There's Something About Harry

I finished reading the twentieth anniversary edition of Ender’s Game a couple weeks ago.   I followed that up with a book by Louis Black called Nothing Sacred.

Speaker for the Dead is the sequel to Ender’s Game.  Ender’s Game was a very good book and I was struck by the lack of detail about the setting and the people and well everything.    The book is written in a minimalist style so that the reader can project with their own imagination what things look like and how they interact with each other.

The book also plays out inside the character’s heads largely.  There is some dialogue, but it is the constant ongoing self analysis of the situations the characters encounter that drive the book forward.

I learned this from the authors own comments at the end of the book.    As I considered that writing style, I realized that like a Heinlein book where the character is often capable of dealing with any situation physically, or like a Asimov book or even a Piers Anthony book where the character’s are always so damn smart that they can figure something out with their intellect, Orson Scott Card emulates that style.  This immediately puts him in company with some of my favorite authors. 

My only criticism of his books comes in either the editing or the close of the book.  In most of the books I’ve read by Orson Scott Card, I run into sections where it feels like the author gets bored with the topic or plot.  That was always my perception until I read the authors notes at the end of the anniversary edition, where a few comments about the editing process helped to indicate that some of the sections of the books were cut to keep the book moving along. 

Personally I feel like that was a mistake, but it could be a sign of the times.  Twenty years ago, lets say before Harry Potter and the Oprah Winfrey book club, I do not think many people were reading popular books as much and reading a page volume level like they might be today.

Book sales may be down, but that could be a function of people enjoying longer books!

So maybe this is a lesson or trend for authors and editors to pick up on and exploit by encouraging authors to write longer books and not editing out all those sections that build a book almost like a Great Pyramid until you have a nice little masterpiece.  Sure fewer words can convey a message and maybe even get a book moving along in a suspense book, but sometimes consumers of books, especially in Science Fiction or Fantasy, we want to experience the world, the universe, the multi verse and don’t want the experience cut short or fast forwarded.

Background on Ender’s Game Series

Ender’s Game (1985) is a science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card.[1] The book originated as the novelette "Ender’s Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.[2] Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card later wrote additional books to form the Ender’s Game series. Card released an updated version of Ender’s Game in 1991, changing some political facts to accurately reflect the times. Set in Earth’s future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind who have barely survived two conflicts with the Formics (an insectoid alien race also known as the "Buggers"). In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains 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. Reception to the book was generally positive, though some critics have denounced Card’s perceived justification of his main character’s violent actions. Ender’s Game won the 1985 Nebula Award for best novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel. Its sequels, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, A War of Gifts, and Ender in Exile, follow Ender’s subsequent travels to many different worlds in the galaxy. "Ender’s Game" has been adapted into two comic series and is planned for a video game.

Ender’s Game – Wikipedia