Ender's Game

Ender's Game

1985 Hardcover edition
Author	Orson Scott Card
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Ender's Game series
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Tor Books
Publication date	1985
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	384 (Paperback Reprint)
ISBN	ISBN 0-8125-5070-6 (Paperback Reprint)
Followed by	Speaker for the Dead Ender's Shadow (Parallel novel)

Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card. In a future (roughly 2160 A.D.) where mankind has barely survived two separate invasions by the insectoid "buggers", 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 coming Third Invasion.

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

Plot summary

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is a child soldier being trained by the International Fleet (IF) as a future military commander. One of the youngest children ever admitted to Battle School, he is thought to be its best and brightest student. Colonel Hyrum Graff, the leader of Battle School, believes that Ender is the last hope for humanity.

The third child in the in his family, he is loved by his older sister, Valentine, and despised by his older brother, Peter. As all children, his thoughts and life have been monitored closely by the IF to determine his military potential. After his monitor was removed, he suffered from an attack at school by some of the resentful children in his class, and after being bullied, he fights back. After knocking the leader to the ground, he continues to kick him until he is unconscious and bleeding, showing cruelty in the hopes that the children will leave him alone in the future. Unknowingly, he had just passed the final test for the IF, as well as caused the bully's death. The following morning, when an IF officer arrives at their home, he is asked to explain his actions. On receiving this explanation, he is offered a place at the battle school, which he reluctantly accepts.

From the moment he is brought together with the other selected children, Commander Graff begins to isolate him, by building the resent of the other children. This is a strategy that will be employed through the whole book, making Ender deal with his problems alone, and making him work hard to make friends and stay ahead of his enemies. To begin, he often succeeds in bringing the group together again by recognizing and employing the right friendships. Later, as the resentment grows from continually being out performed, it is all Ender can do to stay alive.

At the Battle School, a space station where children are taught to be soldiers, due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready Ender for the coming war, he is advanced through his training much faster than the other students. Ender skips basic training and is assigned to Salamander Army, under the command of Bonzo Madrid, where he meets Petra Arkanian — both prominent figures in his life further down the road. After an incident where Ender breaks an order to not fire his weapon during a game, Bonzo trades him to Rat Army. Rat Army's commander, Rose de Nose, places Ender in the toon of Dink Meeker, who takes it upon himself to look after Ender.

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 news nets. Starting as unknown users, they begin to earn anonymous respect from the international community as they present analysis of the current political situation. 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.

Meanwhile, his 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. In the beginning of the game, Ender passes through the obstacles flawlessly, and then comes across a Giant who tells Ender that he must choose between two potions - one that will keep him alive, and another that will kill him, and if Ender succeeded this riddle, he would be taken to "Fairyland". He realizes the game is rigged and instead of taking either of the drinks(countless tries later), he knocks over the drinks and digs though the Giant's eyeball and kills the Giant. After the fall of the Giant, Ender is greeted by a bat, he shows the bat the Giant's eyeball, and it greets him "welcome to Fairyland".Eventually he reaches a kingdom called "The End of the World." He jumps off the edge, and finds a tower. In this area, Ender finds a room with a snake and a mirror. Time after time, Ender kills the snake and sees his brother, Peter's, reflection in the mirror and is, in turn, killed by the game. He tries other methods of exiting, such as trying to pry open the door, or break the window with a brick, but the attemps again fail and he dies.He is stuck at this point, and, combined with the pressures of Battle School, is bordering on a breakdown. When he receives a letter from his sister, Valentine, who Ender had come to believe to be his enemy, he succeeds in surviving the encounter. Instead of killing the snake, he kisses it,accedently, at which point it turns into Valentine, and the mirror reflection shows a dragon and a unicorn, and Ender realizes he will always love his sister and she is always with him. The dragon resents Ender and is army with the same name, whereas the unicorn repsents purity:Valentine. After this, he stops playing the game, saying "I won." Most of this game reflected upon Ender on how much he really is like Peter, or how murderous he can be.

Being a strategic genius, Ender is promoted to Battle School Army Commander years earlier than usual, setting him up for resentment from his peers and pushing his abilities to the limit — both intended consequences. Given a hand-picked list of students, he is given command of the re-established Dragon Army, which had previously been disbanded after having never won even a third of its battles. In the time in which he is Dragon Army's commander, he trains the group so successfully that he never loses a battle, even when the battles are unbalanced to be extremely in favor of the opposing armies.

Envious of Ender's ability, Bonzo Madrid attempts to kill Ender, but ends up being killed by Ender instead. After this, Ender suffers a nervous breakdown and gives up on the Battle School. He is promoted to Command School, but first goes home on a short leave. 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 was 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 perfectly. Knowing his enemy perfectly leads him to love the enemy, and it is in that moment of love that he defeats and destroys them. Valentine, during her visit, reminds him why he is fighting: to preserve the human race, connections like his to her.

