Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Have you read The Hunger Games? How do you feel about it?

I'll break the ice and say that I think the first book is the finest in terms of the originality of the series. I like the other two still but this first is in my eyes the finest.

Ritesh the other two are worth reading if you don't mind the sort of repetitive nature of doing the same sort of thing again. (view spoiler)[ There's an expansion of the games in the second one with old victors fighting and the third one is pretty much all battle scene. (hide spoiler)] The third one does end in similarly unsatisfying way like Inheritance.

I've read lots of true war stories. Mostly from the ww2 period... I have to say, Hunger Games is by far the most realistic fiction I've ever read. All three of them.

How do you feel about Katniss? How would you compare Panem with our current world? What would you do if you are in a Hunger Game? Also, has anyone here read Battle Royale (a 1999 novel with similar premise but told from a different perspective)? (I haven't)

I've read all three of them... I loved Mockinjay and Hunger Games... Catching Fire was meh. For the last book: (view spoiler)[ She literally just got rid of all secondary characters. She did not want them alive, lol. (hide spoiler)]

One thing about the entire series. She was TERRIBLE at suspense. You knew exactly what was going to happen like hundreds of pages before it did.

Katniss: I'm still not sure how I feel about her. I feel sorry for her because of the last book... Not saying why, even in spoiler form.
Panem is kinda like our world in that media plays a big part in the government and can influence people to do things they normally wouldn't.
I have not read Battle Royale...

If I was in Hunger Games: I would be dead in a moment. I would be the one who runs to the Cornucopia, grabs a knife and bow and runs for the forest (if there is one). I might survive to the end by hiding, but I'm sure the government would smoke me out eventually. I'd be the far away and trap person who'd just sit back and watch things go the way they do. I'd still probably die in the end, *sigh*. I suck.

I really loved the book. Many of the characters are placed on my shelf of "Characters to Remember". I actually loved the entire series.

Ritesh wrote: "I've read just the first book, and found it to be really good, but I somehow could not get myself to read the next two books, as I knew I'd be disappointed.
If someone could enlighten me differentl..."

I feel the same way. I sped through the first book and although I really enjoyed it, I just couldn't bring myself to start the second book.

I think the author did a great job at capturing the emotional depth of Katniss. She has the aloofness and dissociation that one would have growing up in the shadow of that government.

I loved the way that the general population of the Capitol werent evil, they were just ignorantly living how everyone around them was living and that was "just the way it was done". Also the way that the flaws of the government at 13 were recognized stopped this Young Adult book from simplistically showing one side as all good and one side as all bad - a rare treat in heroic SF. The 1st book was by far the best.

Anyone going to go and see the film? Because I did and it's very, very good as far as adaptations go.

I went to midnight release!
It was pretty dang close to the book, except the whole mockinjay pin part about where she got it from... that was one of the main things I saw...
BESIDES THAT, I thought it was pretty good.
I just didn't like the people they chose for Haymitch or President Snow. I never pictured them like that.

Well I guess everyone pictured people differently. I never pictured them like that at all. Cina in particular. And I never thought of Caesar like that. However the fact that the author helped write the screenplay indicates that her vision mostly made it onto the screen although still slightly skewed by the Director. And the whole mockingjay thing was the only main difference I noted.

I went to see the movie on Saturday. I agree that it was suprising how close the movie was to the book. I liked all of the actors they picked and I think they did a great job on their roles. I thought that other than apperances, the person who played Haymitch nailed his role. I liked the movie a lot so I spent the next day re-reading the second book from the hunger games in anticipation for the next movie! I highly recommend watching the movie for all of those who read and liked the books.

I'm worried about watching the movie because as readers we are participants of the Hunger Games, but if we watch a movie we become the depraved disgusting Capitol audience who watch kids be killed for entertainment! I didnt want to become that person. How did the movie handle the choice of perspective? Did you still feel like a participant?

No I didn't feel like a participant really. I felt that the film makers did a good job of handling the violence side of things and turning it into something to be disliked. As the director said he stayed away from using 3D because he doesn't want to turn us into the Capitol audiences.

Interesting thought: we talk a lot about how horrific the Romans were for holding Gladiator fights and for killing Christians, Jews and slaves in the arena - it was pretty evil though of course. But the average movie goer will see more carnage in films today than the Romans would have. And we perform pretty barbaric acts and call them decent and civilised things to do. So I guess it shows we are just as bloodthirsty at least on the mental level and have no right to take the moral high-ground.

