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Here’s a quote from Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender’s Game:

So as you look at your bogged down first draft, look to see how much of your effort is spent on withholding information, and then examine whether your reader has any reason to care about what’s going on as long as that information is withheld. Most novice writers imagine that this is how suspense is created–by hodling back key information from the reader. But that is not so. Suspense comes from having almost all the information–enough information that the audience is emotionally involved and cares very much about that tiny bit of information left unrevealed.

Usually the only information that you withhold is this: what is going to happen next.
–Orson Scott Card. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, p. 85.

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Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Age Group: ?

With the movie quickly approaching, I got my hands on a copy of this almost cultish book. As a kid, I gobbled up science fiction - Dune, anything by Mary Stewart, Martian Chronicles, every Stars Wars book ever written. But Ender's Game came out way after my science fiction phase. I was well into battling my way through such wonders as the far more scientific (than fictional) Charles Monod's Chance and Necessity. Sigh. Hours of my life I'll never get back. 

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure yet, Ender's Game is a battle heavy book about a boy who has to save humankind from the perceived threat of an alien race, much like the Borg for all you trekkie fans, that have attacked earth twice. There will be no third invasion. Instead, we're taking the battle to their home world and Ender must lead the attack. 

Despite a zillion fight scenes and at times unsettling brutality, I enjoyed Ender's Game. The premise was intriguing and the characters all Byronic heroes in their own way, but more than anything what kept me coming back for more was that the writing perplexed me. Card defies boxes.

Ender is a child who writes, speaks and acts like an adult. Entirely. There is nothing childlike about him. Either this is genius on Card's part, a particularity of the genre science fiction (there are no childlike characters) or an inability to create a child protagonist. Either way, unchildlike child protagonists are definitely Card's calling card, which has led me to theorize as to what good they do. I've come up with three: 1) this kind of character holds up a mirror up to the way we treat children in war zones; 2) this character portrays the way children view themselves, and 3) these characters create stories that defy categorization.

Three intrigues me most because Card's protagonist appeals to young audience and well as older ones, and has created a cultish following among none other than teen readers. How's that for defying/embracing all categories at once? Seems like  genius on Card's part. His work defies the neat boxes publishing has attempted to erect and neatly divide books into. In getting rid of the boxes and making a jederman character, Card's stories unsettle me, and in unsettling me, challenge me as a reader to think, reassess, reenvision the world around her, and as a writer to challenge boundaries too. Yep, definitely genius.

For more great reads check out Barrie Summy's website. It's brimming with temptation!

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In addition to the May 17 release (finally!) of Star Trek into Darkness, 2013 looks to be a good year for movies based on children's and YA books.

Coming up this year are:

Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
Ender's Game
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Other movies this year based on books/plays/classic tales include:

Bless Me, Ultima
Jack Ryan
Jack the Giant Slayer
Jurassic Park 3D
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Great Gatsby
World War Z
Much Ado About Nothing
Carrie
The Seventh Son

And based on comic books:

Iron Man 3
Man of Steel
The Wolverine
Thor: The Dark Worlds

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Hi all you cool cats in "The Land o Blog." I've been travelling the waste lands all by my lonesome for a little while now, but have found the communication portal once again. Big shout out to Iron Carl for carrying the load all by his lonesome will I was missing in action!!!! Luv ya dude!!!! Anyway since I'm back I'd like to make this post a little special. Hold tight all:




For a Few Dollars More staring Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef!!!!
After reading my first review you will understand why I included this awesome clip!!!!

Jonah Hex, Bury Me In Hell by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and others - For those of you unfamiliar with Jonah Hex let me fill you in. Jonah Hex is the ultimate western anti-hero out there in the world of comics. This Graphic Novel covers the comics numbered 61-70. If you love the Spaghetti Westerns (The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More and A Fistful of Dollars) made with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach (The very best with all 3 involved), you will love this Graphic Novel. This GN includes Jonah taking on a Killer Octopus (I know this one has you scratching your head), being stranded in a town where breakfast, lunch and dinner are more than a tad odd and plenty of other stories involving bandits, gunslingers, saloons, whiskey and general wild west adventure. I must caution that this book is not for younger readers as the violence, language and general mature level is definitely for older western fans. My recommendation would be at least 14 years old and up. If you like this one there are many other excellent Jonah Hex GNs out there. Great stuff!!!!!





Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card - Orson Scott Card is by far and away one of the finest writers of Science Fiction that I know. Now to me what makes for great Scfi is not just futuristic machines and gadgets, spaceships, etc., but also great written characters and a solid plot that peaks your interest. "Speaker For The Dead" has all of these items and I flew through it. Now if you are not familiar with "Ender's Game," the first book in which we meet Ender Wiggins and the war against the Buggers is held, stop right now and read that book first. I would also suggest following "Ender's Game" with "Ender's Shadow" about another interesting character named Bean. Okay after reading those two books dive into this one. This book is about what happens to Ender after The Bugger War ("Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow" occur at the same time, just focusing on different characters). He becomes what is called a Speaker of the Dead and tells the story of people's life that are no longer with us.