After these several months spent in self-contemplation, Ender returns and is promoted to Command School almost six years early to learn to combat the buggers instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He proceeds to be taught by Mazer Rackham, the genius behind the previous human success against the buggers. A long series of simulated battles, each progressively more difficult, without sufficient sleep during the nights due to being plagued by mysterious nightmares, leads him to a simulated final confrontation, where he has to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds by flouting one of the rules of the game.

In the final test, in an act of defiance against his teachers for allowing the test to be so unfair, he destroys the buggers' home planet, killing all their queens, and gaining the only possible form of victory. The buggers have a true hive mind and think only through their queens. By killing the queens the remaining buggers become apathic and die within a few hours. However, at the same time, his plan, a kamikaze attack on the Buggers' planet, destroys most of the units under his control.

When Ender wins the last battle, Ender is told that he has not been playing a game, but instead has been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; this task was made possible via the ansible, a form of instantaneous communication made possible through the use of Philotic Energy. This energy was discovered following the Second Bugger War, as the method of telepathic communication the Buggers used.

When Ender learns the truth of what he has done, he lapses into a few weeks of exhausted depression. Feeling the full weight of the deaths he has caused, made heavier by his apparent love 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 world alliance 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. Instead, his sister Valentine Wiggin convinces him to be sent out on the first colonization ship 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 a new faith for all the new worlds humanity inhabits.

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 and the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985, 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.

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.

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:

• The Marine University at Quantico, as a textbook on the psychology of leadership.
• The New South Wales Higher School Certificate
• Teachers College, Columbia University, as an example of online learning.

Character list

Wiggin Family

• Andrew Wiggin, also known as Ender
• John Paul Wiggin - Ender's father
• Peter Wiggin - Ender's brother
• Theresa Wiggin - Ender's mother
• Valentine Wiggin - Ender's sister

Battle School Characters

• Alai
• Anderson
• Bean
• Bernard
• Bonzo Madrid
• Carn Carby
• Crazy Tom
• Dink Meeker
• Fly Molo
• Colonel Graff
• Han Tzu (Hot Soup)
• Petra Arkanian
• Rose the Nose
• Shen

Novel series

Card went back and expanded the short story into a novel after realizing that he wanted to use Ender as a main character in another novel, Speaker for the Dead. Card has in fact written several more sequels, spawning the Ender's Game series. The more metaphysical nature of the later books has reduced their popularity in some demographics, but increased circulation in others.

Two series were spawned from the original book:

• First series:
  • Ender's Game
  • Speaker for the Dead
  • Xenocide
  • Children of the Mind
  • Ender in Exile: Ganges (working title)
• Second series:
  • Ender's Shadow
  • Shadow of the Hegemon
  • Shadow Puppets
  • Shadow of the Giant
  • Shadows in Flight
• Other:
  • First Meetings

Film

Main article: Ender's Game (film)

As of December 15, 2005, all previous attempts to write a script have been dropped. Card himself has announced he will be writing a new script not based on any previous one, including his own.

As of March 22 2006, Warner Brothers and Orson Scott Card have extended their option on the film version of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Card is still writing the screenplay.

Criticism

John Kessel published in the spring 2004 issue of Foundation, the International Review of Science Fiction an article titled "Creating the Innocent Killer," which is a critical deconstruction of the moral worldview Card propounds through Ender. He describes there how Card and his characters manipulate the reader's point of view throughout the book so that Ender can commit murder several times and, ultimately, xenocide of a species (albeit unknowingly), while retaining our sympathy and remaining innocent. He takes issue with Card's supposed assertion that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting.

The three books following "Ender's Game" continuing the same story (Speaker For the Dead, Xenocide and finally Children of the Mind) expand the moralistic ideas posed in the novel to new levels according to Card's philosophy, notably concerning the dealings of humans with inscrutable alien species. (In fact, this entire morality debate is restated at the outset of Speaker For the Dead through a conversation between Ender and some of his Calvinist students).

Ender's Game is also occasionally criticized in reference to its literary merit. Critic Norman Spinrad critiques Ender's Game in several of his essays collected in Science Fiction in the Real World. Card freely admits, in the revised edition's introduction, that his novel is not "fine writing" by any means. Card noted most criticism of Ender's Game is based on its lack of artistic qualities. He justifies himself in that he sees writing as a tool to convey a story, and not the layered, and sometimes cryptic, art form of more literary prose, a style Card describes as "muddled".

External links

• The original short story in its entirety (from Card's website)
• Ender's Game title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Ender's Game at IMDb
• Review of Ender's Game
• Fresco Pictures news page for Ender's Game
• Ansible MOO: The only officially sanctioned role-playing game based on Ender's Game outside of the Hatrack forums
• The Philotic Web: An excellent website and forum dedicated to the Ender Books.
• "Creating the Innocent Killer": An essay by John Kessel about the intention-morality of Ender's Game

"Ender's Game and the Hero's Quest": An essay by Michael Collings concerning the "literary merit" debate of Ender's Game

• Ender's Game Quotes: Collection of memorable quotes from the novel
• Intergalactic Medicine Show: Online science fiction magazine published by Orson Scott Card. Features a new Ender's world story in every issue.