<i>Ender's Game</i> by Orson Scott Card

This was a really great read. I would have, I think enjoyed it even more reading it as a 13 or 14 year old. Card mentions in the introduction that many gifted kids use the book as their Bible---identifying strongly with Ender. I had trouble seeing that for myself---though maybe the 13 year-old me would have easily made that identification. Now, though, Ender seems too perfect, too young and the one story too well worn (though I really liked this retelling) for me to identify completely with Ender's point of view.

With that said, really liked the sci-fi aspects of this book. Card mentions in the introduction how he was trying to figure out how fighting would be different in space. I think Ender demonstrated that most perfectly in the idea that there is no "down" when there isn't any gravity. "Down" is toward the goal. The orientation of the entry point's ceiling and floor means nothing once you are in a weightless environment: orientation is relative to your task.

I liked how Card visualized the internet. Granted his last revision for the copy I had was in 1991, but even then, few people had any vision of how the online world would emerge and dominate. He saw it as the primary location for human discourse, with entire symposiums held online. We haven't quite reached that point yet, but we are getting there.

The battle school appears to be a necessary outcome of the time the plot is set. With 2 invasions of aliens fought off, it is expected that militarization would be required to keep them at bay---a normal human response to an external threat that we are unable to understand.

Card concludes the story with redemption---absolution given by the enemy to the humans through Ender. Ender is the one---with enough empathy, survival instincts and smarts to save the world as a tween (a young Paul Atrides, Luke Skywalker or Neo) and later redeem human kind to bring back the enemy in the name of empathy.

A well written and engaging book.

8/10

<i>Laughter in the Dark</i> by Vladamir Nabokov

Throughout the majority of the book, I thought the title referred to the start of the story, where Albinus meets Margot in the cinema. After completeing the book, though, it more obviously refers to Albinus's cuckold position later in the novel and his blindness. Though, beyond the more obvious poetic justice of a man being cukolded by his lover after leave his wife, it may also reference how the relationship began in the dark and tended to stay that way for Albinus.

There were two parts to this story that I particularly liked: the first few and the last few sentences. The first few reminded me of How to Read a Book (in which I checked and found no reference to it), in that it gives us the whole story in two sentence, but concludes by noting:

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

The last few sentences describe the last scene in terms of stage directions, which is very effective since the beginning of the chapter was told from Albinus's blind point of view. since we are seeing with him, we have a limited understanding of the room and the actions within it. With the stage directions, we get to see the results of the last actions, giving us a better understanding of how Albinus, Margot and the room interacted.

The story, overall, was very good, though I am generally frustrated by stories where people seemingly effortlessly remove themselves from long held relationships. I find the section where Albinus was blind and the conclusion of the story to be a bit rushed after the long set up between Rex and Margot.

Rex was a despicable character---pretty much a conman who can draw. His amiability for life, seen most easily in how he teases Albinus, was very amusing to watch, but painful to think about in reference to Albinus.

The sympathies of this story are reverse to those in Lolieta. To HH, one is more sympathetic at the start, but less sympathetic later in the book. Here, as Albinus is planning his infidelity, I was must less sympathetic as his actions were rather pathetic. But, as Rex and Margot start conning him and he becomes blind, my sympathies for him increased greatly.

A very good read.

8/10

<i>Men, Machines and Modern Times</i> by Elting E. Morison

Dave gave me this one.

Come to find out, Elting Morison started th STS (Science, Technology and Society) program at MIT. You can see that interest in his writing. There are 8 essays in this book, which address some questions on innovation.

My favorite essays focused on the mechanical. Morison includes two essays on computers, but like many thoughts on computers they don't age well. It may be due to thoughts that are generally had regarding any new technology are very optimistic at the outset---"none of the processes involved in human creativity appear to lie beyond the reach of computers" (I'm not an AI person, but I think that we don't say that with certainty now)---then it is slowly determined that the problem is much more complicated than originally thought.

But, back to the mechanical. These essays are about men (all the examples were of men) who were able to create---as Clayton Christenson would say---disruptive innovation in their respective fields. Morison puts this down to a type of personality more than anything else. In the case of the naval gun site, the man (Sims) who faced the change

was moved...in part by rebellion against tedium, against inefficiency from on high, and against the artificial limitations placed on his actions by the social structure

He gives other similar examples related to the expansion of the use of the Bessemer process in the use.

Morison aims, though, not to say that we should all fight our hierarchies (despite the fact I really want someone to give me permission to do so), but

that in a world such as ours, new ways to do things [are] standard operating procedure and that we had all better realize it and become an adaptive society before we [are] shaken apart or disintegrated under the strain produced by our blind resistances.

But within this we have to beware of our

mechanical triumph...produc[ing] a mechanical atmosphere we can't stand...the design of our technology must take into greater account our interior needs."

One note on an essay included here, but does no easily fall into either of the two categories above. This one was on bureaucracy and described it quite wall as a state reached due to years and years of refinements put into place with the best intentions, but never reconsidered---"it is easy to make a regulation than to abolish it." As a result, organizations are "highly dependent upon outside stimuli to force changes...Everyone inside is too committed to the special world." All due to the order we try to apply to the chaos we see around us.

A very good read---minus the essays on computers.

7/10