From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 11:12:56 MDT
Paul Grant wrote:
>...
> <me> Gentlemen; its a book. You can't use Orson Scott Cards
> fictional characters as a basis for sound judgements as they
> regard to genocide.... Besides, there are so many *real life*
> examples to choose from <historical examples>...
>
> omard-out
That's a good point... but it cuts both ways. In the historical
examples one never knows the complete context, whereas in the book one
knows, or can know, the complete context.
However, I think the "Ender's Game" referred to above was actually a
short story, or perhaps a novella. It appeared in either Astounding or
Analog. The books followed decades later. But the error was shown in
the original story. (I must admit I never read the expansions into books.)
A part of the point of the original story was that some decisions must
be made on the basis of incomplete information. Whether a mistake was
made or not depends on how you consider guessing wrong, when you emerge
a victor. If it doesn't bother you to have killed people needlessly, as
long as you emerge triumphant, then I guess that no mistake was made.
I do forget the details, though. It's been decades, so I may have this
confused with another, but I seem to remember that Ender was playing as
the enemy, and was loosing, thought he had lost. But his actions were
being used to predict the actions that the Enemy would take. So his
side actually won. And he emerged as a part of the victorious side that
had destroyed the civilization that he had believed he was defending.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 30 2003 - 11:21:27 MDT