Ok... so I just finished reading the book and was wondering does anyone else think the author is trying to use this story to show how media can control and ruin peoples lives

Jonathan wrote: "No I didn't feel like a participant really. I felt that the film makers did a good job of handling the violence side of things and turning it into something to be disliked. As the director said he ..."

I don't know... there is still a major difference between fictional violence & real-world ones though, and I don't see a lot of ppl today get excited by actual wars & crimes like those in Syria and Libya as well as campus shootings in America :) Actually I'm not sure if statistics have shown that exposure to fictional violence would make ppl more likely to commit violent acts in real life.

@Roderick: I think that's a major point of the story.

Yes there is a difference between fictional and real violence but what I would argue is our love for fictional violence indicates essentially violent natures if you will. People are attracted to fictional things that they enjoy after all.

Jonathan wrote: "Interesting thought: we talk a lot about how horrific the Romans were for holding Gladiator fights and for killing Christians, Jews and slaves in the arena - it was pretty evil though of course. But the average movie goer will see more carnage..."

I agree. I think the whole horror movie obsession isn't much better than the people in those societies. It's the socially acceptable blood lust.

The comments on how the media is used by the government to control the people is well done - not too preachy, but definitely a statement. I especially loved how as the series progressed through to the end of book 3, the author avoided the black and white view of politics - basically both leaders were bad. It's unusual for YA fiction to talk in the "grey" areas, so I enjoyed it also for the rarity !

I just watched the movie on the weekend. They added the game makers in and removed the focus on the viewers, so we watching could identify with either the game makers or the participants - clever removing the risk of us becoming the degenerate Capitol viewers! People watching who hadn't read the book would completely miss Katniss' fierce self preservation and mercenary attitude.

People watching could also miss what was the true dynamic of the early love triangle. I know my Dad found it unsettling that she was pretending to like Peeta who was unhealthily obsessed with her and yet Gayle was back home waiting.

Ritesh wrote: "I've read just the first book, and found it to be really good, but I somehow could not get myself to read the next two books, as I knew I'd be disappointed.
If someone could enlighten me differentl..."

I would suggest reading the other books just to see how everything plays out and if other people haven't spoiled events in the second book for then you are in for a lot of suprises and shockers unfortunatley I like the last book the least and found the events and ending a bit rushed and not as good as I'd hoped. But overall the book series is great and after reading the second book (which is in my opinion almost as good as the first)You will want to read the last one to find out what happens.

Roderick wrote: "Ok... so I just finished reading the book and was wondering does anyone else think the author is trying to use this story to show how media can control and ruin peoples lives"

There were definatley a lot of point the author was trying to make about how the our world was wel on its way to becomming similar to Panem. Im sure the media control thing was a very strong point she was trying to make

My friend is a year 7 teacher and he's using Hunger Games as a way of teaching the kids how much better books are to movies! They read the boom as a class then went to the movie and now he has them all enthused about books!

have read the entire trilogy - i really liked the first two, but i thought the third wasn't as good. books were better than the movie, though. the movie only seemed okay to me - with a budget like the one they must have had, it could have been much more visually stunning. i wasn't sure gary ross was the right director... had he done any sci-fi movies before?

Actually it was a small budget and personally I thought it was well made for a book adaptation. But I probably like the books more since they are the source material.

Jonathan wrote: "Actually it was a small budget and personally I thought it was well made for a book adaptation. But I probably like the books more since they are the source material."

was it really small budget? why? i thought hollywood would pour money into 'a hunger games' movie.

i don't know... i think i've seen better book-to-movie adaptations. maybe my expectations were too high. some of my favorite book-to-movie films are LOTR and 'charlotte's web' (the cartoon version), so i was hoping it'd be at least close to that level.

I thought it was fine as it was and I also am a fan of the Lord of the Rings. But then it could be just me.
Well it only had a small budget because the company that picked it up was a small company. So they couldn't afford to pump the hundreds of millions into it.

I watched the movie yesterday. It's a pretty faithful adaptation imo.

I thought the same thing. Compared to some book to film adaptations it is very very good.

