posted
Hi all. This is my first post here. I did a basic search and couldn't find this topis repeated in other threads but I may have missed it somewhere. Firstly, let me say that I'm a scientist, primarily a biologist now, but with a physics, chemistry and mathematical background originally. Now for what left me perplexed about Shadow Puppets. It was the whole embryos and wanting Bean without Anton's Key turned business. The biggest plot flaw in my mind was all that hoo-ha about Petra wanting a child right there and then. I mean, even today the technolgy exists to freeze sperm. They could easily have got Bean to make a deposit and then just keep it until a convenient time to undergo IVF and implantation; seriously, the worst time to do this is when a psychopath is out to get you and your every move is likely being tracked. Also, were Bean and Nikolai just brothers, or were they identical siblings having arisen from one fertilized egg which was then separated into the 24(?) or so embryos after a few division cycles? If the latter, then Petra cold easily have been impregnated by Nikolai, who is essentially Bean without Anton's Key having been tampered with.
Posts: 8 | Registered: May 2004
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Bean and Nikolai are the same. Bean just has Anton's key turned. Petra wouldn't want Nikolai because she loves Bean. She knows Bean. She loves Bean. If you were married to someone with an identical twin, you would not want to get impregnated by the twin. You would want to be impregnated by your husband, the one you love. Whether it be by external fertilization or not, its just the idea of it being Bean's baby. But you are right, the determination of Petra to get it then and there was kinda dumb.
posted
See that's exactly what puzzles me. These people are genii. Nikolai and Bean are genetically identical. To be totally pragmatic, Nikolai's baby IS Bean's unless you specifically want Anton's Key, which they were going out of their way to avoid. Sure, have sex with Bean, but use Nikolai's sperm to fertilize yourself with. For all intents and purposes it's the same thing. I understand the "but I'm in love with Bean", but Nikolai's progeny IS Bean's progeny too, unless we say that Lamarck was right and that experiences can be inherited (which is wrong). Bean should know this and I'd expect him to suggest it. As a thought exercise, it's a bit out there, but picture a set of identical twin brothers who have babies with identical twin sisters; the kids (cousins) are actually, genetically, siblings!
Posts: 8 | Registered: May 2004
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You are right. Bean should have at least thought of it. But he would then think that Petra would not have it. She didn't just want Bean's genes in her babies; she wanted them to be Bean's babies too. It would not be the same to have it done by Nikolai.The babies would be genetically the same but not mentally the same. Plus, would Nikolai do it? He would always have in the back of his mind that those were his babies.
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You know what puzzled me about Shadow Puppets? That Bean didn't speak Mandarin and didn't learn Arabic in the time he was with the Caliph. He inhales languages. He read military history in the original languages when he was 5 years old. He speaks Thai, English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch (etc.etc.etc.)... and then when they are watching the Caliph's opening speech at a restaurant in Damascus he understands... nothing. Amazing.
Petra puzzled me in the whole Shadow Puppets book.
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There were a lot of problems I had with that book which is why I didn't finish it. For example, why did they go to that guy in the first place knowing that he'd take their embroys away? Perhaps I read it wrong though, but that part was utterly dippy... Not to memtion one more problem I had with the book....
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I just read the threee Bean books back to back in a coupel of weeks. That's good because all of it is fresh in my mind, but bad because it was bean overload and hence difficult to digest- yes the bean overload/digestion thing is an intentional pun. I too seem to recall that Nikolai and Bean were identical. Namaki, there's a simple reason why Bean didn't learn Arabic at the Caliph's modest palace; he'd discovered sex by then!
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So sex blocks the neural pathways for language learning Must be why adults are so bad at learning languages... This would be an excellent subject for my Masters...
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Who are your masters, and do they treat you well? Do you need Bean to rescue you? Just draw me a dragon if you mean yes.
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"Petra puzzled me in the whole Shadow Puppets book."
