Where are aliens?

[Zbyszek]

I would like to encourage you to read to series of books: about Ender written by Orson Scott Card (maybe except Children of Mind) and the Hain series written by Ursula Le Guin.
Orson Scott Card: I have seen some of his funs around so I will start with it.
Why I am saying that the Chldren of Mind are the worst? Have you read Roger Zelazny Chronicles of Amber? In second part, that about Courts of Chaos and Merlin, he gains some super rings (spicards?) and is able to do anything. Something similar happend in 4th novel about Ender - they can do everything, Jane is almost a god. Thats why Scott Card is no longer writing sequels.
But it is not good way to praise books .
Why world of Ender? These books are about us. How we react, feel. How we can be manipulated. How we are afraid, afraid of strangers, afraid of aliens. We are able to grant them right to live but only if they are inferior, only if we can ensure they will not threaten us. Ender - in first book a child, he is alone and has been taught that his victory has to be complete. He is sensitive, he can understand strangers. He distroyed alien race. In sequels he is looking for redemption. Scott Card aliens are real threat because we think they threaten us.

Le Guin - daughter of famous anthropologists or whatever. She populate her planets with human species that originated from planet Hain. Each planet had separate evolution, but it is cultural not biological evolution (mostly) what is important. If Card write about politics, she writes about social organisms. Her characters are usually represenatives of outer world (Hain civilisation) who try to understand culture, customs, society of different planets. Usually they fail. They are send as ambassadors or agains their will they become ambassadors. They stand between cultures. They will be never accepted as one of them, but they are no longer one of us. They are aliens, strangers for everybody. This appears to be their strength, we can try to understand alien societies using their eyes, they can diagnose problems of our civilisation.

Some samples of her social experiments:
- world where is only one gender, individual can be biological father and next year biological mother - no gender segregation
- world of matriarchat (?) men are are seen as a danger to society and kept away, boys after some age have to leave villages
- world of communism, not totalitarian but anarchistic
- world where past have been thrown away in the name of progress
- world struggling with newly acquired freedom (after slavery)
- worlds where live many different species, societies where powers of mind are present (telepathic, telekinesis ...)

There are also very good sociologic SF books written by soviet authors - like brothers Arkadij and Boris Strugaccy, but I dont know if they are available. There is also a polish author Janusz Zajdel. I think some of them have been translated anyway. Let me know if you read them


Zbyszek

[Memnoch]

Good info. I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card.

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[Djinn Raffo]

Hi Zbyszek!

Yeah i enjoyed the Ender books...the only Orson Scott Card books i have read unfortunatly...My favorite was the first of the series.

ONe thing i really liked about it was the Net. Cant recall what it was called in the book but remember how there was that forum like site where people discussed political happenings of the day etc. remember a manifesto of some kind was being dispersed on their web.??.. I dont know what year those books were written, i think quite a while ago. But that is exactly what the forums are today it seems to me. Those parts of the book are an amzing premonition of what is happening right now right here!!!!

Enders Game and the following series rules!!! I like the parallel novel about Bean alot too.

[ScottG]

I've read most of Card's books (after the 3rd Ender book the series takes a serious decline.) I've also read Le Guin (cut my teeth on the Earthsea trilogy.)

My fav. from Card is (hmm. can't remember the title, I've read way to many books) - It starts w/ an O and I believe is only one word (perhaps its Outworld or something like that). The book about the singer is also excellent.

Card seems to do emotion better than just about anyone I have read (though Janny Wurts is pretty good also.)

However, (as far as more recent works go) Card does seem to be slipping (writing style) in the same way that Heinlein did over his career.