Philotic Web

There was something I didn't understand: How did the buggers NOT know that human beings were sentient? When the buggers first attacked earth (BEFORE their colonizing mission), didn't they notice cities and buildings, not to mention satelites and space stations surrounding Earth, and the human presence on the moon, and technology throughout the solar system, etc? Did this not indicate to them the existance of thinking beings?

The buggers had an entirely different definition of sentience before they came to understand humanity. Their workers lived in cities, piloted spaceships, and produced technology, but they were mindless drones. They assumed that humans were the same. It wasn't until after the second invasion that they realized that each and every human has their own mind and consciousness.

We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams. How were we to know?

*SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD SPOILERS*

Also consider how shocking it was for the piggies that humans didn't understand that the trees of Lusitania were sentient

*END SPOILERS*

That's the thing about truly alien lifeforms trying to understand each other. What's so fundamental and obvious for one race may be practically beyond the imagination of another.

That helps clear it up for me. Except.... If the buggers thought they were just killing mindless drones, didn't they assume the human "drones" were connected with sentient beings as the bugger workers were ? But their intent was NOT to be hostile?

Whether or not they assumed that there were human "queens" somewhere is unclear. Either way, killing drones is like clipping toenails to them. That's why it was so easy for Mazer to kill the queen in the second invasion once he realized what it was. From the buggers' perspective the whole war was like a harmless contest and then suddenly the humans go and actually kill one of them! It's like your opponent pulling out a gun and shooting you during a game of chess and suddenly you realize that those inanimate chess pieces you've been "killing" represent living people.

I think the whole point is to try to put yourself into someone elses shoes. The meaning of it can be explained in cultural differences as well. Take as an example the Hijab. Not to long ago a young female was stabed by her mother because she decided to go out and have some teenage fun without her hijab. The mother wanted to end her dauthers life as a mercy killing. This makes no sense to people living in North America and mostlikely to most parts of the world, but for a very small group of muslim followers the mother did the right thing. I believe that OSC is trying to but us in a situation that we need to try and put ourselves into the buggers shoes (if they do infact wear any... lol) and try to imagine how they perceive us.

I hope that makes sense...

I have a fuzzy recollection that ender or hive queen both indicated that the hive queen thought that they were killing drones and not queens, which would mean they weren't "killing" anything.


I'm not sure if there's any indication in any of the books that the buggers wore shoes thou...

As I recall, toward the end of the series, the Hive Queen that Ender was holding even comes out and says that the Hive Queens themselves were mindless drones, too, that there was only ever one Formic aiua, one intelligence. It's kind of a big moment for Ender since he realizes that even his Xenocide wasn't actually a xenocide, he basically just scattered some philotes. Unless I completely misread that conversation.

As I recall, toward the end of the series, the Hive Queen that Ender was holding even comes out and says that the Hive Queens themselves were mindless drones, too, that there was only ever one Formic aiua, one intelligence. It's kind of a big moment for Ender since he realizes that even his Xenocide wasn't actually a xenocide, he basically just scattered some philotes. Unless I completely misread that conversation.

Simply put, you only slightly misread the conversation. The queens body is the mindless drone, yes, in a sense, but there are many potential queen aiuas. From what I remember, the queen explains to Ender that when a new queen is born, the queen(s) form a web, much like the one that was used to create Jane, to call a queen aiua.
But to call a queen body a drone amounts to calling a human body a drone because they are both controlled by aiuas from outside.

As I recall, toward the end of the series, the Hive Queen that Ender was holding even comes out and says that the Hive Queens themselves were mindless drones, too, that there was only ever one Formic aiua, one intelligence. It's kind of a big moment for Ender since he realizes that even his Xenocide wasn't actually a xenocide, he basically just scattered some philotes. Unless I completely misread that conversation.

I think you might have... As i recall, the Queens are the powerful aiuas, like Jane, that can take control over many different bodies at once. Just like Jane has millions of levels of attention, and can simultaneously focus on many things, so does the Queen aiua focus on the lives of every single one of the workers. However, killing the Queen's body still gets rid of that aiua, so killing the queen is still murder, although you're right that there never was a Xenocide. I think that's even specifically stated in Children of the Mind, that the destruction of Lusitania would have been the first Xenocide, since a Hive Queen survived from Ender's 'Xenocide'.

On a similar note, I remember reading somewhere in the books that each one of the workers had to be subdued by the Queen... does anyone know if this means that each individual worker had it's own aiua? I've wondered about that for a while.

Good read,thanks.

The buggers had an entirely different definition of sentience before they came to understand humanity. Their workers lived in cities, piloted spaceships, and produced technology, but they were mindless drones. They assumed that humans were the same. It wasn't until after the second invasion that they realized that each and every human has their own mind and consciousness.

The buggers attacked Earth directly in the first invasion couldn't it have occurred to them that maybe there might have been an equivalent of a hive queen on Earth or were they so stupid as to assume that Earth was a colony and the hive queen controlling it would be elsewhere?

The buggers attacked Earth directly in the first invasion couldn't it have occurred to them that maybe there might have been an equivalent of a hive queen on Earth or were they so stupid as to assume that Earth was a colony and the hive queen controlling it would be elsewhere?

In bugger societies, anyone doing things out and about is a worker. Queens are only physically present for colonization or breeding. So they see people bustling about like ants and think "Hey, workers!" So they kill a few to say hi, and probably to say "I want this bit of land, k?"

Us slaughtering them back meant, "No. I like that bit of land."

Good point there also was a cultural bias on the part of The buggers to assume that all hive queens would be on the homeworld thank you