Page 38 it has Anderson and Graff talking in bold about how Ender must be isolated. One says to the other "Especially because if we lose this time there won't me any criticism of us at all." This is because all the humans will be dead.
We find out later that the humans are actually attacking the buggers at their world. This means that if they lost there would still be 80 years or so before the buggers came back to kill them once and for all.
In this time there would surely be an investigation while everyone is looking for someone to blame the loss on. Both of them would surely be Vilified to an inhuman degree. The human race would die blaming Graff and Anderson.
Graff and Anderson deffinatly know that the humans are attacking the buggers and therefore that if we lost we wouldn't all instantly die. Why did he make this comment?
[ July 22, 2006, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: James Burton ]
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
Plot device, James Burton, plot device. Maybe they mean long-term criticism, the kind that happens when historians get to you after you're dead.
Posted by Soara (Member # 6729) on :
Well, I'm never reading Ender's Game again, not with mistakes like that in it!
Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
Didn't they think that if they attacked the Formics and failed, before they could arrange another offense/defense the Formics would have retaliated? I believe I read that somewhere...
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
Yes, but by the time the Buggers' counterattack reached Earth, Graff's and Anderson's handling of everything would surely have been criticized (in the way that failures are criticized, I mean, not the way that they were criticized anyway following Ender's success).
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Remember that Buggers wouldn't have attacked Earth even if humans have lost.
Posted by neo-dragon (Member # 7168) on :
But Graff and Anderson didn't know that, and they certainly had no reason to think it. It's like hitting a bee hive with a stick. You pretty much assume that they're going to try and sting you for it.
As for the original post, I think that they're just trying to say that criticism and blame won't matter if the human race is going to be finished in 80 years max. Is this small matter of semantics really what one calls a problem?
[ July 24, 2006, 12:54 AM: Message edited by: neo-dragon ]
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
But the humans didn't believe that; if they knew that the Buggers were planning to leave them alone, the humans wouldn't have bothered launching the fleet. And they certainly wouldn't have been so happy when Ender wiped out (what they thought was) all of the Buggers.
So while worrying about a Bugger counterattack seems silly, to we who know that they were planning on leaving us alone because they finally realized that we were sentient, it made perfect sense as it happened, before the Hive Queen made contact with Ender and told him all their plans.
Posted by James Burton (Member # 9592) on :
neo - dragon
I agree is a very minor point but i wasn't going to call it - place where osc skrewd up, for the very reason that I was probably wrong.
And i'm not sure what is ment by plot device?? the conversations in the rest of thge book mention Anderson trying to save his ass. If there would be an imidiate counter attack that wouldn't matter either...
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
Well... I would assume that if they lost, the millitary would not be in a hurry to TELL the rest of the human population that they were going to be wiped out in another hundred years. Perhaps there might have been some internal consequence, but nothing too terrible. Besides, if you know you've just destroyed the world, what anyone else says doesn't really matter much anymore.
Posted by OSTY (Member # 1480) on :
Since the world did not know about the launch to the Buggers homeworld, I think it would just be a matter of the IF sitting on their hands after the loss and letting what happens next happen without anyone knowing until it was too late!
Posted by cmc (Member # 9549) on :
I was thinking the same thing, OSTY. Why would the IF tell anyone they'd screwed up so royally when it would all come out soon enough? Come out with no one having to answer for their actions, at that. Lucky for everyone in the books it didn't play out like that... And I guess lucky for us readers, too!
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
That's true...and since the Buggers weren't planning a counterattack, I wonder how long it would have been before it leaked out of the IF for good. What would the IF do if they'd lost that final battle? They'd have no way of knowing that the Buggers hadn't sent out a fleet following their victorious defense of their homeworld (assuming they didn't, but then who knows, the Buggers might have changed their minds after being attacked), so would it make more sense to try to build up that impossible defense-in-depth Bean was criticizing anyway? Would they send out a new fleet, to try again? Either it'd pass the Bugger one on the way to each other's homeworlds, if the Buggers sent one out, or it would mean that the Buggers hadn't sent one. Then again, that's the situation they were in to begin with, and we all know what decision the humans made...without the ability to communicate, there was no way of knowing if the Buggers had changed their collective mind about the humans or were just biding their time or were going to attack at the first opportunity. Varelse, war the only option. I wonder if the Buggers'd've found a way to contact Ender through their bridge in the meantime...
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Uh, I always took that to mean they were working under the assumption that there was a likelihood that the buggers had already sent a counter-attack, right after the second war. We knew they had the ansible.
-Bok
Posted by cmc (Member # 9549) on :
Wait - what's 'that'? Sorry.
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
Just because their was a counter-attack in the offing does not mean that they did not expect another invasion force.
BC
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
That, being the the statements between Graff and Anderson.
Or what BC said.
-Bok
Posted by formic rising (Member # 9172) on :
i dont see this as much of a problem. the small portion that i can view as a problem would be the fact that the IF and even earthside military could have time enough to establish a better defensive system. let alone a new offensive fleet. but considering the odds... what's the chance of another ender wiggin coming along? i think there are some that would agree that ender wiggin is the best offensive system
think of all the kids in battle school. would they have been able to do what ender did? would they have prevailed from isolation and grueling advancement the way ender did?
when graff and anderson imply the failure to destroy the buggers, of mankind to survive, it's because they havent seen anyone work the way ender does. their hope is equal to their despair.
i thought it took 40 years to reach the buggers homeworld. 50 tops? the fleet was launched right after mazer's victory.. that was less than 80 years wasnt it? correct me if i'm wrong.. i'd doublecheck but my girlfriend's dad is reading from my copy presently
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