SDS 126: Ender’s Game

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the SuperDataScience podcast. And today I wanted to share something different to what we normally talk about. It won’t be about data science or analytics. This is about something that I experienced in my life just recently, and I thought it was a really, really cool thing and I wanted to share it with you.

Just recently I read the book “Ender’s Game”. In fact, I didn’t actually read the book, I listened to the audio book “Ender’s Game”, and it was amazing. It was a fantastic audio book. Actually quite a few people recommended it to me, and finally I got to listening to it. It’s not a short book, it’s 14 hours long, but it’s so worth it. And I haven’t read a fiction book in many years. In probably almost a decade now. I’ve been most of the time focusing on self improvement books, books about productivity, and getting things done, and stuff like that.

And finally I decided to listen to an audio book and this was a fantastic choice. In short, I wanted to describe to you, in case you are looking for an audio book, or a book, or a science fiction book to read, this is a fantastic option. And it will really get you into a whole different space. And it’s such a great experience. So as data scientists, we can really get carried away with learning and improving ourselves all the time, learning programming and things like that. But I think it’s important to also have time for your mind to rest, to drift away, into some completely different universe, and this book accomplishes that in a fantastic manner.

“Ender’s Game is a book which was written by Orson Scott Card. It’s called “Ender’s Game” because the main character is Ender, it’s about a boy as he’s growing up, but he’s a genius boy and he goes to this battle school in space where they teach him how to fight in zero gravity. So I won’t give away all the details, but it’s set in the future where there’s this conflict between humanity and this other race which are invading our planet and humans are faced with this challenge to come up with the best and brightest commanders in order to fight in this invasion.

And so fantastic story. It’s actually been adapted into a movie. I haven’t seen the movie, “Ender’s Game”. I heard from some people it’s good, some people it’s not that good, but the book is definitely fantastic, and I would recommend reading the book even before you see the movie, or if you have seen the movie, then still read the book. From this book, actually, also in addition to just floating away into space, into a different reality where you have something completely out of this world, something that will allow your mind to rest and to not always be crunching numbers in your head, in addition to that, I personally learned a lot of things from this book that are useful to me.

And my mom always said that reading books that are not just about self-help and productivity, they help you experience life many times, through other people’s views, through the author’s views, through other people’s experience, to live through experiences that you would have never lived through in a lifetime, live through that many experiences, and that variety of experiences.

And in this book, I actually really felt that. And personally, I learned a couple of things, such as interpersonal relations, this book is fantastic in that sense. It shows the psychology behind how people interact, and why they do certain things, and how some people have different agendas, and how they clash, and how all of that works out. Then I learned about ambition and dedication and commitment to a cause, and not stopping, and keeping moving forward.

I definitely learned a few things about leadership. Because there’s these battles, and this invasion, there is some military or large military component to the book, and therefore they talk a lot about leadership there as well. So I picked up quite a few things from there, and I think those are going to be useful. You can talk about things. There’s a difference between reading a book on leadership, like specifically do this, do that, and do this. As opposed to reading a novel where leadership is incorporated, you actually see it in action. In a way, it’s more practical.

So highly recommend to check out this book, whether you look at the printed version or the audio book. And I’ve already started downloading the next book by the same author, which is the second book in Ender’s series, and it’s called “Speaker for the Dead.” And apparently, it’s as good as this one. In fact, some people debate which one is better. “Ender’s Game” received two prizes, it received the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award, which are two very prestigious prizes for science fiction books, very renown prizes. And the next book, “Speaker for the Dead,” also received the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. So if you have already read “Ender’s Game”, then check out “Speaker for the Dead.” It is at least as good as “Ender’s Game.”

So there we go. Hope this will give you some inspiration to pick up a science fiction book, whether it’s “Ender’s Game” or “Speaker for the Dead” or maybe some other book. But going through this experience, I really wanted to share it with you that there is value in spending 14 hours (well, I mostly did it while driving) to actually listen to an audio book and get your mind off things and also learned a few things from other people’s experiences and the author’s viewpoints on life.

Hope you enjoyed this, and I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.