EG really isn't about alien culture so much as how humanity reacts to the idea of alien culture; the aliens barely appear in the book.
I agree, and I think that's why I liked Ender's Game more. It's always refreshing to me, to see an author take the premise that all science fiction is about our understanding of humanity and run with it (yay Ray Bradbury!). I remember thinking that Ender's Game was just straight-up better written than Speaker for the Dead -- that Speaker was interesting as a representative of the genre but Ender's Game was interesting independent of genre -- but it's been a few years, so I don't have evidence for that.
My perspective on high school students is rather warped, so I don't know if your students will've read it before. But I doubt your students will have read it critically before, and I'm all about having students examine closely things they've taken for granted.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-03-06 01:43 pm (UTC)I agree, and I think that's why I liked Ender's Game more. It's always refreshing to me, to see an author take the premise that all science fiction is about our understanding of humanity and run with it (yay Ray Bradbury!). I remember thinking that Ender's Game was just straight-up better written than Speaker for the Dead -- that Speaker was interesting as a representative of the genre but Ender's Game was interesting independent of genre -- but it's been a few years, so I don't have evidence for that.
My perspective on high school students is rather warped, so I don't know if your students will've read it before. But I doubt your students will have read it critically before, and I'm all about having students examine closely things they've taken for granted.