Ender's Game

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Ender's Game
1985 first edition (hardcover)
AuthorOrson Scott Card
Cover artistJohn Harris
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SeriesEnder's Game series
GenreScience fiction novel
PublisherTor Books
Publication date
1985
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages357 pp
ISBNISBN 0-312-93208-1 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Followed bySpeaker for the Dead (sequel)
Ender's Shadow (Parallel novel) 

Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card.[1] In a future where mankind has barely survived two invasions by the "buggers", an insectoid alien race, the world's most talented children, including the extraordinary Ender Wiggin, are taken into "Battle School" at a very young age to supply commanders for the expected Third Invasion.

The book originated as a science fiction novelette in Analog magazine (1977),[2] and Card later expanded the novel into the Ender's Game series, dealing with the long-term results of the war.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler Andrew Wiggin (Ender) is a brilliant six-year-old boy, born a third child into a United States that only permits families two children each. His very existence requires permission from the government. He has been closely watched for years through a monitor on the back of his neck. The book opens with its removal. As a Third and as an exceptionally smart student, he invites scorn from the children surrounding him. At the end of the school day, the bullies of the school begin teasing and mildly attacking him for the loss of his monitor. In response and to defend himself, Ender beats the ringleader, Stilson, until he could no longer get up. He then continues to brutally assault Stilson, kicking him in the ribs as hard as he can, to end not just that fight, but all future fights with the bully and his gang. Unknown to Ender, Stilson dies as a result of the beating.

When Ender returns to his home, the reader meets Ender's older brother Peter and older sister Valentine. Both Peter and Valentine are very intelligent, like their younger brother Ender, but Peter is evidently cruel and sadistic, while Valentine's temperament is nurturing and sweet. The next morning, members of the International Fleet, or IF, arrive at Ender's home to ask him why he attacked Stilson. By responding that he did so to prevent Stilson from ever approaching him again, instead of saying that he attacked him for revenge, Ender passes the last test. The IF offers him a place at the Battle School, a space station where children are trained for military command. Colonel Hyrum Graff, the leader of the Battle School, believes that Ender is the last hope for the survival of mankind against the alien Buggers. He reluctantly accepts.

From the moment Ender meets the other children, Colonel Graff begins to isolate him through favoritism, inviting jealousy and dislike of Ender from the other students. This is a strategy that will be employed throughout the entire book, forcing Ender to deal with his problems alone instead of relying on others. It also makes him work hard to make friends and stay ahead of his enemies. Ender is psychologically compelled to perform flawlessly in all that he does, proving Colonel Graff correct in his praises, leaving his peers with little to say. Antagonism toward him, however, continues.

Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students. He has just succeeded in making his first real friend, Alai, when he is yanked out of basic training and assigned straight to Salamander Army, under the command of prideful Bonzo Madrid. Battle School revolves (literally) around the Battle Room, where 41-man armies fight in a zero-gravity form of laser tag. Ender, who never got the standard training for these battles, is tutored by Petra Arkanian, but ordered by Bonzo to never fire his weapon in battle. Eventually, though, he defies these orders to save Salamander from certain defeat, earning Bonzo respect for "his" tactical brilliance. Bonzo, however, sees only defiance and trades Ender to Rat Army, whose commander, Rose de Nose, places Ender in Dink Meeker's toon. The elder Dink begins to look after Ender. Meanwhile, Ender's psychological development is monitored by the "Mind Fantasy Game", a complex computer game embedded in the school's computer network, and manipulated to a large extent by Colonel Graff. Later, Colonel Graff asks Ender's beloved sister Valentine to send an encouraging letter to Ender in response to potential psychological issues caused by the very machine designed to monitor them.

Following Ender's removal to battle school, his two siblings Valentine and Peter continue their own lives of genius. Every bit as intelligent as their brother, but of differing temperaments, they begin to integrate themselves into the political discussions on the newsnets (which presaged the modern-day Internet and may have been inspired by Usenet, known by many of its early users as netnews). Starting as anonymous unknowns, they begin to earn respect from the international community by presenting insightful political analysis. Valentine, convinced by her brother to help him, takes the name of Demosthenes; Peter takes the name of Locke. Demosthenes becomes known as a radical leader of the masses, warning against military and political maneuvering of the nations of Earth. Locke takes a much more peaceful view, pacifying the enemy while still taking preparations against him. Peter plans to play the two users against each other to help preserve peace and unity, while furthering his position to achieve a point of power in world politics.

