Interested in a group read of "Ender's Game" ?

This author, Orson Scott Card, has had an online discussion group (Hatrack River) about his books, and especially about Ender's Game, since there was an online (early-to-mid-1990s). Thousands of fans of Ender's Game have participated in those discussions, and the global conversation on Ender's Game is about to go light-speed now that casting for the movie version is halfway through in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here is the IMDB link for the movie, which will be released March 2013:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/

My neighbor is a member of the Ender's Game movie crew, and verifies that there will be lots of Flight School scenes in the movie, just as in the book. They will begin filming in New Orleans sometime next month. My own impression of the book version of Ender's Game is that it is one of a handful of fiction treatments of children that speaks to readers of all ages, as did To Kill a Mockingbird, Rite of Passage, etc.

It's too bad Card's outspoken homophobia has killed my interest in contributing to his continued financial success. I'll still buy and read his old works that I like, but only second-hand. And with a little less enjoyment.

I certainly won't funnel money to him by paying for a ticket to his movie.

I didn't know that about Card. Thanks for the heads-up. Another movie that IMDB says is scheduled for release in 2013 is Rendezvous With Rama, based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name. The spacecraft described in that novel has always been my favorite spaceship design!

Glad to, though I hate that there was such a thing to give you a heads-up about. I read authors that I totally disagree with and still enjoy them. But Card just made it so intense that it was hard to ignore.

Sounds like more fun to me! Though I fear that they'll have to "Hollywood" it up and create some sort of conflict for the movie to work. The book always impressed me as being a sort of low-conflict, melancholy sort of plot.

According to IMDB, Morgan Freeman has had the option on this title for about 10 years ... he said that a screen adaptation has been difficult. It sounds like Mr. Freeman wants it done right.

#2 Agreed. There's an interesting article on the moral expediency in Ender's Game by, I think, John Kessel.

I just received my replacement copy of Rendezvous with Rama; my original copy had disintegrated. But I will be out of town until mid-March., so I won't be able to start reading and discussing until then, at the earliest.

The Rama spacecraft is my favorite alien spaceship of all time. Second favorite might be the home ship described in Rite Of Passage.

I'm back in town, and I just re-read the 3 Rama sequels, which may be also worth a group read later, because the co-authors (Clarke and fellow scientist Gentry) do such a good wrap-up job in the final sequel (Rama Revealed).

Should I just start reading Rendezvous with Rama this coming week? What say you all?

Kessel's article, originally in Foundation, is excellent. It's available on his site at NCSU: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

Jim53, Alice Miller is my hero! Thanks for the discussion link above. You might be particularly interested in Miller's book on the genesis of creative and destructive impulses in the human psyche: The Untouched key: tracing childhood trauma in creativity and destructiveness

http://www.amazon.com/The-Untouched-Key-Creativity-Destructiveness/dp/0385267649...

She interviews people who knew history-making people, such as of course Hitler, but also Nietzche (a very revealing portrait there), Van Gogh, an astounding exploration thru the childhood of Pablo Picasso, as well as the childhood of Buster Keaton, and that also of the person who killed more than anyone else in human history, Joseph Stalin. If you want to know how to make (or heal) a dictator, start here.