posted
I'm not sure if this has ever been addressed, but in the audiobook version of Ender's Shadow has some numbers that were off.
After Ender's final battle at Battle School, the toon leaders and seconds get transfer notices. He says that EVERY toon leader and second got transfer orders to command positions. But right after, he went to his new army, rabbit, and he said to Itu, "I bet the total who graduated was 9." It would be 8 plus bean if ender had the normal 4 toon army, but he had a 5 toon army bringing the count that should have graduated up to 11.
Maybe someone has mentioned it, maybe it is fixed in the latest printed copy, but I figured that it should be posted in case it wasn't.
If I remember correctly, Bean's toon wasn't official. Ender told Bean that they would usually be part of the other 4 toons, but that if he needed them for a special assignment they would be able to form the 5th.
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posted
No, beans unnoficial platoon would be the 6th. The norm was 4 toons and i distinctly remember that, and this was before ender assigned the position for bean, dragon had 5 toons not 4 and each toon was 8 members. When they split into half toons, each one had 4 members.
Also, now that i think about it, shouldn't ender also have been on the transfer list of the other commanders were? This is a technicality though.
posted
Another number discrepancy i found in Shadow.
When Bean is first forming the list for Dragon, he says he had 22 launchies, 15 veterans. He then added crazy tom, 16 vets, then another vet (a girl i think. she would ask for a transfer if a leader tried to promote her to toon leader. he lastly add's Nikolai
so 17 vets. Then later bean says that all of the toon leaders and seconds were veterans, in fact all veterans were a toon leader or second.
he had 5 toon leaders, 5 seconds, 10 spots with 17 veterans.
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posted
There's also the discrepancy between how many people go to Command School with Bean. In Ender's Shadow, the number is 12. In Ender's Game, the number is three dozen, and he keeps cycling them in and out after Petra faints, which is never mentioned in Ender's Shadow.
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posted
Well, while it was weird that he said three dozen (I think that might've been edited, I don't have the book on me), he was really unspecific in EG about the number of commanders and who was who. There is the slight possibility that a Command School student stepped in and helped every once in a while, but I doubt it.
I think this is just one of those minor issues that OSC didn't have to think about until he started thinking about Ender's Shadow, and at that point, EG was too widely distributed and too well known to take it back. Also, I thought that he just hashed out EG as a precursor to Speaker and never really put the same effort into it as Speaker (at least that was my understanding of it, I could well be wrong). If I am right, than the level of analysis he put into EG is understandable and these small errors are pretty inconsequential.
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posted
[I just deleted a completely nonsensical post I made when I was running a fever. Nothing to see here.]
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posted
Minor spoilers for Ender's Shadow and the rest of the Shadow series:
Petra fainting and Ender's response (or lack thereof) is a decent-sized plot point in Ender's Shadow. Bean draws Ender's attention to her abandoned ships, and also tries to talk to Petra afterward. It comes up again in the later Shadow books as a key part of Petra's relationship with Vlad.
But yeah, the numbering was off in both the number of kids who went on to Command School and the number of new toon leaders. It's also hard to get a solid grip on the number of armies in Battle School.
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posted
Tolstoy made mistakes with numbers in War and Peace, too. For example, Natasha ages a number of years while her older sister Vera stays the same age.
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posted
On the note of discrepancies: in the end of Ender in Exile, chapter 20 in the letter at the beginning (from Ender to Graff), it mentions: "Speaking of Peter, he and I are in conversation; perhaps you knew. We're not messaging, we're using ansible bandwidth for conversation. It's bitter-sweet to see him at nearly sixty years of age. hair turning steely grey, face lined, carrying a little weight (but still fit), and the lines of responsibility etched on his face."
However, at the end of Shadow of the Giant (chapter 26, p. 943 of 962 on my iBook): "No picture. Peter had to draw the line somewhere. And Ender hadn't insisted. It would be too painful for both of them--for Ender to see how much time had passed during his relativistic voyage out to Shakespeare, and for Peter to be forced to see how young Ender still was, how much life he still had ahead of him while Peter was looking coolly at his own old age and approaching death."
Story changing? Of course not. But at the end of EiE, OSC mentioned that he makes mistakes and to please post them on here (at least that's what I got out of it), so here's my catch for the day.
posted
The thing about 9 transfers representing 11 Dragons always bothered me. I just listened to EG again and don't remember the part about three-dozen kids going to Command School. Where does it say that?
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This actually makes me wonder if Jane was already causing trouble in Ender's life even during this time. When Bean left, the fantasy game was starting to adapt itself to Ender's life...
So perhaps at the time when Ender and Peter were talking to each other Jane was already listening in? I could imagine Jane having it so Ender could see Peter but Peter could not see Ender. Since Peter said Ender didn't insist on seeing him this could mean that Ender was already seeing him, thus not having a reason to insist.
Of course you could be right and its an obvious mistake... but it does make me wonder if it wasn't intentional?
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