Author Orson Scott Card has been to the set of Ender's Game, and some of the revelations from his detailed notes about the visit might surprise you.

Card writes that writer/director Gavin Hood's movie version of Ender's Game isn't just the book brought to life. In fact, the movie seems to be taking on a life of its own.

Of one scene, he wrote:

The scene does not come from the book – very few of the scenes in this movie do – so it was amusing when others asked me how it felt to have my book brought to life. My book was already alive in the mind of every reader. This is writer-director Gavin Hood's movie, so they were his words, and it was his scene.

That doesn't mean Card disapproves of the movie, though. On the contrary, he described both the sets and the actors (particularly Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford) in glowing terms.

This is Card's appraisal of the actor behind the movie version of Ender:

Butterfield is smart. That really helps when he's supposed to bring off a preternaturally intelligent character. Actors can easily play dumb, but I've never seen an actor bring off a character that is smarter than he is. He's convincing as Ender Wiggin, so if the movie doesn't work, it won't be Butterfield's fault.

When it was first announced that an Ender's Game film was finally going forward, fans were worried that it wouldn't do justice to the book. From what Card says, we can stop worrying out and start counting down to the movie's November 1, 2013 release date.

[geektyrant.]

Two new photos from the set of Ender's Game have hit the web, courtesy of the movie's official production blog.

The new images show Ender's Monitor implant and his bedroom back on Earth -- which looks, appropriately, like any future kid's room.

The producers had this to say about the Monitor:

Implanted tracking and monitoring chips are no longer a science fiction concept. They exist now. And one day, they may be as advanced as the monitor implanted into Ender, which allows Colonel Graff to "see through his eyes" and know: HE'S THE ONE.

And Ender's Game news blog Ender's Ansible has dissected the bedroom photo item by item, including links to places to buy most of Ender's cool stuff.

Ender's Game is due out November 1, 2013.

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Summit Entertainment has pushed back the release date for the movie adaptation of Orson Scott's classic sci-fi novel Ender's Game from March 15, 2013, to November 1, 2013.

The delay isn't necessarily bad news for Ender's Game, as the new date was picked to land it closer to the holidays, in a slot with less competition from other genre flicks.

Filming on Ender's Game continues apace. The most recent update to the official set blog included a photo of Ender (Asa Butterfield) and the other Battle School kids undergoing real-life zero gravity training.

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The official Ender's Game movie blog has released a second set photo (the first was a look at Asa Butterfield's "Ender" chair) that gives us our first glimpse inside the orbital Battle School.

"If you think regular school is tough, try it in a rotating space station. And by the way, do you have a hall pass for hall number 0058? Because if you don't, you could end up scrubbing the showers," the film's producers write.

Ender's Game is directed by Gavin Hood and stars Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Abigail Breslin and Hailee Steinfeld. It's due out March 15th, 2013.

[endersworld]

The official on-set blog for the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game has debuted with a photo of the chair reserved for young Ender Wiggin himself, Asa Butterfield (Hugo).

According to the producers, Butterfield praised Card's novel as an amazing book from "the late 1900s," which, while both technically true and adorable, makes me feel even older than the realization that Ender's Game was first released 27 years ago.

[endersgameblog]

An Aiken, SC middle school teacher won't face criminal charges after reading to his class from Orson Scott Card's classic sci-fi novel Ender's Game, which a 14-year-old student's mother described as "pornographic" in complaints to the school district and police.

Investigations by police and the district apparently didn't turn up any pornographic material in Ender's Game, but the teacher may still have violated district policy by reading from three books -- the Card novel, Agatha Christie's Curtain and Victoria McKernan's The Devil's Paintbrush, a young adult novel set in the Old West -- without getting them approved by the administration.

"One of the things that teachers are supposed to do is preview material for appropriateness for any questions that may come up," said Joe Shealy, the district's academic officer for middle schools.

School district officials said they expect the issue to be resolved quickly, and they're also looking into whether the school's staff "followed district policy in a timely manner" in their handling of the complaint.

An earlier report suggested that the teacher may have been suspended for reading pornographic material from the Internet in class, but neither the school district nor Aiken police have confirmed that accusation.

[aikenstandard]

An Aiken, SC middle school teacher is under investigation for allegedly reading a book containing "pornographic material" to his class. The school district is currently reviewing three books the teacher used in class, including Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game.

The titles of the other two books haven't been released, so it's not yet clear which of them included a scene deemed pornographic in a report filed by a 14-year-old student and a concerned mother. The district said in a statement that two of the books have already been found to include "swear words" and age-inappropriate "subject matter terminology."

The student's mother has also reported the incident to local police, and the district is now working with the department to determine whether the teacher may have violated the law.

Maybe one of the two as-yet-unnamed books contains some seriously adult material, but it's hard to imagine that Ender's Game, a parable about the horrors of war that appears on the American Library Association's list of Best Books for Young Adults, would be at the center of a porn scandal.

[aikenstandard]