Sign in with Facebook
Lancelot Schaubert's Reviews > Xenocide
Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)
by
by
Ender's Game was one of the best modern novels I've ever read, especially in this genre. It surprised, delighted, and asked ethical and epistemological questions I hadn't thought to ask up until having read it (not to mention some fascinating universe-wide questions of pneumatology, psychology, and hamartiology). Speaker for the Dead was better and did the same, though in an almost entirely different genre — that book changed how I offer eulogies forever, changed the nature of funerals in my mind.
Xenocide, it seems, fell flat. A la: https://xkcd.com/304/
Or at least the audiobook version did — perhaps I need to merely read it in print as I read the other two. Then again, of the making of books there is no end and much study wearies the body. But the words of the wise are like goads, and the anthologies of the masters are like firmly embedded nails driven by a single Shepherd. The first two novels in the series clearly seemed like mastery. This one... not so much. Please leave a comment if he improves or returns to mastery in another series or even this one – am I way off base here?
Card seems obsessed with the nature of humanity, specifically humanity as tethered to the idea of consciousness, and the seedbed of that question lies in both Speaker and Ender's. Can a machine be a conscious being? Can a tree? A larva? Can a hive? All good questions. In this book, it shows up over and over again in the quarantining of OCD humans who — prior to the revolution led by an A.I. — had been treated as less-than-human. It shows up in a conscious virus. In conscious clones of memories of Andrew. In the piggies and buggers and so on. But I feel the farther we get into the series, simultaneously the more interesting his questions of religion and faith get AND the less interesting his questions of consciousness and systematic theology / philosophy grow.
I feel like rather than reading this book, everyone would do well to read the consciousness section of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss — in fact, all philosophers of the mind, folks who study A.I., people who have questions of consciousness, and the like should have read that chapter. It's heavy, but it's worth it.
As for Xenocide... the title sums up the question of species extermination and how far that implication goes.
It's also telling that these questions seem wholly absent from the author's personal politics. Or at least they seem lacking in any discernible sense.
He is, in the end, a tight storyteller and I'll be checking out his lessons on writing. He even says in the afterward that to make it this philosophical and talky, he needed to grow into a better writer — it might be a good idea for him to revise Xenocide into a new edition, but what do I know? I'm no better or worse than him. The last word of the book does help with the brightness, but it feels it ends in a similar way to The Waste Lands in the Dark Tower series, the only problem being Stephen King WARNED us he'd split his book at the start, Card did not so... yeah.
Cannot recommend Ender and Speaker enough.
If you've read it, what did you think? If you haven't, why do you want to?
Xenocide, it seems, fell flat. A la: https://xkcd.com/304/
Or at least the audiobook version did — perhaps I need to merely read it in print as I read the other two. Then again, of the making of books there is no end and much study wearies the body. But the words of the wise are like goads, and the anthologies of the masters are like firmly embedded nails driven by a single Shepherd. The first two novels in the series clearly seemed like mastery. This one... not so much. Please leave a comment if he improves or returns to mastery in another series or even this one – am I way off base here?
Card seems obsessed with the nature of humanity, specifically humanity as tethered to the idea of consciousness, and the seedbed of that question lies in both Speaker and Ender's. Can a machine be a conscious being? Can a tree? A larva? Can a hive? All good questions. In this book, it shows up over and over again in the quarantining of OCD humans who — prior to the revolution led by an A.I. — had been treated as less-than-human. It shows up in a conscious virus. In conscious clones of memories of Andrew. In the piggies and buggers and so on. But I feel the farther we get into the series, simultaneously the more interesting his questions of religion and faith get AND the less interesting his questions of consciousness and systematic theology / philosophy grow.
I feel like rather than reading this book, everyone would do well to read the consciousness section of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss — in fact, all philosophers of the mind, folks who study A.I., people who have questions of consciousness, and the like should have read that chapter. It's heavy, but it's worth it.
As for Xenocide... the title sums up the question of species extermination and how far that implication goes.
It's also telling that these questions seem wholly absent from the author's personal politics. Or at least they seem lacking in any discernible sense.
He is, in the end, a tight storyteller and I'll be checking out his lessons on writing. He even says in the afterward that to make it this philosophical and talky, he needed to grow into a better writer — it might be a good idea for him to revise Xenocide into a new edition, but what do I know? I'm no better or worse than him. The last word of the book does help with the brightness, but it feels it ends in a similar way to The Waste Lands in the Dark Tower series, the only problem being Stephen King WARNED us he'd split his book at the start, Card did not so... yeah.
Cannot recommend Ender and Speaker enough.
If you've read it, what did you think? If you haven't, why do you want to?
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
Xenocide.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
May 3, 2020
–
Started Reading
July 3, 2020
– Shelved
July 3, 2020
–
Finished Reading