I liked the first book more than I care to admit. I read it in one afternoon. My wife wanted to go out for dinner and I told her to order pizza so I could finish it. The second book took me maybe a week. It was a total rehash of the first one, but at least it was short. The third one took me about a month and a half. It was uneven, but Collins deserves a lot of credit for changing the formula.

My review of the first book is that it was made of 100% recycled elements. Even if Collins didn't know about Battle Royale as she claims, she should still have been familiar with Ender's Game, The Giver, and 1984. The thing Collins did well was rearrange these familiar elements into a fast-paced, tightly plotted action/adventure story. I appreciate the first book for how fun it was to read.

However, any effort at thematic power that Collins made was destroyed by the silliness of her fictional world. If living in Panem is so terrible, why don't people just jump the fence? As far as I can tell, North America is wide open for resettling. Also, how does this world make any economic sense? It's way more lopsided than France under Louis XVI, and there's not even the threat of war with the Prussians to keep the rabble in check. Also, does Collins really believe that people are willing to starve to death if their obedience is rewarded by an annual display of child murder? Sometimes, writers shoot for "the heart of mankind is dark and selfish" and just land on "silly plot convenience" instead. Collins' dystopia is a slap in the face to all credible dystopia-building that other authors have done before her.

All snobbery aside, nothing can take the popcorn charm away from that first book. Good, cheesy fun.

I prefer The Hunger Games to Divergent, but only because of how bad Allegiant was. If that hadn't been the case, The Divergent series would have won the day, because I'm not fond of Suzanne Collins' sparse style of writing.

However, I'm not sure I agree with your comments, Phil. We all know that there have been totalitarian regimes on our own planet that haven't operated too differently from this (East Germany springs to mind). We know that District 12 had an electric fence around it to stop people leaving (even though theirs didn't work) and I'm pretty sure the other districts had them as well. Gale and Katniss talk about leaving, and it's clear others have tried, and many have been caught and paid the penalty. And If I remember correctly, if they aren't caught, their families are made to pay the penalty.
There's also the issue of what's out there. Fear of the unknown is often greater than fear of the known. Is what's beyond the fence better than what's within it? There's also the fact that all these people are raised with the idea of submission, something that can be hard to break, not to mention the peacekeepers who are there to make sure they don't step out of line. Why take the chance of trying to escape when you might be killed or your family tortured by the peacekeepers? Stay, and you might be lucky and survive everything and have a decent life. As President Snow said, hope is a bigger motivator than fear. There is probably, in their minds, more hope of survival within the system than outside it.
Of course, this kind of suppression can only last so long before there's an uprising, which is what we witness in The Hunger Games series.

North Korea...

Indoctrination, brutal oppression, isolation. Not easy to fight a modernized army without modern weapons. Even harder if you believe the supreme leader is akin to a god.

Haven't read this series, but there are historical examples of extreme oppression that dictators have executed successfully. We are indoctrinated with a concept of freedom and dying for freedom is glorified in our culture so this is difficult for Westerners to wrap their minds around I think, but it does happen.

When you look at real-world totalitarian governments, I think it proves just how difficult it is to maintain absolute control over a populace for any amount of time.

East Germany is a great example. Even after the Great Depression, WWII, a brutal occupation by the Soviet army, financial support and trade with other Eastern Bloc countries, and the fear of WWIII as a propaganda tool, the East German government barely lasted 40 years. And yet Collins wants us to believe that the Capital, with none of these advantages, could maintain control for 75!

North Korea is a much better comparison. They are on track to last 75 years, and they are largely economically self-contained. However, they have the advantages of succeeding two wars, an oppressive Japanese occupation, a state-sponsored religion, long-standing trade and financial support from China and Russia, and the fear of South Korea as a propaganda weapon. This is a much better recipe for domination than Panem's and they still would have starved to death by now if it weren't for foreign aid.

Really, though, my biggest complaint is economic. Katniss' district seems to contain less than 10,000 people. Even if the other districts are larger, Panem altogether couldn't be bigger than 10 million people spread across an area almost as big as the continental US. How does a group that small and diffuse manage to produce the raw materials, run the factories, invent the technology, operate the government, and enforce an oppressive police state? Even North Korea has to import most of their technology- that kind of society just doesn't produce quality engineers.

Normally, I don't make a big deal out of the economics in books, but Collins kind of shoves it in your face. Her economic concept is the whole reason the book is called "The Hunger Games." If you take away her economic justification, then there's no story to tell.

