Buggers !

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Connavar

Connavar

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Does that the aliens name bother only me?

I have read maybe 100-150 pages of Ender's Game and i like the book alot but the buggers thing bothered me alot early in the book. It made me flinch everytime i saw it and come out of the story world. Eventually i forget about it since the story got better and better.


I am not saying it makes the book worse but was wondering if anyone else thought it was a bad name.
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Please explain why you did not like it. I thought that it was slightly juvenile but it did not interfere with my enjoyment.
 
It didnt interfere with my enjoyment either.

But still it is one of the lamest enemy names i have seen.

It wasnt menacing or anything and it sound bad like some joke instead of the enemy name. I couldnt almost believe my eyes when i saw the names for the first time .

To me when i hear it i picture some brittish sitcom and people saying buggers which is why it looks lame to me.
 
I think that it was meant to be detrimental and demeaning. There is no point in making an enemy seem fierce.
 
Orson Scott Card writes in the intro of my copy of Enders Shadow that at the time of him writting Enders Game he thought he had just made up a good alien name, only years later finding out that the word Bugger had a real definition in the English language.

It really confused me when I began reading Enders Game and I kept reading "Kill the Buggers". To start with I would laugh out loud every time the word showed up. But I realised that the author was American and obviously didn't know that the English would interperet it wrongly.
 
Haha how cant he know that :eek:

I would think he would reaserch the word.


I think he crushed my view of SF writers reaserching everything alot before they write a story. That he cant check what other thing the words can mean...
 
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Ha ha ha! Well if you made up a word, even if you checked it's other meanings in English, I guess that the word might have another meaning in the USA, Spain or even China that you wouldn't find out about unless someone contacted you and said, "By the way, in my country, that word is really rude...just so you know."

Easy mistake.
 
Nakor said:
But I realised that the author was American and obviously didn't know that the English would interperet it wrongly.
Click to expand...

I was just about to mention this. American English doesn't use that word in the same way that British English uses it, and until I read Ender's Game for the first time I didn't realize that the term, in British English, means...well, what it means.
 
Well Little Miss I am not to sure what bugger means in the british language. (Although I have a fair idea) For australian's it is very much a part of our australian slang. Its reference is would equate to something bad, like say pulling out a tree stump and your bumper bar falls off , you would say Bugger. (its used alot in tv adds here)
Having said that it sounds like a pretty lame name for an alien (still I supose they are something bad)
I havnt read this book, but I think I will have to get a copy now. Thanks for the tip everyone.
 
They are something bad.

I thought it was lame for an enemy name and the fact he didnt look it up is.....


Im not saying he is bad cause he didnt look it up but i thought you looked a word before you thought you were making it up.
 
I see what you mean Connavar, I didnt realise he thought it was a made up name but that it alread existed. I agree with you completely.... It obviously has different meanings to dependant on which part of the world you live in.
 
Yeah which is why i found it wierd and thought he must not know what it means.


Heck im not from Uk or OZ but i have seen enough british sit-com to know what it means ;)
 
Yeah, come to think of it, it's not really a good choice, especially given the connotations. But I suppose if you're not British it won't really affect you that much. If he'd used something as simples as bugs, he'd have avoided that. The lack of a scientific description of the enemy goes to show how little the I.F. know about them, and that's probably a device to enhance Ender's genius, but also the height of his challenge.

I just finished reading the book, and I'm totally willing to overlook the badly chosen term for the rest of the book completely enthralled me. Now, should I read 'Speaker for the Dead'?

*ATTENTION! MAJOR SPOILER IN THE POST BELOW!*
 
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Im not british but it affected me from page one how badly choosen name it was.


Just like you im willing to overlook it.

I hope the other books are as good as the end of Ender's Game when Ender was older and they went to that planet,he got to know more about the bugs,thier queen.

I think that was much better than in the middle of the story and how he beat the the bugs through what he thought was V.R

The start and the end of the book was great the middle lacked alot.
 
You should edit your post and add *SPOILERS* to the subject.;)

Someone who hasn't read the book yet or the sequels (like me) can get really annoyed.
 
I can't agree about the middle of the book. I though the whole thing was paced well.
 
If you havent read the first book you dont belong in this thread ;)

When he went that base in the asteriod it can alittle less good to me.

The military school was very fun, the games,how he handled everything that happened to him. Killing that bully damn.
 
Maybe that's because of the fact that the whole environment in the asteroid was less comfortable and more nerve wrecking as a whole than in military school. He was getting older and they had to make him go through some really rough moments to get him ready. The whole setup is meant to be less inviting and more of a stifling situation than the previous sections.

The parts I liked least were the whole Demosthenes and Locke side-story. I know they serve a purpose, and they where interesting, but still I was so enraptured in the whole battle school ordeal that I didn't want to be taken away from Ender at any moment.
 
No it wasnt cause what happened but cause that Card told that part of the story worse. It wasnt as interesting.


I didnt mind Demosthenes and Locke cause they had a purpose.

What i liked least was his brother. He was alittle unbelievable to me. Not how smart he was or that he took over the world. But the hole

" i will kill you Ender!.... no i dont meant it i love you"

I was like come on thats lame.
 
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