GWC Book Club Nov. Selection: Ender’s Game
The votes are in, and this month's community-selected book of the month is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. If you haven't yet read this much-borrowed-from classic, this is a great opportunity to delve into it with lots of company as the GWC community reads it together.
And if there's a book you'd enjoy reading with the community, you can post your recommendation in the GWC Forum's Book Club section. We gather up all the selections and start voting on the 15th of each month.
Group Read: Ender's Game [GWC Forum]
Ender's Game Via Amazon [What's this?]
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I have been a listener for the last few months, but I do not post much. A caller in show 90 mentioned three books that I love. Of course Ender’s Game is outstanding and one of the better Sci Fi books written. I would also recommend the two follow up books one being called “Speaker of the Dead.” I want to talk about “Armor” and “The Mote In God’s Eye”.
I was in the army for 8 years and Armor is one of the most popular books among soldiers. The main characters actions while wearing the armor and being the “Machine” was an idea that many soldiers aspired to. It was an idea of doing action automatically without conscious thought. This is a soldiers goal in a stressful situation, working on instinct and survival. I was a medic and there are several times that I can remember that I would be treating a soldier for a wound and working without thinking. It was the absolute culmination of training. Moving before thought, knowing what to do without having to rationalize it or plan it out. There are also times were I would go for 30 hours without sleep and being nothing but a machine. It is hard to describe how you can be beyond yourself and become a schema of unquestioning soldier. I have never been a loyal follower and always questioned actions and orders, but at these times of stress I would become reduce to a functioning survival unit whose soul motivation was my next action and not having a thought beyond that.
“The Mote in God’s Eye” is a great book with a very unique idea on an alien race and its survival. I always thought the authors were comparing the alien creatures to the Chinese. I might have been reading to much into the book, as I do with so many, but I feels that it is a commentary on the Sino-Soviet-US relations of the 70’s and 80’s. There may have even been some Xenophobic underpinnings against the Chinese.
I would recommend all of these books to my fellow listeners especially “Mote” and if any of you are ex-military then I know you have already read “Ender’s” and “Armor.”