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Orson Scott Card...

Amazing anticipation of things which we take for granted

One of the things that makes me a fan of Card's "science fiction" writing is that his stories do not rely heavily on "gismos" and "gadgets". And whatever gizmos he incorporates are there to serve a story with deeper aspects.

However, the 1985 version of Ender's Game had in it recognizable equivalents of a number of things which, in 2013, seem unremarkable, everyday products and services... but, for when Card was imagining them, were pretty special. (He, of course, used different names for them.)

Sadly, none of the following appear in the 1977 short story. (I will come to things which were in the short story in a moment.)

(The Twitter-like service, and its place in the Ender's Game story, didn't make it into the film. As is so often the case, the film just couldn't include everything that was in the book. Actually... as I think about it, maybe the "Twitter" service was part of Speaker For the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game? Where ever it appeared, Card absolutely anticipated how it could serve democracy.)

While I'm making confessions, I have to add that I am pretty sure that all of the above WERE present in the 1985 novel. There was a 1991 revision of Ender's Game... but I believe that the changes in that were confined to fine-tunings of the ending. (More on that elsewhere.) I will try to find time to check a copy of the 1885 novel carefully.

The tablet computers were important tools used by Ender's teachers... what a pity they aren't more widely, or purposefully, used in classrooms now. The technology is there. Why are programs and encouragement from the schools lacking?

To us, in 2013, seeing Ender use an iPod/ Android-like device doesn't seem odd. We don't need to be told that it is communicating over WiFi, and hooking into a wider information infrastructure....

But if you were using computers in 1985, you will know that they weren't GUI driven tablets with touch-screens, and they certainly weren't wireless!

Sadly, NOT with us yet...

While, sadly, the following are not with us yet, they were in the story from the earliest version, the 1977 short story...

(Wikipedia reports in its laser tag article that the military had a laser tag-like training tool in the 70s. There was a beam and sensor toy available in 1979. "Proper" laser tag, with laser beams, and hit scoring was first available to the civilian public in 1984. So Card didn't necessarily imagine laser tag "from scratch", but he certainly "ran with" the idea, not just in putting it in a zero-G environment.)





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