As previously stated, though, they don't maintain it. And as you yourself pointed out, it's not without precedent. As for the economic problems, I think we'd need to know more about various aspects of the world before anyone could accurately correlate those aspects. As far as I'm aware, she hasn't gone into huge amounts of detail (which is typical of her writing).

I really enjoyed the Hunger Games, though I have to admit it might be because I was connected to a morphine drip at the time.

In speculating on Panem's military capability and economic structure, we're wandering off into areas Collins didn't bother to explain. (The entire series is light on the, "how did we get here?" exposition.) Most of what we see of the future technology is in the actual staging of the Games itself: silent hovercraft and impressive custom genetic engineering.

Lacking guidance from the author, I suppose were free to make up our own military and economic alternate reality:

I think I agree with those who feel future weapon technology makes future populist revolution improbable. At some point the disparity is too great. Especially when the revolution is geographically isolated. The Capital seems quite willing to nuke a rebellious district (see District 13.)


Phil wrote: "East Germany is a great example...."

Not sure that's a great example. East Germany was a Warsaw Pact satellite nation to the old USSR, and the USSR more or less allowed the revolution on a cost-benefit analysis. Contrast with previous Hungarian (1956) or Czechoslovakian(1968) revolts. If Gorbachev had wanted to expand the effort (and money), I don't think the Red Army would have had military difficulty subduing that revolt (or Lech Walesa's Polish Solidarity.)

Which brings us to the vexing economic questions of Panem...


Lynne wrote: "As for the economic problems, I think we'd need to know more about various aspects of the world before anyone could accurately correlate those aspects. As far as I'm aware, she hasn't gone into huge amounts of detail ..."

Nicely understated. :)

Collins doesn't explain, but it's hard to see how District 11 can supply enough coal to meet the energy needs of the Capital.

We could postulate a post-scarcity economy of robot, nanobot & 3D-printer manufacturing, mining, and farming (and military) that could explain the capital's wealth. The question then would be, why do they need the Districts at all?

I also enjoyed the first book, and I would encourage anyone to give it a try. Just to clarify my point, though, I think the books clumsily mix action/entertainment with attempts at serious reflection.

Classically, dystopia novels were meant to reflect truths about our contemporary world. They did this by mirroring us or extrapolating from current trends. In the case of Hunger Games, it's pretty clear that nothing was extrapolated, so much as cobbled together for mood and plot convenience. I can enjoy it for the sake of mood and plot, I can't take it seriously beyond that.

Ryan wrote: "The first of the trilogy was my favorite. I enjoyed catching fire as well, but the third book I actually did not enjoy too much. I felt that is was rushed because of the demand for it, which made c..."

Goodreads continues to teach me how weird my taste is. I think all the normal people liked Catching Fire and hated Mockingjay, but for me it was the opposite. I thought Catching Fire was a boring repeat of the first book. I thought the characters were really cardboardy, and CF is all about the characters.

Mockingjay, on the other hand, changes the formula. I was interested in seeing where Collins was going thematically and plot-wise. I was interested in seeing what kind of ending she had in mind for her characters. Ultimately, I thought the ending seemed forced and poorly matched to the rest of the plot, but I appreciate Collins for taking some risks.

When I reached the scenes immediately after the explosion in Mockingjay, I at first thought they were hallucinations Katniss was experiencing. It took me a while to realise they were real time events. Her ending of their journey through the Capitol to kill Snow was so abrupt it jolted me out of the story, and it seems to have been the case for the majority of people. It's almost as if she ran out of ideas, or that she had a word count and said, 'Well, I'd better start the resolution now or it's going to run overtime.' It was not an impressive piece of writing.

Lynne wrote: "When I reached the scenes immediately after the explosion in Mockingjay, I at first thought they were hallucinations Katniss was experiencing. It took me a while to realise they were real time even..."

Yeah, it had its faults. The whole ending felt awkwardly stapled on. Still, I'm glad she gave me something new to think.

I thought the first one was the best, because the ideas were fresh and interesting. It made you think, then the next two books did little to build on those first ideas. It mostly just really forced the entire ideas of 'War is never good' and 'No one really wins a fight'. I did like the fact that the hero of the story suffered some kind of trauma as the price for what she had to do, hearkens back to 'A red badge of courage' and the idea that being a hero isn't always so glamorous as we would like it to be.