Meh, on all of these I just kinda shrug it off. If a series I enjoyed reading has a bad television series or movie made out of it... well the books are still good. I enjoy rereading Starship Troopers despite the horrid movie that was made from it. I've enjoyed the Dresden Files despite Sci-Fi Channel making a mess out of the concept. Hell, even crappy books can't stop the first book from being good for me; Dune is awesome, despite Frank Herbert going a bit crazy in the later books and Anderson milking the universe for all it's worth.

As for George Martin not being involved with the HBO series, I think that might be a good thing. First of all because it means more time for him to actually write his books and finish up the freaking series which is what I'm really interested in. Second because some things that work in novels simply don't work on the small or big screen and I trust script writers to manage that more than most authors. For example I still like the Tom Bombadil scenes in Lord of the Rings and enjoyed Frodo's attempt to hide within the Shire itself for a few months but I also acknowledge that neither would be that interesting in a movie. And the Harry Potter movies became a lot better when they stopped following the original work religiously and worked on being good movies instead.

Oh, and if the Bean saga and Xenocide didn't ruin Enders Game for you then no movie ever will.

Agree on Starship Troopers. I remember I watched the movie first, then read the book a few years later. It was like a whole different (and way better) story.

The Bean saga is decent. Ender's Shadow was probably the best in that line, since it happens at the same time as Ender's Game, but from a different perspective. The rest are a bit too political for me, but that's just personal taste. The only really bad thing I felt about it was that neither series goes into whatever happened to Bean in the end.

Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide/Children of the Mind, were just freakin' out there. He originally wrote these books as theoretical physics fiction, but his editor told him they wouldn't sell as he wrote them. So he went back, and put them in the perspective of adult Ender, and his editor liked them. I still read or listen to them from time to time, but normally only when I don't have something better.

While I can respect that other people have different views of Ender's Game than I do, it still stings a little when there are any flaws pointed out. SotD and Xenocide and Children of the Mind I can see as they were indeed pretty slow and convoluted. It entered into the philosophical and spiritual nature and the universe versus intelligent beings tangent. Which is honestly pretty far removed from any sort of firm ground base. So I can see how many would not really enjoy those stories. But honestly I have to give Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow a solid, "Must Read", recommendation.

But alas I digress as the movie rendition of the Ender's Game is what I'm worried about. We could argue this and that about Ender's Game till the bugs really do start a war.

i think soiaf should be animated. the new dragonlance movie is animated but i haven't seen any trailers or pics from it. i'm curious to see how that turned out.

That's because it's supposed to be a travesty.

While I think Ender's game is one of the best Sci-Fi books ever written, and probably the best aimed at a younger audience; Uncle Orson's judgment has been suspect for a few years at least. Seriously, he wrote a enormous blog post about how the '06 elections going to the democrats was an epic failure of Americans in understanding the nature of the enemy we face. This guy has been on board with the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld handling of the Iraq occupation from the beginning and doesn't see how letting the Neo-Con agenda run unfettered has been a terrible idea for everyone(Military-Industrial Complex not withstanding).

In the same way that Dennis Miller's entire previous career has been put under the microscope, so too does Ender's Game become less for what it's creator has chosen associate himself with later in life. I suspect that Orson's religious beliefs make him susceptible to the whole Islamo-Fascist retardary that Cheney/Rove made up to justify every destructive course of action they partake in. When religious beliefs blind you from the very obvious facts of real life going to hell all around you then that is where I begin to lose my tolerance for your thought process.

I want a good/excellent Ender's Game movie even more than the next guy, but I find it hard to believe that will happen given who Card has been putting his trust in lately.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/index.html

That is the ramblings of a very out of touch OSC, the blog I referenced above is from 10/29/06, but clicking on any of his postings before or after that will pretty much show you the depth of his sophistry. He literally thinks the reason people have turned on the Iraq occupation is because Bush is a terrible public speaker who cannot relay the importance a never-ending commitment. Yeah, that the real problem; if Bush were Churchill, we would all be on board.

I think Player Hater does have a point here as the specific political views do have strong parallels with the story in question. Ender's Game is the equivalent of a modern day fairy tale, or Aesop's fable. In that light I think it is appropriate to evaluate any moral messages contained within. Is it right for a government to nab indiviuals for the sake of thwarting a greater threat? As a potential conduit for moral teaching, it is very important to make sure that the mechanics of the story are more Realism than Romanticism, otherwise the validity of the moral is questionable at best.

I have no problem with that essay and it doesn't change my opinion of Enders Game one bit. I enjoy the book for the storytelling and characters. No amount of dissection is going to change that. The same way I can enjoy a U2 song and still think Bono is a colossal douche. Card's politics are his politics, and unless he goes back and re-writes Enders Game so the buggers are replaced with Islamo-fascists, I could care less.

I always read the Buggers, like the Bugs from Starship Troopers, as Communists myself.

Well I can't say that I hate it. Raistlins voice is terrible. The animation is as someone else said too Saturday Morning Cartoony. However, that said, I'll probably still watch it and hopefully as it unfolds as a narrative it'll be entertaining. I have a fondness for the original 6 dragon lance novels, so i'm willing to give the movie alot of slack.

Well, one thing the trailer makes clear is it's a straight to DVD release. No way that kind of animation would fly in the movie theatres. The thing that came to mind when I saw that style of animation was the old He-Man and GI Joe cartoons from back in the 80's. That movie must have a budget of like $5k, give or take.

So ignore everything in this thread except the part about the HBO version of GRRM's SOIAF

Latest news if you haven't already heard. Quoted straight from his Not a Blog.

and this makes his books or the upcoming show less because of this? Seems like each body of work should stand on its own

There was a kerfuffle on some library list-serves last year when Card was given an award for a kid's book he wrote and a bunch of folks took umbrage at Card's position on the role of homosexuals in society.

I don't share Card's politics, but I do think that he writes consistently well and every so often pops out a work of genius. The facts of the matter are that there isn't a PC (politically correct or patriotically correct take your pick) test for artistic merit.

Just watch The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl for all you need to know about that particular issue.

What I want to add to the thread is the notion that the chance to read great writing by a really smart person that you strongly disagree with is perhaps one of the richest learning opportunities imaginable. If we read only good work by folks we agree with, or the worst examples of what we disagree with, we don't really learn much, we just pat ourselves on the back for being so goddamn smart in the first place. Reading people who are smarter than us but have made very different value choices is where we get to be challenged and grow.

And no, I don't particualarly want to be be challenged and grow into someone who supports the GWOT or denying full particiapation in civil society to sexual minorities, but I do want to learn why smart folks think that way. Wisdom lies is seeing the nuances and complexities, not in narrowing everything down to bullet points and soundbites.