The Po Show

Enabler

Well, I have done it. I have truly done it, and I'm HAPPY I've done it.

I have turned my son into a science fiction geek. FINALLY!

A few months ago, I started begging Matthew to try reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I loved the whole series (up to approximately seven thousand books at this point, including the latest, Ender in Exile, which just came out a couple of weeks ago and which I am currently devouring. I bought it in hardback. I HATE hardback, but I am willing to tough it out because there was no conceivable way I could wait till this came out in paperback). The timeline of the books is very staggered, with the second book taking place 3000 years after the events of the first, and one offshoot sub-series taking place at the same time as the first book, from a different character's perspective.

Anyway, the original book has been promoted as Young Adult in recent years, and I knew, absolutely knew, that Matthew would love it. I mean, how could he not get into the concept of children playing a video game that simulated space warfare (or so they thought), or these kids learning to play physical war games in rooms with zero gravity? He was skeptical, but after much cajoling, he finally started it. It took him about 30 pages (as I knew it would, as the story takes a bit to ramp up), and then he couldn't put it down. He read the whole book in 2 days, and wanted the next. Woohoo!! Score one for Mommy!

I re-read Ender's Game myself after he finished (it's been forever since I'd last read it) and realized by page 5 that there's quite a bit of swearing. Oh. Well. No biggie, in the grand scheme of things. I started to worry, however, about what would happen if he wanted to read the later books in the series. They are far less, shall we say, Young Adult. There are a lot of significant plot points like illegitimacy and celibacy and folks hooking up. In other words, talk about sex. I guess I didn't have to worry about it, since I think that all breezed over his head. At least he never asked about it, or even brought those issues up. Mostly he wanted to talk about the concept of sub-lightspeed travel and the implications for those who would travel in this fashion, and what would happen if a way was found to travel faster than the speed of light. He was fascinated by the idea of an alien construct that functioned like a supercomputer with access to all digital information in the universe. He used the phrase "defy the laws of physics" more times than I can count :).

Now he's on the fourth book (as they were chronologically written), the last book in that arm of the series. It is a wonderful thing, to get to talk about these books with my son. If it enables him to talk to me without expounding upon computer components, the smallest details of whatever video game he's playing, or the plot points of Cartoon Network shows, I'm a happy camper.