The story starts on a world know as Lusitania that is colonized by humans. The problem is there is an alien race already living their known as the Porquinhos or Piggies (although in no way or form do they resemble pigs) which means because of incidents that occurred in "Ender's Game," humans are forced by The Starway Congress to have limited contact with this newly discovered species. The limited contact that is allowed for study leads to quite a mystery. A mystery that involves death and causes great pain and suffering until it builds to multiple calls for the most famous Speaker of the Dead....Andrew Wiggins. also not known by many to be Ender (despised by many for reasons you will have to read about)!!!!!!! A great read that I thoroughly enjoyed. Recommended for those13 and up.

Well I missed you guys and I will be back soon. Let me know if you are reading something you really like by commenting on this post?

Peace all,

Bill

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The producers of the Ender’s Game adaptation have launched an on-set Tumblr for fans to follow the creation of the movie.

The weekly posts have featured photos of props, production sets and a sighting of Ender Wiggin himself, actor Asa Butterfield. What do you think of the casting?

Author Orson Scott Card will publish Earth Unaware, a prequel title to Ender’s Game, in July 2012. Besides that book, Card has several other manuscripts in the works including the next installments for the The Shadow Saga, the Women of Genesis series, the Pastwatch series, the Mithermages series, The Mayflower trilogy and the Pathfinder series. (via Shelf Awareness)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Microsoft is billing its upgrade of the Xbox Live platform (as the “future of TV.” The new user interface comes with a wealth of content from video partners, including 26 live channels from Verizon Fios, thousands of On Demand options... Read the rest of this post

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Marie Lu‘s debut novel, Legend, hits the shelves tomorrow. We caught up with Lu (pictured, via) to learn more about how authors can utilize social networking tools, the writing process for the book and her views on being an Asian-American author. The highlights follow below…

Q: How did you land your book deal?
A: My agent, Kristin Nelson, first took me on for a novel that we ultimately didn’t sell. While we waited for feedback on that one, I began writing Legend. After two intense rounds of edits with Kristin, we submitted Legend to publishers in the summer of 2010, and I recall shrieking in my apartment when Kristin told me it was going to auction with six interested publishers. Legend sold to Penguin a couple of weeks later!

Q: You drew inspiration for Legend from watching a musical production of Les Miserables. During the writing process, did you consult with Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables?
A: It’s odd–Les Miserables triggered the first flash of inspiration for Legend (a criminal versus a detective-like character), but after that, I never referred to it again. I think the story just started going in a completely different direction. I did consult Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow a few times for inspiration on how to write from the point of view of a child prodigy.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game  is being turned into a movie starring Asa Butterfield (Hugo)!  It is about time!  The movie will come out in March of 2013.  Click here for more info.

Anything that far out is still tentative.  Keep your fingers crossed that this movie actually gets made.  (Remember the Artemis Fowl movie, anyone?)

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I recently listened to the audio book of Ender’s Game (20th anniversary edition), and it was sooooo good. I thought maybe I had read the book before because I knew a lot about it; but maybe it was 20 years ago and I don’t have a good memory. Anyway, whether it was the first time or second, listening to the audio book has made me fall in love with the first book of the series and brought back my interest in reading other books in the series. I need to know what happens to Ender!

If you aren’t familiar with this Timeless Thursday pick, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is a science fiction story set in a futuristic earth about a very young boy who is recruited by the powers-that-be to command fleets against the Buggers, alien beings called Formics. The young boy is named Ender Wiggins, and he is taken to Battle School where the world’s most talented children are being trained and tested through a series of computer games and “battle” exercises against other children. They are being prepared to fight in the third invasion of the Buggers. Ender’s Game won the 1985 Nebula Award for best novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel.

One of the best parts about the audio book is that the author of Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, tells about his writing career, writing process, ideas for Ender’s Game, and struggles to get it made into a movie on most of the last CD. Being a writer myself, I might have appreciated this part more than the average person, but my husband actually found it interesting, too; and believe me, he hears enough about a writer’s struggles. It’s always nice to hear how a successful author started, how he worked on Ender’s Game to get it just right (which was actually first published as a novelette in a magazine), and how he still has to struggle to get his story out into the world the way he wants it. For example, many movie producers who wanted to buy the movie rights to Ender’s Game insisted that Ender had to be 16 years old in the movie version, and he had to have a love interest. Card understands that his book will have to be changed somewhat for the big screen, but changing Ender to 16 will not work for the story. Card explains why and his fight to find someone else in Hollywood who thinks the same way. And he found this person! YEA! This still doesn’t mean we’ll see a movie any time soon, but keep your fingers crossed.

Even if you are not a huge sci-fi fan, I think you’ll love Ender’s Game whether you are a middle school student, high school student, or older. The drama and characters will appeal to anyone! If you teach older kids, this would be a great book for discussion–there are a ton of moral dilemmas to debate. This would also be a great pick for a parent/teen book club.

There’s still a chance to win Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs until 8:00 p.m. CST tonight. Go here.

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Hey, one and all, it's Carl. Cyber Kid 303 came in today and got his free book. Here's a picture:

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Peter Heather, a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, a teacher at Worchester College, University of Oxford and author of The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians is our guest on the OUPblog this week. Heather’s book proposes that centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling the Roman empire. In the article below Heather looks at The Battle of Hadrianople. Be sure to come back tomorrow when Heather answers a few questions for OUP.

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