47 - Influential Book #1: Ender's Shadow
The first of a new series - bringing a bit more introspection to books I've read in the past.
You might not read much sci-fi, but there's a classic book written by Orson Scott Card called Ender's Game - a story of humanity recruiting the world's genius children to go to Battle School - a custom-built space station orbiting the Earth - to teach them how to become tactical and strategic geniuses in order to prepare for the onslaught of an alien threat - the Formics (i.e. aliens). They would simulate battles against other children in zero-gravity rooms (is this ethical?), shooting each other with freeze guns and organising in 'armies' that would work together to defeat the other team.
The book meant a lot to me when I read it - I was young, around the age that Ender was going through these events, and loved hearing about battles and strategies etc. It made me want to go to Battle School - into space - to learn about war, strategy etc. - keep that Art of War alive! However, it was a much deeper book than I realised at the start - reading through the psychological struggles of Ender (no spoilers) was something I wasn't really prepared for. The subsequent books are interesting in terms of the concepts they cover (alien life, faster than light communication, AI) but the story is told a lot worse.
Speaker for the Dead, the second book, centred around the fascinating concept of essentially a eulogist/biographer - someone who would try and work out exactly who you were before you died, and then tell your story after you died. Warts and all.
However, I then read Ender's Shadow (coincidentally available at the library when the third book in the original series was not) and fell in love with it. It tells the story of Bean, the runt of Ender's 'army' who has the biggest brain of them all (due to a genetic defect that turned off the limiters for his growth and his intelligence).
Bean is tasked with coming up with weird, wacky, wonderful ideas to help Ender fight the battles at Battle School - and he does. He uses different props like ropes, analyses the key assumptions underpinning battles, and finds new ways to exploit them. In the face of adversity, Bean comes up with ideas on the fringe, thinking about things from first principles and giving Ender ideas about how to win.
This story was something I related to a lot more. I definitely wasn't an orphan kid from Rotterdam who had to fight for scraps of food to survive (at least, I don't think so?) - but I vibed with the physical similarities, being a short, small kid that was real good at math due to intensive tutoring.
But at the same time, I wanted to be creative and come up with fun, exciting, new ideas. I didn't care if they were massive, audacious goals. I just wanted to be known to have weird, new, different ideas that no-one else was thinking about. I used to get bored with ideas as soon as I knew someone else had had the same thought (and sometimes that still happens today!).
I remember asking my parents whether I could be an author or a writer one day - I filled notebooks with ideas about extensive, vast story ideas (mainly fanfiction), thinking they could be one book each. What a library I would write!
These ideas were soon dashed (memorably, in Year 12, an editor came to school and essentially said 'just don't get into writing. being an author sucks'. I remember my heart literally sinking because I was supposed to use his evidence against Mum about why I should be a writer. Ugh), but I remember wanting to keep that creativity alive somehow. As you read previously in Performing, I tried different ways to find creative things to do in my life.
There was a technique I learned in uni - Reverse Brainstorming - that I absolutely adored because it helped me bring this creativity to other areas of my life. The key to the concept is: come up with dumb ideas. As many as possible. Reverse what you're trying to do, and then see if that helps you build up other ideas! This meant I would come up with really stupid ideas, but usually they had some nugget of insight that really helped - and other people thought it was smart.
I continue doing this to this day. It's the same technique when people can't choose what to eat - suggest something 'dumb' like Maccas or KFC and soon they can find something better!
A blank canvas can be paralyzing - sometimes, coming up with things that are dumb can help get those creative juices flowing. Bean does this in the book, trying new ideas, iterating them, and finding great solutions to problems. That's what I want to do :)
I keep coming up with silly ideas in things like game design or writing. Remember this? This was one of my favourite things to do because it's just...ideas. Thinking. I need to do more of it.
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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The Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card - if you want to read about future geopolitical warfare, tactics and strategy on Earth, and how nationalism can break the world, this series is fantastic. I especially loved a discussion in the last book of this series around what it means to live - one must weave their strand into the unbroken chain of human life - be it through a legacy, or children, or the effect you have on the world. It's a really good quartet to read through!
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The Element by Ken Robinson - this is the same guy from this TED talk who talks about how education is killing creativity. In this book, he writes about finding your 'Element', which boils down to 'introspect about your entire life and try to find when you were happy or things you naturally gravitated to'. I think it's a good read, even if the overall message is simple, because it's a simple idea that not everyone takes on board.
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Billion Dollar Startup Ideas - INSPO. Ideas and ideas and ideas about different things one could do for startups. Ideas are cheap, but execution is killer; I just like thinking and seeing new ideas. It's another email newsletter - one idea per day - and very worth the absolutely free cost you have to pay to read it.
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The Strategy Bridge - I don't read this often, but I think it's relevant to today's post. It's a blog on military strategy, written by US army officers. A lot of the posts are a bit...too US-centric, but it's fascinating to read about how they think about threats, and decisions and the security theatre of it all.
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Product Hunt - a list of newly launched startups or projects that I like to visit from time to time. It's a really nice community, and I've found a lot of little tools like this Avatar Maker for PowerPoint packs, or Notion, a personal notes manager that has recently taken off!