by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2013/11/15, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/11/15/10468205.aspx
I was thinking about Ender's Game the other day.
Well, at the same time, I was also thinking about Ender's Shadow.
The former was a story I had loved for twenty years.
And the latter was one that had been troubling me for as long as I had known about it.
The problem was only compounded by the fact that I almost had the chance to have a brief part in the movie when it came out.
Now the author, Orson Scott Card, makes the problem even more complicated for me because he credits the movie being about both books, as a way of getting it made as a "Hollywood Buddy style movie".
Personally, I had always felt a little betrayed by the second story.
It stole from me much of the original story's majesty, or maybe Ender's majesty.
Not that I ever thought I was smart enough to be an Ender Wiggin.
I didn't even think myself worthy of being a Bean.
But like when I was introduced by one of the Wieders to Robert A. Heinlein in my youth based largely on his Stranger in a Strange Land, I introduced Orson Scott Card to others over the years to people based largely on Ender's Game.
Somehow it was MY story, that I shared with others.
I felt betrayed by Ender's Shadow, by the fictional Bean, by Orson Scott Card for sullying my memory of a story I have loved for so long.
And yet even in Ender's Shadow, Ender Wiggins gets to be the hero, and Bean seems a little less human, somehow.
So I have trapped myself for the last few weeks, listening to the Audible book Ender's Game followed by the Audible book Ender's Shadow, trying to keep my old hero who had his reputation damaged by how it turned out the story actually was, after the fact.
Isn't George Lucas the only one who was supposed to muck with the story after it came out?
Oh, I guess not.
Even Robert A. Heinlein did it by continuing to change the tapestry by having later books grow out of earlier ones.
From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and so on, mucking with the story seems to be the way these "World as Myth" stories get told by him..
The way that Robert A. Heinlein did it didn't betray my hopes; as a young man I could dream that if i wrote a great science fiction story that Gay Deceiver could pop in and Lazarus Long could make me a part of the story somehow!
But what Orson Scott Card did to Ender's Game by writing Ender's Shadow, in an even worse way then George Lucas did with the "Han Shot First" debacle, feels like a much worse crime.
Suddenly, I'm glad I wasn't a child when I read Ender's Game. Yet I still feel betrayed somehow...
I was going to reach out to Orson Scott Card to tell him how I almost got to be a small part of the movie Ender's Game (unless saved later by Gavin Hood and his director's cut), but I realized I would be too distracted by my disappointment in Ender's Shadow.
Suddenly I found myself back in New Orleans having lunch next to Harrison Ford and biting my tongue to avoid trying to take him to task for the Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull debacle, and possibly even getting fired for my trouble.
But now I'm not in the movie and may never even be in some Director's Cut. Maybe I should have spoken my mind to Harrison Ford when I had the chance!!!! 😏😆😏😆😏😆😏😆