Agreed. I loved her in Shadow of the Hegemon, and then she morphed into Little Miss Backboneless-Sap. A terrible, terrible disappointment. Posts: 165 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I liked the book partly because I'm so loyal to OSC and partly because it was pretty darn good. The only problem I had with it was the relationship between Bean and Petra. It just didn't seem realistic and could have used a bit more development, in my own opinion. The two of them worrying about having babies just seemed weird. I don't know; maybe I just expected them to stay very young forever. Darn kids grow up too fast.
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I understand/agree with much of what others here say about their problems digesting the relationship between Bean and Petra and their sudden desire to have children.
Yet, having read so much of OSC's work, and realizing how important marriage/family is to him personally (and in his religion) I guess it never surprises me that this is a recurrent theme in many of his books (like the Alvin Maker series, etc.) I think it is just one of those personal values of the writer that bleeds over to the characters he writes about.
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As a person who has gotten married and had kids during the time that I've been reading the Ender/Bean books, it seems very natural to me that Bean and Petra would get married and want to have kids.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Same here, mph. And while I can see the argument that Nikolai and Bean's genes are the same (but for the one major alteration) . . . the idea of therefore just taking a sample from Nicolai instead just is WRONG to me.
I have friends who are identical twins, and their kids can tell which one is their mom (I can, sometimes ). We are more than our genes! Nikolai's kids would NOT be Bean's!
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A .22! What's the world coming to! *Everyone stares at Kabe for spouting off random complaints*
Posts: 126 | Registered: Mar 2004
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A rat named dog I meant that Bean and Petra are supposedly very intelligent and Bean has ingested so much information that he should know very basic genetics. The comment about pragmatism isn't related to his genius per se, but rather to his character, which has been ruthlessly pragmatic since he was 4 years old. Twins are not identical because they have different experiences. They also live in different environments all their lives, because the two of them cannot occupy the same space at the same time. These influences make twins distinguishable. However,these differences are not inherent in their DNA and are not heritable. Save for somatic mutations, they are genetically identical. SO in Shadow Puppets we have: Nikolai and Bean are identical. Some maniac alters Bean so that they're not the same any more. Petra falls in love with Bean. She wants to have a baby that is Bean's but doesn't have the alteration. So they go back to the same maniac and try to have the alteration removed or at least eliminate the embryos which have it. Seems that she could have just gone to Nikolai and saved themselves a lot of grief. Love Bean. Have sex with Bean, but if you're serious about Bean without Anton's key, you're talking about Nikolai. If a DNA test were carried out to determine the paternity of either of Bean's or Nikolai's offspring they would not distinguish between them, unless the test specifically looked at Anton's Key.
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posted
Can anybody else confirm this? Just don't buy the idea that Bean and his brother are genetically identical. Did I just miss this part, or this an assumption being made?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Shadow Puppets left me scratching my head, too, but for different reasons.
The main one is simply... doesn't it kind of leave off without a resolution? I mean, I have no idea if there's another book coming, and if there is, then no worries. But I wouldn't think Card would end the Bean series this way.... For instance, Peter is left in a rather disadvantageous position. We know he will eventually rule the world, right? So how does he get from the end of Puppet Shadows to being World Ruler? I expected these books to tell me this (as well as telling Bean's story, of course.)
I also found it bizarre that we are never told (to my recollection) how tall Bean is at any stage in the book. That seems like an important piece of information to me.
Anyone have any answers for me?
Posts: 3 | Registered: May 2004
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That would be... Shadow Puppets. For some reason that title gives me a fit of dyslexia. But I got it right the first time!
OK, now that I know there's a sequel, I don't have an issue about the ending. I'm quite relieved, actually.
And yes, mph, I've noticed that Card basically never describes his characters (in the Ender/Bean series, at least, which is all I know).
I look forward to seeing the Ender's Game movie for that reason, just to see what Ender looks like. In lieu of an official description from the writer, that's the best I can hope for.
