Speaker for the Dead

What's your favorite fiction book?

Speaker for the Dead.

It's a part of the Ender's Game series.

Yes.

So while not exactly time dilation, definitely a cool concept.

Shane Immons mentioned Speaker for the Dead, classic book, sequel to Ender's Game, and yes, time dilation plays a significant role in that book as well.

Orson Scott Card is also one of those authors in science fiction that has been extremely influential and whose work has definitely stood the test of time as far as it still being readily consumed today and as far as that influence permeating the modern zeitgeist.

And finally, James Donahoe mentions a Superman issue where Superman is able to witness the explosion of his home planet.

Yeah.

And I read the first two, like, particularly Speaker for the Dead, or Speaker of the Dead.

I love Speaker for the Dead.

Yeah.

I'm like, "This is a great book," and I feel like this is a pretty progressive book.

... not like you can never get to that point where you're like, "Okay, I'm, I'm done." Um-

Right

... you know, I, like, Speaker for the Dead is one of my absolute favorite books.

That emotional devastation is the entire point of the narrative.

It is a profound moral tragedy that serves as the necessary foundation for the sequel, Speaker for the Dead.

It's the difference between watching a building collapse from a mile away and being trapped inside the building while it comes down.

Precisely.

The Polygon community context actually adds another layer of audience expectation here.

We have a commenter named Pllert.

Pllert says they actually enjoy the Ready Player One movie despite the differences, but they lament the sequel, Ready Player Two, which they think isn't good at all.

Yeah, sequels are tricky.

I would just note that on the sort of Questions about how religion generally, but also how even the Catholic Church specifically, would view a non-human intelligence, mostly aliens rather than AI, have also been litigated pretty heavily in science fiction, particularly books like The Sparrow.

But you can look at something like Speaker for the Dead, the follow-up to Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

That is one of my favorite novels.

It's more about Mormon missionaries, but they're That book is a big question about what religions and humans do when they encounter an intelligence that is clearly conscious and intelligent, but not ours, and meaningfully different in ways that are hard for us to understand.