Alternative Ending: Ender's Game
Righteo. I realize the whole alternative ending activity ended a few days (a week? I've been really busy lately) ago, but today I got struck by random inspiration from some serendipitous recall of Ender's Game, a book that to me was quite peculiar. It is like Stranger in a Strange Land in that it is somehow canonical SF literature even for people who don't read SF, but I read it and all I can think is, "Wow, who is the guy who wrote this?" because it's so... peculiar.
As I'm rewriting the ending I guess spoilers should be assumed, but for what it's worth, spoiler alert or something. In Ender's Game, Ender is taken in a young age and trained for futuristic military brilliance through simulations against an alien race that is in war with Earth. Here my memory fails as to precisely why they are at war, but I do recall mightily that Ender ends the game wiping out the entire race, only to be told that he wasn't practicing simulations--it was the actual, trufax, real thing. Homefry was just the instrument of macrocosmic genocide, and then things get even weirder. Some collective ghost or cloud consciousness of the destroyed race appears and thanks Ender for doing it. Something about, "It was a privilege being weaker than you" or something like that. Maybe I missed the point but whatever the point was, it was completely out of left field and made no damned sense.
(I asked other people who had read Ender's Game about it and most of them responded with, "Yeah that ending was weird, but I dunno, the rest of the book was good I guess." This is why I don't understand how this book came to be canonized, since I haven't really found that many people to rigorously defend it. Nevertheless, anytime a posting like this is made, defenses occur, so fire away all ye Cardophiles!)
Right then. The other important part of Ender's Game I remember is his sister, and their communications over a network that today would be known as the Internet, that are politicized message board discussions that garner both siblings a dedicated, almost revolutionary, fervor and following. The readers of the postings have no idea how young the two posters are, and society gets tumultuous over their genius. This point is very important to my rewriting of the ending because I remember reading about it and thinking, "Ahhh, but the way the Internet actually works is that two people get in a political discussion on a message board, and no matter who they are or how they're written, everyone thinks they are total idiots or at least just 12 year olds."
But therein you have the seed of a pretty great reveal, methinks. Ender becomes the ender as his namesake foreshadows, but chili-Joe is pissed. His (digitalized, synthetic) military skillz abused by conspirators for the absolute elimination of a foreign race results in depression, remorse, and kindling, slow-building anger (as in, I know there are many Ender sequels. I'd read them if they were actually about this). Ender reveals his true identity on teh Intarwebs, and he and his sister realize they've stumbled onto something horrible, and something big. Despite previous general Internet style apathy to the contrary, people start to take them a little seriously. Other leaks occur from Ender's co-soldiers, and the truth goes out: every Halo fanboy in America has been tricked into eliminating real people for a living.
But hey. In classic Sci Fi totalitarian military state irony, those selfsame conspirators of displeasure have accidentally trained the ultimate weapon of their demise: Ender living up to his name again, as now the ender of his nation's regime. Ender and his sister go underground with (because I'm a silly fanboy at heart, too) a rogue collection of cyberpunk revolutionaries gathering to kick ass and take data as they begin to hack and scourge the "simulation" waves, turning the infrastructure against the building it's founded on.
Oh, we could still have him talking to Native Terran graveyards. As a part of his constant internal struggle with remorse.
I seem to recall something in the book about a nemesis within the school who eventually becomes Ender's second-hand (living up to the general theme I'm getting of the rightful subjugation of the weak by the stronger), and tiny tot of course joins forces with the hot dog's resistence, but periodically his loyalty is questioned as resentment still smokes from feathered flames in the heart of the wickedly righteous.
Eventually Ender's weaknesses come to bear. The big cheese starts noticing that he truly is Ender, the ender, the finalizer of aggressive and damaging conflict, and realizes he needs to become Starter, Beginner, some other form of productive influence to society building, instead of destroying. Plus the ghosts of Ender's past keep collecting in his brain mainframe like a Stuxnet gone right. This is where his sister comes to bear most fruit, because strawberry shake herself has always been associated by the resistence as the producer, cliched Earth mother, society creator and all that crap. It cannot be the case, because that's boring. Sister Ender becomes Ender Ender when Ender becomes Progenitor, as Goldilocks and the three gummy bears finally gets overwhelmed by the stress and seriousness of the sit-e-ation, y'see, and finally plants the firebomb in the core of the Behemoth that turns their society into Ozymandias--killing herself in the process, of course! Left with nothing but dust and graves, Ender finds the one thing the syntheticized newly ostracized military DIDN'T teach him, and that's how, finally, to actually lead.
