One of my favorite series as a teenager was the Ender books by Orson Scott Card. The first Ender book grabbed me right away when I was a teenager since it was essentially a story about a kid who was born and raised to save humanity. It was a simple story without much depth, so I was at the perfect age to read it. A few years later in my early 20's I bought both Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide (2nd and 3rd book in the series). The stories were much more refined and mature. It was like the books grew up with me to fit my "refined" reading preferences. Last year I read the 4th book, Children of the Mind. While not as engrossing and well thought out as the first 3 books, I stil found it enjoyable.

One of the things that appealed to me in all 4 books was Card's devotion to the tenants of his world. He shows how religion is reintroduced into the world, how mandatory birth control is removed, and how humanity moves from fledgeling race to holders of a vast empire.

Fast forward to this year. This weekend I finished reading Card's latest book, Ender's Shadow. (**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****).

Ender's Shadow is supposed to be a retelling of the first Ender book (Ender's Game) from the perspective of one of Ender's greatest commanders, Bean. From reading the book, Card obviously decided that Bean was a god who knew everything there was to know, but that isn't my real complaint. My complaint isn't the story as a whole, it is the fact the Card placed several stabs into the heart of the continuity of his world. This is a parallel book to Ender's Game, so the world should be identical. It isn't even close.

Time for some disection; in Ender's Game, humanity is united under one government (simply called The Hegemony). This was necessary to stop the in fighting on Earth and to unite under one flag to fight off the Bugger threat (oh, and apparently Bugger is a politically incorrect term in this book now). To keep Earth united, The Hegemony makes religion a stigma. It is taught in schools across the planet that religion is a false thing that is only used to control minds and cause strife between people. Churches are outlawed and the public shuns anyone that appears to believe in a God. This is protrayed several times in Ender's Game. For example, Ender is horrified to find out that his mother prays for him at night. He thinks this shows that his mother is weak willed and has no sense of humanity. However, in Ender's Shadow, religion is huge in the world. Bean is found and raised by a nun in the Catholic church. The government (you know, the guys who outlawed religion completely in the original text) works closely with orphanages across the planet as they search for the next great commander to rid the universe of the Bugger threat.

This leads to another wild inconsistancy; the fact that there are orphanages and homeless children. In Ender's Game, the population of Earth is at the breaking point. Birth control is mandatory and the only children allowed to be concieved have to be approved by the government, impregnation happening throuhg artificial insemanation. Every child that is born has a monitor attached to their necks to see if they have the intelligence and maturity as children to grow up to be the next great hope for humanity. Most monitors are removed by 3 years old, but some stay on longer. ALL children have monitors in Ender's Game. But wait, Card has decided that isn't true anymore. In Ender's Shadow, there are tens of thousands of homeless children in just 1 of the countries that he focuses on. In one of the conversations between the nun and one of the government officials, they remark that the problem with homeless children on Earth has become epidemic. So the world went from mandatory sterilisations where only liscened births are even possible to a world where people can't afford to take care of their children so the just dump them on the streets. All of these children must be born in back alleys also, since none of them has even had a monitor attached to their necks.

There are several more examples of Card destroying the world he created, but this simple post is threatening to turn into a 3 page book comparison.

Another inconsistant world is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. He states repeatedly that men who can channel are hunted and stilled, and those who aren't stilled die before they're 25. However, in book 6 he suddenly decides that this isn't true. These men, who apparenlty don't go insane with a year as Jordan repeatedly stated, have been channeling without their own knowledge for years, sometimes as many as 45 years.

So what I'm asking is, is there a series of books that you've read where an author decided to completely rebuild the world in mid-stream like Card did in the Ender series? For me, it's a real pet peve that I have a hard time dealing with in my reading.

Whew, sorry for the legnth of that post there. I got into a bit of a groove. :)

"So what I'm asking is, is there a series of books that you've read where an author decided to completely rebuild the world in mid-stream like Card did in the Ender series? For me, it's a real pet peve that I have a hard time dealing with in my reading."

That's interesting that he would do that. Makes you wonder if his last few books didn't sell and he was looking for a hit again and so was mining old ground? Some book publishers hang out in one of the Usenet sci-fi groups and they said that sci-fi doesn't sell well anymore, outside of the junky series like Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.