Ender is promoted to command of his own army years earlier than usual, setting him up for resentment from his peers and pushing his abilities to the limit (intentionally). He is given command of the re-established Dragon Army, which had never won a third of its battles and was disbanded. Though dealing with fresh recruits, including the precocious Bean who is even smaller (and much smarter) than Ender himself was, Ender trains Dragon Army in unorthodox ways: he abolishes school-standard formations as they take a long time to learn and are highly inflexible, divides his army into five toons of eight instead of four of ten, and encourages each toon to act independently and take initiative during combat. Despite having only 3 weeks to train instead of the standard 3 months before their first battle, Dragon Army completely annihilates their first opponent with almost no casualties. After that, Dragon Army never loses a battle, despite engagements that are (deliberately) weighted against them.

Envious of Ender's ability, Bonzo Madrid ambushes Ender in a shower room. Ender once again decides to end the conflict once and for all, winning the fight and unknowingly kills Bonzo. Just hours later Dragon Army is called into battle against two opposing and allied armies. Ender, exasperated with the manipulation and the burdens the teachers place on him, gives up command and turns the rules of the Battle Room on its head: the winning condition of the battle is technically not to wipe out the enemy but rather for five soldiers to activate the opposing team's entry door (the "Gate"). Ender realizes he doesn't necessarily need to accomplish the former to win by the latter; he allows his army to be slaughtered in order to sneak 5 soldiers in to the gate, thus winning the battle. He is then promoted to Command School by the teachers, who do not realize that Ender has given up on the game, but first is allowed to go home on a short leave. (It is revealed through epistolary conversation that the same shuttle is taking Bonzo Madrid home) Not wanting to see his family, he is kept isolated from everyone at a small lake in the woods. He builds a raft and spends his time alone in contemplation and self-resentment. The IF, worried that he is no longer motivated to continue his studies, employs his sister Valentine once again to motivate him. She has a long talk, during which Ender admits that he has come to hate himself, because in order to win his battles, he has to know his enemy well enough to love them—and, thus, is constantly destroying those he loves. Valentine, during her visit, reminds him why he is fighting: to preserve the human race, with its connections like his to her.

After these three months spent in self-contemplation, Ender returns and is promoted to Command School, almost six years early, to learn to combat the Buggers in space instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He is taught by Mazer Rackham, the genius behind the previous human success against the buggers, and the first man to realize that the Formics are actually a hive mind (see group mind (science fiction)). There has been no way of communicating with the buggers, and they have shown no inclination to spare humanity their wrath; thus, plans for an invasion have been underway, and it is the command of this invasion that Ender is being trained for. Fortunately, he will be augmented by a cadre of his best friends (and the best commanders) from Battle School, including Alai, Petra, Dink, and Bean; Ender assigns them to individual flights or squadrons of ships while he remains in overall charge.

Once the team has meshed, the training begins, this time against Mazer Rackham. Ender and his "dream team" begin to fight ever-more-challenging battles, in which his team must frequently fight with outmoded hardware, and the enemy frequently outnumbers them and quickly learns to adapt to Ender's tactics—even the ones that won yesterday's battle. Ender also begins to be plagued by mysterious nightmares which interrupt his sleep. Fatigued in mind and body, his team slowly succumbing to exhaustion, Ender begins to lose hope.

In Ender's final exam before graduating from Command School, he and his team find themselves in possession of a small fleet, approaching a planet that is literally swarming with Bugger ships, outnumbering his own force a thousand to one. Ender, by now, has had enough of being manipulated by the adults, and decides to flunk out of Command School—a true victory. He duplicates his final battle at Battle School and uses the Molecular Disruption Device to destroy the planet around which the Bugger fleet is orbiting (taking the surrounding fleet with it), demonstrating that he is far too ruthless to be trusted with command of an actual battle fleet.

However, when the simulation ends, Ender discovers that the "audience" watching his "final exam" is now in jubilation and delight. Rackham and Graff tell Ender that he has not been playing a game, and had never played against Rackham, but instead has been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; this task was made possible via the ansible, a form of instantaneous communication making use of Philotic Energy. This technology was discovered following the Second Bugger War, as the method of telepathic communication the Buggers used was reverse engineered. He has just commanded the fleet attacking the Buggers' home planet, and destroyed the entire race once and for all.