It occurred to me that OSC might be withholding such info intentionally -- it's said that the more vaguely a character is depicted, the more people can relate to him (can picture themselves *as* him). Maybe that's his reasoning.
Posts: 3 | Registered: May 2004
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posted
OSC has said that's why he does it. Good guess!
Speaking of, are there any physical descriptions of Ender and Peter? In my mind, Ender is *definitely* blonde, while Peter has black hair. Did I make that up, or is that from the book?
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I'm pretty sure that it was stated in the Shadow series and Ender and Peter look very much alike.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I don't recall it giving Ender's hair color; I always pictured Peter and Ender as being black-haired, and Ender having a serious, sort of square-jawed look to him and a slow, steady way of speaking.
But that's just my mind's eye talking, not actual fact.
Posts: 3 | Registered: May 2004
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Yup, page 10 of the paperback version of EG.
"Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, thick, tousled hair and a face that belonged to Alexander the Great."
[ May 21, 2004, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: St. Yogi ]
Posts: 739 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I am not entirely sure why, but in my mind, Ender and Nafai (from the Homecoming series) have the same appearance more or less. I don't know, maybe it's just the young, smart, brave, altruism in them both that makes me keep connecting them. Does anyone else think that their mental image of Ender matches Nafai's?
Posts: 7 | Registered: May 2004
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I don't know if I could ever see them the same. Ender we basically know as a prepubescent, then leaping to adulthood. Nafai begins at 14, and never really seems to get past 30. I mean, I know he does, but I always picture him as late 20s in the later books. With the two characters never overlapping in age, it's difficult to picture them as being the same. Plus Nafai is tall and lanky, whereas Ender always seemed compact to me.
No, although I never really had a picture of Ender in my mind, I know that everything I did think about him made him very different in appearance from Nafai.
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I could have sworn that as a young man, Peter was described as having blonde hair, and a leader-like quality, with handsome facial features.
But I may very well be wrong, since its been a while since I've read a lot of the books, and I don't have them on hand to reference to.. so I'm not exactly sure if I'm just pulling this out of the air or what.
I always pictured Ender as somewhat of a light brown headed boy; perhaps because I saw him as the balance of Valentine and Peter and imagined it as a genetic trait difference as well? For some reason, I've always pictured Valentine as blonde and Peter (up till the book where I apparently got confused) as a deep brunette (like Kabederlin said with the dominant genes).
Posts: 10 | Registered: May 2004
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just because Bean and Petra know that he has a genetically identical twin does not mean they would want to do it that way. There are more to having a baby than genetics...there is emotion invovled too. Sure they could use the sperm of Bean's twin brother and it would be genetically identical...but it would not be Bean's sperm. Sure it would be genetically identical, but it would not have the same emotional impact.
Have you ever received a gift from someone that means something to you because it came from that person? If the item was broken, sure it could be relplaced with an identical item...but it would not be the same because it did not come from that person.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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Petra wants to have Bean's children because she loves him. She wants to have his children *right now* because they will at least get to see their father before he dies prematurely. OSC made it quite clear that in spite of their intelligence they were very much at the mercy of their hormones.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Pausanius is so right... Bean and Petra wish to be a family for whatever amoun of time they can.... if she just wanted to raise good little generals, then she could choose from anyone's frozen donation, not just Nikolai's.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I always thought that Peter was supposed to look kind of Greek, though I'm not sure how I got that since all we know is that is father is Polish and is mother is American. I think it might have been because of the dark hair comment. The cover of the version of EG that I have shows a boy with orange/light brown hair, and while I've never thought it looked much like my version of Ender, I do see him with a light brown hair color.
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
If you're going from the perspective of Anton, the only problem with Nikoli being the father is that Bean wouldn't be alive to raise the children. The point of view taken in the book is that it doesn't matter how you get children, what makes them yours is that you weave them in the web of life.
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Must be why adults are so bad at learning languages... This would be an excellent subject for my Masters...
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). We are more than our genes! Nikolai's kids would NOT be Bean's!
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