis' Program for Evacuating Children during World War II, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 1997.
17.b. After this review was wished, it was found out that the prediction about the Peter subplot might turn out to be true, but nothing seems to be definite. According to http://www.philoticweb.net/movie/ , "Peter is in this draft, but in a very minor role" (italics in original).
18. "Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/mao/sw3/mswv3_08.html
19. Apparently, the united $nakes military differs on this point and has recommended Ender's Game for corporals and sergeants to read. "Commandant's Reading List," http://tun-tavern.diakonos.com/readinglist.php3 ; confirmed, but do not visit this link without a proxy: "The Marine Corps Professional Reading Program List," http://www.usmc.mil/cmcalmars.nsf/0/39da7ce39611249e8525645e00755e1d?OpenDocument
20. "On Guerrilla Warfare," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/mao/sw6/mswv6_29.html
21. "The Politics of Transhumanism," http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm ; "Humanity 2.0: transhumanists believe that human...," http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=2357&s= ; "Why the future doesn't need us," http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html
22. "Brave New Babies," http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3990134/
23. "Children (or young adults) who are owned by their parents until they are 18 are also an especially important vehicle of change under imperialist patriarchy" (parentheses in original). "The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets For Capturing The Heart Of Mr. Right, by Ellen Fein & Sherrie Schneider, 174 pp. 1995," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/gender/fein.html ; "The Oppression of Children Under Patriarchy," http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/mt9child.html
All links are working and accurate as of August 8, 2004.