When Ender learns that he has been playing a game with real peoples' lives, he lapses into four days of exhausted depression, completely void of reality, dozing in and out. Feeling the full weight of the deaths he has caused, made heavier by his apparent love and respect of the Buggers, developed over his interaction with them, he refuses to respond to anyone for a time, until conflict breaks out at the command center. Immediately after the end of the Bugger War, the Hegemony falls apart and war breaks out on Earth in a dispute about who gains control of Ender. The battle lasts all of five days, but the impact is clear: Ender cannot return to Earth because he would simply be used as a tool of the dominant government on Earth, eventually led by Ender's older brother, Peter Wiggin. Fearing for Ender, his sister Valentine Wiggin blackmails Peter into leaving Ender in peace, allowing him to be sent out on one of the first colonization ships as the governor of the new colony on a former bugger planet.

Ender's fame quickly wears off, but is replaced with the respect of the colonists traveling with him. Only years later, after the colony is built and Valentine has written a seven-book history of the Formic (bugger) Wars, does Ender discover something that the buggers left for him: by using their alien telepathic communication, they were able to extract images from Ender's brain, which were the source of his nightmares during his time at the Command School. Using those images, the buggers built a large scene directly taken from the Mind Fantasy Game at the Battle School. Following the steps from the Mind Game, Ender discovers the surprise the buggers left for him: their last surviving queen, in pupal form. The pupa is able to communicate telepathically with Ender, who learns that the Buggers' previous killings of humans had rested on the mistaken notion that humans were not sentient, and once the Buggers realized their mistake, they resolved not to attack humans again. Thus, the invasion and extermination of the Buggers was not necessary to defend Earth.

Ender writes about the buggers from their perspective. He calls the book The Hive-Queen and signs it 'Speaker for the Dead'. After the book becomes famous, Peter Wiggin realizes that Ender wrote it and asks Ender to write a similar book presenting Peter's perspective. The result is The Hegemon. These two books become the seeds of a new semi-religion and profession (speaking for the dead).

Eventually, Ender takes the cocoon and leaves the colony with his sister, seeking a planet suitable for the redevelopment of the bugger race. Template:Endspoiler

Creation and inspiration

The original novelette is merely a snapshot of Ender's experiences in Battle School and Command School; the full-length novel is a more encompassing work dealing with Ender's life before, during, and after the war, and it also contains some chapters describing the political exploits of his older siblings back on Earth. In a commentary track for the 20th Anniversary audiobook edition of the novel, Card stated that Ender's Game was written specifically to establish the character of Ender for his role of the Speaker in Speaker for the Dead, the outline for which he had written before novelizing Ender's Game.

In his 1991 introduction to the novel, Card discussed the influence of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series on the creation of the novelette and novel. Historian Bruce Catton's work on the American Civil War also influenced Card heavily. He also derived the name and basic function of the ansible from Ursula K. Le Guin's works.

Awards and impact

Ender's Game was the winner of the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986[3] and the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985,[4] two notable awards in science fiction. It was reprinted in a slightly revised edition in 1991. The following year, the sequel Speaker for the Dead also won both awards; Card is the only author to have won both awards in consecutive years.[1] The popular musical act Dashboard Confessional released a song titled "Ender Will Save Us All" in homage to the novel. However, the song itself makes no obvious references to the book, other than the title. (Ender is also lead singer Chris Carraba's middle name).

Several schools around the world have adopted Ender's Game as required reading, some for its psychological aspects, others for its science fiction background. Some examples include:

Translations

Character list

Main article: List of characters in the Ender's Game series

Wiggin family

Battle school characters

Film

The latest author-written screenplay was finished and submitted to Warner Brothers by Orson Scott Card in May 2003. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were later signed to write a new script, working closely with Petersen. However, as of December 15, 2005, all previous attempts to write a script had been dropped. Card himself has announced he will be writing a new script not based on any previous one, including his own.

As of December 28, 2006, a movie of Ender's Game has been categorized as "in production". It is being produced by Fresco Pictures in conjunction with Warner Brothers; the movie will be directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and is set to be released no earlier than 2008. No casting will be done until the script is finished. The final film's story line will be a fusion between Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, focusing on the important elements of both. There may also be new elements and/or plots added to the film.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Ender's Game The Book. Fresco Pictures.
  2. ^ Short Stories by Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game. Hatrack.com.
  3. ^ The Hugo Awards, 1986
  4. ^ 1985 Nebula Winners
  5. ^ News South Wales Board of Studies, 'Annotations of Texts Prescribed for the First Time for the Higher School Certificate 2001-2002: Common Content': p3. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/english_textnotes.pdf

References

External links


Preceded by Nebula Award for Best Novel
1985 		Succeeded by
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