Fantasy sells better, which probably explains why an author like David Drake (Hammer's Slammers) started an epic fantasy series.

Getting back to your question, I can't think of any similar examples, though I know it's not uncommon in later works for authors to be inconsistent. Card's example of retelling a story is a bit unusual.

Sometime in his later years, Asimov decided to tie all the Foundation, Empire, and Robot novels together. I doubt that he had that in mind when he originally wrote those stories, so I'd be surprised if didn't introduce more than a few inconsistencies in the process. But I'll be damned if I'm going to read all those books again in an effort to document that assertion. ;)

"Sometime in his later years, Asimov decided to tie all the Foundation, Empire, and Robot novels together."

I tried to read the book after the original Foundation Triology and just found it dull. I doubt I could go back and read the triology again and like it. My guess is that it hasn't aged well.

"I tried to read the book after the original Foundation Triology and just found it dull.
I doubt I could go back and read the triology again and like it. My guess is that it
hasn't aged well."

I didn't care much for the later books either, although I did like the Robots of Dawn, which was the first to start bringing the series together. To me the original trilogy is simply a classic, like Dune and Childhood's End. And the Mule remains one of SF's greatest characters.

"So what I'm asking is, is there a series of books that you've read where an author decided to completely rebuild the world in mid-stream like Card did in the Ender series?"

This made me chuckle a bit, as to me Ender's Game was and remains a great short story. I found the book a turgid and dull retelling of what should have stayed a short. "The gate is Down." How ironic that Card would forget that!

Sci-fi doesn't sell well? Do you think there's a correlation to the fact that there are lots of sci-fi movies, but hardly any fantasy ones these days? I wonder if people can feed their jones' off of the movies for sci-fi, and that's why they don't bother with the books? Or has sci-fi literature gotten itself into a rut? I haven't read any sci-fi in some time, I'll confess. But we've had some great movies and TV. Pitch Black was great, Matrix, Farscape (that show has me well-hooked), even more borderline stuff like First Wave, Black Scorpion and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne have potential. I also used to like G Vs. E, if anyone remembers that. So lots of sci-fi, but little fantasy on the screen. Lots of fantasy, but not a lot of sci-fi, in the pages. Hmm...

Sci fi fans I know are a breed apart. They typically like hard sci-fi like Isaac Asimov or David Gerrold's Chtorr War. It seems like a lot of the current sci-fi lines are fluff! I haven't found to many new generatrion writers that provide authentic feeling world with lots of detail and authenticity to worlds they create. At least that is what I've encountered. If anyone has books from the new generations of writer that they could reccomend with the depth that level of depth, detail and believability I'd be much apprecative...:)

Maybe it's getting too complicated to write sci-fi? The world is getting pretty technical, and writers aren't famed for their technical expertise most of the time. Fantasy, you just make it all up as you go.

I dunno why SF doesn't sell as well as fantasy. I think the tie-in novels sell well -- there's an endless supply of Star Trek novels produced.

One of the editors said he thought it was the difference between the general pessimism you find in SF (the future usually sucks) versus the general optimism in fantasy novels (if we find the magic crystal we can vanquish evil and the world will be whole again, tr-la-la!). It probably has something to do with the demographics of readers these days too. More and more the people who buy books tend to be women, and women traditionally don't major in science and math, so it's understandable that they prefer fantasy to SF -- if that's what is indeed going on.

Hard SF -- there's an author I want to recommend, though I've only read a couple of his books: Allen Steele. He wrote one novel that posited that the face on Mars was indeed a carving, and it takes a sort of Rendezvous with Rama turn when they investigate it. He's also written several near future novels about building a large satellite that deal with the nitty-gritty details and favor a sort of blue-collar, hardhats in space approach.

Hmm. The future usually DOES suck, doesn't it? But in fantasy, either the present sucks, or is in imminent danger of succumbing to suckage, unless the magic crystal (tra-la-la) is found. But why do people line up in droves to see this suckage that is the future at theaters, only to ignore it in print? Sigh. I should have paid more attention to that "nature vs. nurture" class in high school, methinks.

"But why do people line up in droves to see this suckage that is the future at theaters, only to ignore it in print?"

I don't know, but SF seems easier to do in the movies than does fantasy. It just comes off as more believable for some reason.