B.K. Evenson:Dead Space: Martyr
- edizione con copertina flessibile 2011, ISBN: 9780857681751
TOR. Very Good. 110 x 178mm. Paperback. 1992. 562 pages. Cover worn.<br>Ender and Valentine Wiggin are brother and sister who both share the gift of genius. The monstrous Starw ays… Altro …
TOR. Very Good. 110 x 178mm. Paperback. 1992. 562 pages. Cover worn.<br>Ender and Valentine Wiggin are brother and sister who both share the gift of genius. The monstrous Starw ays Congress has sent a warfleet to their home planet of Lusitani a, containing two alien species and the deadliest virus ever know n. They have also issued the order to destroy the planet. Editor ial Reviews Amazon Review A Reading Guide for Ender's Game. THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender's Series: Ender Wiggin: The finest ge neral the world could hope to find or breed. The following Ende r's Series titles are listed in order: Ender's Game, Ender In Exi le, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind. Ender' s Shadow Series: Parallel storylines to Ender's Game from Bean: E nder's right hand, his strategist, and his friend. The followin g Ender's Shadow Series titles are listed in order: Ender's Shado w, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Sh adows in Flight. The First Formic War Series: One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and de ath. These are the stories of the First Formic War. Earth Unawa re, Earth Afire. Ender Novellas A War of Gifts, First Meetings . The Authorized Ender Companion: A complete and in-depth encycl opedia of all the persons, places, things, and events in Orson Sc ott Card's Ender Universe. --This text refers to the audio_downlo ad edition. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permission. All rights reser ved. Xenocide 1A PARTING<Today one of the brothers asked me: Is i t a terrible prison, not to be able to move from the place where you're standing?><You answered ...><I told him that I am now more free than he is. The inability to move frees me from the obligat ion to act.><You who speak languages, you are such liars.> Han F ei-tzu sat in lotus position on the bare wooden floor beside his wife's sickbed. Until a moment ago he might have been sleeping; h e wasn't sure. But now he was aware of the slight change in her b reathing, a change as subtle as the wind from a butterfly's passi ng.Jiang-qing, for her part, must also have detected some change in him, for she had not spoken before and now she did speak. Her voice was very soft. But Han Fei-tzu could hear her clearly, for the house was silent. He had asked his friends and servants for s tillness during the dusk of Jiang-qing's life. Time enough for ca reless noise during the long night that was to come, when there w ould be no hushed words from her lips.Still not dead, she said. S he had greeted him with these words each time she woke during the past few days. At first the words had seemed whimsical or ironic to him, but now he knew that she spoke with disappointment. She longed for death now, not because she hadn't loved life, butbecau se death was now unavoidable, and what cannot be shunned must be embraced. That was the Path. Jiang-qing had never taken a step aw ay from the Path in her life.Then the gods are kind to me, said H an Fei-tzu.To you, she breathed. What do we contemplate?It was he r way of asking him to share his private thoughts with her. When others asked his private thoughts, he felt spied upon. But Jiang- qing asked only so that she could also think the same thought; it was part of their having become a single soul.We are contemplati ng the nature of desire, said Han Fei-tzu.Whose desire? she asked . And for what?My desire for your bones to heal and become strong , so that they don't snap at the slightest pressure. So that you could stand again, or even raise an arm without your own muscles tearing away chunks of bone or causing the bone to break under th e tension. So that I wouldn't have to watch you wither away until now you weigh only eighteen kilograms. I never knew how perfectl y happy we were until I learned that we could not stay together.M y desire, he answered. For you.'You only covet what you do not ha ve.' Who said that?You did, said Han Fei-tzu. Some say, 'what you cannot have.' Others say, 'what you should not have.' I say, 'Yo u can truly covet only what you will always hunger for.'You have me forever.I will lose you tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week.Let us contemplate the nature of desire, said Jiang-qing. As before, she was using philosophy to pull him out of his brooding melanch oly.He resisted her, but only playfully. You are a harsh ruler, s aid Han Fei-tzu. Like your ancestor-of-the-heart, you make no all owance for other people's frailty. Jiang-qing was named for a rev olutionary leader of the ancient past, who had tried to lead the people onto a new Path but was overthrown by weak-hearted cowards . It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die befo re him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besid es, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more compl ete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their c hildren. They were never as solitary as a man alone.Jiang-qing re fused to let him return to brooding. When a man's wife is dead, w hat does he long for?Rebelliously, Han Fei-tzu gave her the most false answer to her question. To lie with her, he said.The desire of the body, said Jiang-qing.Since she was determined to have th is conversation, Han Fei-tzu took up the catalogue for her. The d esire of the body is to act. It includes all touches, casual and intimate, and all customary movements. Thus he sees a movement ou t of the corner of his eye, and thinks he has seen his dead wifem oving across the doorway, and he cannot be content until he has w alked to the door and seen that it was not his wife. Thus he wake s up from a dream in which he heard her voice, and finds himself speaking his answer aloud as if she could hear him.What else? ask ed Jiang-qing.I'm tired of philosophy, said Han Fei-tzu. Maybe th e Greeks found comfort in it, but not me.The desire of the spirit , said Jiang-qing, insisting.Because the spirit is of the earth, it is that part which makes new things out of old ones. The husba nd longs for all the unfinished things that he and his wife were making when she died, and all the unstarted dreams of what they w ould have made if she had lived. Thus a man grows angry at his ch ildren for being too much like him and not enough like his dead w ife. Thus a man hates the house they lived in together, because e ither he does not change it, so that it is as dead as his wife, o r because he does change it, so that it is no longer half of her making.You don't have to be angry at our little Qing-jao, said Ji ang-qing.Why? asked Han Fei-tzu. Will you stay, then, and help me teach her to be a woman? All I can teach her is to be what I am- -cold and hard, sharp and strong, like obsidian. If she grows lik e that, while she looks so much like you, how can I help but be a ngry?Because you can teach her everything that I am, too, said Ji ang-qing.If I had any part of you in me, said Han Fei-tzu, I woul d not have needed to marry you to become a complete person. Now h e teased her by using philosophy to turn the conversation away fr om pain. That is the desire of the soul. Because the soul is made of light and dwells in air, it is that part which conceives and keeps ideas, especially the idea of the self. The husband longs f or his whole self, which was made of the husband and wife togethe r. Thus he never believes any of his own thoughts, because there is always a question in his mind to which his wife's thoughts wer e the only possible answer. Thus the whole world seems dead to hi m because he cannot trust anything to keep its meaning before the onslaught of this unanswerable question.Very deep, said Jiang-qi ng.If I were Japanese I would commit seppuku, spilling my bowel i nto the jar of your ashes.Very wet and messy, she said.He smiled. Then I should be an ancient Hindu, and burn myself on your pyre. But she was through with joking. Qing-jao, she whispered. She was reminding him he could do nothing so flamboyant as to die with h er. There was little Qing-jao to care for.So Han Fei-tzu answered her seriously. How can I teach her to be what you are?All that i s good in me, said Jiang-qing, comes from the Path. If you teach her to obey the gods, honor the ancestors, love the people, and s erve the rulers, I will be in her as much as you are.I would teac h her the Path as part of myself, said Han Fei-tzu.Not so, said J iang-qing. The Path is not a natural part of you, my husband. Eve n with the gods speaking to you every day, you insist on believin g in a world where everything can be explained by natural causes. I obey the gods. He thought, bitterly, that he had no choice; tha t even to delay obedience was torture.But you don't know them. Yo u don't love their works.The Path is to love the people. The gods we only obey. How can I love gods who humiliate me and torment m e at every opportunity?We love the people because they are creatu res of the gods.Don't preach to me.She sighed.Her sadness stung h im like a spider. I wish you would preach to me forever, said Han Fei-tzu.You married me because you knew I loved the gods, and th at love for them was completely missing from yourself. That was h ow I completed you.How could he argue with her, when he knew that even now he hated the gods for everything they had ever done to him, everything they had ever made him do, everything they had st olen from him in his life.Promise me, said Jiang-qing.He knew wha t these words meant. She felt death upon her; she was laying the burden of her life upon him. A burden he would gladly bear. It wa s losing her company on the Path that he had dreaded for so long. Promise that you will teach Qing-jao to love the gods and walk al ways on the Path. Promise that you will make her as much my daugh ter as yours.Even if she never hears the voice of the gods?The Pa th