Ender's Real Life Game

Right off the bat, I have to say that Ender's Game (actually a series of Ender's ____) is a fantastic sci-fi book I read a long time ago. Still good enough that when I see it on the shelf at a store I often get excited and think about reading it again, but never have the $20 to spend on it. It's fantastic. If you haven't read it and intend to do so at some point, my blog will probably spoil a good bit, if not THE entire plot of it. So fair warning, don't complain to me that I spoiled it for you, even tho the book is 20+ years old.

With all of the video games available that feature war as the main feature (Call of Duty's yearly entry, Halo, Gears of War, MAG) its becoming more and more like it will soon be a training simulator. Soon 12 year old kids will be controlling some machine in the battlefield and to him it will be like getting the high score on his favorite game. But in real life, it will be that same kid having gone thru a village somewhere and wiping it completely off the map. But he won't know. He'll go on about his day, and wait for his next simulator mission to begin. And if he fails, his parents won't bury him, he'll just wake up the next morning at his new 'training' school, ready to try again. But if he happens to suck at his simulator missions, instead of wasting tax payer money, he'll be sent home from school, ready to resume his normal life, never knowing he alone wasn't just a virtual soldier of death, but that he actually did that.

That was a quick run thru of Ender's Game (again, written in the 80s). I hear commercials on the radio about someone sitting in Vegas about to bomb the crap out of some cave with his fancy Military Grade Airplane, and I instantly come back to thinking about that book. Sooner or later, it'll happen like that, if it isn't already. Guess we just have to wait and see if we get a WikiLeak on that story too.

***Update*** I had no idea that it was only like 4 cents!!! I'll have me a collection of books to read soon!