But he could not sleep. He lay awake longer and longer each night, and his sleep was less restful. He woke too often in the night. Whether he was waking up to think more about the game or to escape from his dreams, he wasn't sure. It was as if someone rode in his sleep, forcing him to wander through his worst memories, to live in them again as if they were real. Nights were so real that days began to seem dreamlike to him. He began to worry that he would not think clearly enough, that he would be too tired when he played. Always when the game began, the intensity of it awoke him, but if his mental abilities began to slip, he wondered, would he notice it?

Eliina, where are you and when can we run to the bookstore? Orson Scott Card is back for another round of Ender, the only man you'll ever love more than Henry Bienen, and the only sci-fi books I've ever loved and have somehow never had on my Facebook favorites list until now.

I meant to blog the news after seeing the book on Barnes and Noble shelves the other day, but now a LAT story has reminded me: "When we revisit Ender in Exile, he is 17 and exalted as a hero for fending off the third wave of alien marauders that threatened to obliterate Earth. But his brutal military techniques render him a monster to the very people who trained him to be a killer. He is mercilessly exiled from his home planet and forced into a colony that is light years away. … It took getting married, raising a family and the death of two children to put life into perspective and give Card the necessary material to imagine Ender during his transition to adulthood." Always, more than sci-fi.

Reviews appear scarce. (And the film's off again, but that's not news.)

Lloyd Alexander died earlier this month at 83. He wrote the Prydain Chronicles, the stories of pigkeeper-with-a-destiny Taran the Wanderer and some of my first favorite books.

When I heard the death news, I didn't remember much of the them, but reading what others wrote helped jog my memory some. A blog post from Timothy Burke, a Swarthmore history professor, made a point that especially surprised me. He defined the series in a way I've — in recent, better memory — put Ender's Game, and the closeness left me wondering if I'd tapped into the same feelings both times, seven or eight crucial development years apart.

To me, the books were valuable not just as a story of swords and sorcery or even of the journey from childhood to adulthood, but also as an exploration of what it means to make moral choices….

The Prydain books explored morality as it is lived, even for children, in difficult choices, in painfully-won wisdom, from the inside of consciousness rather than the outside infrastructure of social life. There isn't much doubt about who the bad guys and the good guys are in any of the books, but the main characters are not noble by fiat, either, particularly Taran. One of the incidents that made the biggest impact on me as a boy was when Taran is compelled to accept the possibility that his lost father is not of noble birth, but a shepherd, and the shameful feelings he struggles with as a result. Characters die, characters suffer. When they come to a moral decision, you're taken along with them inside the process of experience and reason that brings them to that moment.

I think you could probably go farther still along that road: I think small children are just as attuned as adults to the possibility of the no-win moral scenario, those moments in life that can't be resolved cleanly in favor of a right and wrong choice. This is the kind of argument that gets lazily, casually dismissed by some as favoring moral relativism. Far from it….

Read the rest.

I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card's Ender trilogy, and I know a good number of you are as well. The opening Ender's Game is draws in reader with barely a bump in the sci-fi crossover.

Where Card likely loses a chunk of his fans is his politics. Your views probably determine how you estimate the chunk. Both sides of the aisle would agree that Card is conservative and loudly so. He writes regular columns on issues in the national news and, despite the sci-fi fan base, doesn't hold back.

So when Fark.com links to one of those columns — as the site's known to do with opinion material, right and left, a few times a day — and then gives him a Hero tag and the tagline "Orson Scott Card nails it," it's not surprising when the ensuing debate rages on for hundreds of comments.

Reading the first few comments, they all begin to blur and I scroll down to look for pictures posted in the thread. Hundreds of flames pass. I don't find anyone Photoshopping the Game cover, but I do come across this picture of a rabbit.

Ender movie update
The writer of Troy and the 25th Hour will do the screenplay for the Ender's Game movie. More at Fresco Pictures.

My warm feelings for science fiction extend only to the friendliest of its commentaries on humanity: Star Wars (IV-VI), Orson Scott Card and other assets that pop up only now and again. Popping up recently has been Isaac Asimov and the fresh and jiggy I, Robot. After loving the trailer, I still haven't seen the movie. Between mediocre reviews and circumstance, the adaption is likely joining my growing 2004 once-wanted-to-see-but-didn't list. (Hello, Terminal. Hello, Welcome to Mooseport. Hello, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.)

But forget these new robots for a second. You remember Norby? The little mixed-up robot? Maybe you do and maybe you don't. The Web sure doesn't. Of the 698,000 Asimov hits on Google right now, fewer than a 1,000 mention Norby. Maybe Norby is a niche.

Anyway, a series of 1980s books by Asimov and his wife, Janet, send the rules-following robot and his young friends all over the galaxy. Adventures ensue, as does a comic serialization in Boy's Life, where Asimov long-time contributed and where I would first find him.

Related — what's the latest on the Ender's Game movie?

Fresco Pictures has the details: As of February, the X-Men 2 writers were working on a second draft of the script. Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy) was still slated to direct.