is for everyone, not just the godspoken.Perhaps, thought Han F ei-tzu, but it was much easier for the godspoken to follow the Pa th, because to them the price for straying from it was so terribl e. The common people were free; they could leave the Path and not feel the pain of it for years. The godspoken couldn't leave the Path for an hour.Promise me.I will. I promise.But he couldn't say the words out loud. He did not know why, but his reluctance was deep.In the silence, as she waited for his vow, they heard the so und of running feet on the gravel outside the front door of the h ouse. It could only be Qing-jao, home from the garden of Sun Cao- pi. Only Qing-jao was allowed torun and make noise during this ti me of hush. They waited, knowing that she would come straight to her mother's room.The door slid open almost noiselessly. Even Qin g-jao had caught enough of the hush to walk softly when she was a ctually in the presence of her mother. Though she walked on tipto e, she could hardly keep from dancing, almost galloping across th e floor. But she di... --This text refers to the audio_download e dition. From School Library Journal YA-- A fitting culmination t o the marvelous trilogy that began with Ender's Game (1985) and c ontinued in Speaker for the Dead (1986, both TOR). Once started, Xenocide is almost impossible to put down. It continues the confl icts with the Penuininos (the alien race infected with a deadly v irus); the Hive Queen and her workers; and the humans, including Ender, on Lusitania. What makes this title so fascinating are the new characters introduced here: Gloriously Bright and her father /mentor Han Fei-tzu, two of the ruling class on the planet Path. Their Chinese heritage, combined with their possession by obsessi ve-compulsive disorder, makes for an intriguing situation. The ph ilosophical nature of this novel may be frustrating for some read ers, and hardware fanatics may be disappointed by a solution that ventures into the more speculative realms of physics. For everyo ne else, however, Xenocide successfully pulls together all of the various themes Card has explored in this series. It will appeal not only to his fans, but also to readers of the speculative fict ion of David Brin and Greg Bear. A thought-provoking, insightful, and powerfully written volume that no library should be without. --Cathy Chauvette & John Lawson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text ref ers to the audio_download edition. From Kirkus Reviews Sequel to Ender's Game (1984) and Speaker for the Dead (1986), exploring t he problems of alien contact and coexistence on planet Lusitania, where now three intelligent species dwell: human colonists; ``bu ggers'' (an arachnoid Hive Queen reasserts herself after the near extinction of her species in the human-bugger war); and the indi genous ``piggies,'' who, after a horrid flaying-alive ceremony, m etamorphose into sapient trees. But the planet is rife with desco lada virus; this mediates the transformation of piggies into tree s, but in humans mutates into a deadly, ineradicable plague. Rath er than permit the descolada to spread, Earth sends a battle flee t to blast Lusitania. Once again, Ender Wiggin and his sister Val entine will play prominent roles in the search for a solution--th e upshot being, thanks to time travel, a ``rescolada'' rescue-vir us that promises to turn a potential plague into a fabulous biolo gical tool. Splendid plotting--if you can stomach Card's repulsiv e transcendence-through-torture notions; and, what with the frequ ent, irksome, and interminable theological/philosophical interlud es, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Card's true purpose h ere is to preach rather than simply tell a story. -- Copyright ?1 991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refe rs to the audio_download edition. From AudioFile Book Three in t he popular Ender Quartet is meticulously directed by Stefan Rudni cki and Gabrielle de Cuir, who also narrate the novel, along with an ensemble cast. XENOCIDE follows the lives of the humans, a ra ce called the pequeninos, and the insectoid Hive Queen on Lusitan ia as the Starways Congress prepares to wipe out all life on that planet. Each chapter is introduced with an eerie dialogue betwee n the Hive Queen (de Cuir) and a sentient tree (Scott Brick). A d ifferent narrator reads each of the various subplots. At the clos e of this audiobook, author Card speaks for four minutes about th e series and its audio adaptation. S.E.S. ? AudioFile 2006, Portl and, Maine-- Copyright ? AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text r efers to the audio_download edition. From Library Journal As an armed fleet from Starways Congress hurtles through space toward t he rebellious planet Lusitania, Ender Wiggin, his sis, TOR, 1992, 3, Titan Books, 01/28/2011. Paperback. Used; Good. **WE SHIP WITHIN 24 HRS FROM LONDON, UK, 98% OF OUR ORDERS ARE RECEIVED WITHIN 7-10 DAYS. We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books., Titan Books, 01/28/2011, 2.5<