Something I would read, at least. Okay, so I'm going cliched and pulp here, but at least I had fun writing it.
--PolarisDiB, and no I don't know why I call the characters fast food names.
As I'm rewriting the ending I guess spoilers should be assumed, but for what it's worth, spoiler alert or something. In Ender's Game, Ender is taken in a young age and trained for futuristic military brilliance through simulations against an alien race that is in war with Earth. Here my memory fails as to precisely why they are at war, but I do recall mightily that Ender ends the game wiping out the entire race, only to be told that he wasn't practicing simulations--it was the actual, trufax, real thing. Homefry was just the instrument of macrocosmic genocide, and then things get even weirder. Some collective ghost or cloud consciousness of the destroyed race appears and thanks Ender for doing it. Something about, "It was a privilege being weaker than you" or something like that. Maybe I missed the point but whatever the point was, it was completely out of left field and made no damned sense.
(I asked other people who had read Ender's Game about it and most of them responded with, "Yeah that ending was weird, but I dunno, the rest of the book was good I guess." This is why I don't understand how this book came to be canonized, since I haven't really found that many people to rigorously defend it. Nevertheless, anytime a posting like this is made, defenses occur, so fire away all ye Cardophiles!)
Right then. The other important part of Ender's Game I remember is his sister, and their communications over a network that today would be known as the Internet, that are politicized message board discussions that garner both siblings a dedicated, almost revolutionary, fervor and following. The readers of the postings have no idea how young the two posters are, and society gets tumultuous over their genius. This point is very important to my rewriting of the ending because I remember reading about it and thinking, "Ahhh, but the way the Internet actually works is that two people get in a political discussion on a message board, and no matter who they are or how they're written, everyone thinks they are total idiots or at least just 12 year olds."
But therein you have the seed of a pretty great reveal, methinks. Ender becomes the ender as his namesake foreshadows, but chili-Joe is pissed. His (digitalized, synthetic) military skillz abused by conspirators for the absolute elimination of a foreign race results in depression, remorse, and kindling, slow-building anger (as in, I know there are many Ender sequels. I'd read them if they were actually about this). Ender reveals his true identity on teh Intarwebs, and he and his sister realize they've stumbled onto something horrible, and something big. Despite previous general Internet style apathy to the contrary, people start to take them a little seriously. Other leaks occur from Ender's co-soldiers, and the truth goes out: every Halo fanboy in America has been tricked into eliminating real people for a living.
But hey. In classic Sci Fi totalitarian military state irony, those selfsame conspirators of displeasure have accidentally trained the ultimate weapon of their demise: Ender living up to his name again, as now the ender of his nation's regime. Ender and his sister go underground with (because I'm a silly fanboy at heart, too) a rogue collection of cyberpunk revolutionaries gathering to kick ass and take data as they begin to hack and scourge the "simulation" waves, turning the infrastructure against the building it's founded on.
Oh, we could still have him talking to Native Terran graveyards. As a part of his constant internal struggle with remorse.
I seem to recall something in the book about a nemesis within the school who eventually becomes Ender's second-hand (living up to the general theme I'm getting of the rightful subjugation of the weak by the stronger), and tiny tot of course joins forces with the hot dog's resistence, but periodically his loyalty is questioned as resentment still smokes from feathered flames in the heart of the wickedly righteous.
Eventually Ender's weaknesses come to bear. The big cheese starts noticing that he truly is Ender, the ender, the finalizer of aggressive and damaging conflict, and realizes he needs to become Starter, Beginner, some other form of productive influence to society building, instead of destroying. Plus the ghosts of Ender's past keep collecting in his brain mainframe like a Stuxnet gone right. This is where his sister comes to bear most fruit, because strawberry shake herself has always been associated by the resistence as the producer, cliched Earth mother, society creator and all that crap. It cannot be the case, because that's boring. Sister Ender becomes Ender Ender when Ender becomes Progenitor, as Goldilocks and the three gummy bears finally gets overwhelmed by the stress and seriousness of the sit-e-ation, y'see, and finally plants the firebomb in the core of the Behemoth that turns their society into Ozymandias--killing herself in the process, of course! Left with nothing but dust and graves, Ender finds the one thing the syntheticized newly ostracized military DIDN'T teach him, and that's how, finally, to actually lead.
Something I would read, at least. Okay, so I'm going cliched and pulp here, but at least I had fun writing it.
--PolarisDiB, and no I don't know why I call the characters fast food names.