The big game (book)

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The big game (original title: Ender's Game ) is a military science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card . The story was published as a short story in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in August 1977 and expanded into a novel in 1985. The book won two awards for best science fiction novel: in 1985 with the Nebula Award and in 1986 with the Hugo Award .

The book was followed by several sequels ( Ender series ) and parallel narratives ( Shadow series ) until 2013 , with more being planned.

The novel is characterized by a special narrative form that allows the reader to experience the events from two perspectives. At the beginning of each chapter there is a short section that reproduces dialogues between the people who oversee Ender. The reader is always informed about how much Ender's life is being manipulated.

action

In a possible future of the earth: The planet is overpopulated and still entangled in the East-West conflict . However, since insectoid aliens have attacked Earth, the West and the Warsaw Pact , which now also rules over Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, have agreed to create a common military: the Interstellar Fleet (IF). A second attack of the so-called crawlers (engl. Original: Bugger), after they have already destroyed the main human fleet, in a sensational manner by a hitherto unknown, numerically far inferior commander named Mazer Rackham on Saturn blocked. There has been no attack since then, but the threat of a third invasion is omnipresent and dominates life on earth.

The book begins eighty years later on earth, in the USA: The Wiggin family gave birth to three children at the government's request (only two are actually allowed), the now ten-year-old Peter , eight-year-old Valentine and six-year-old Andrew. called Ender . Peter and Valentine were considered for space commander training, but Peter was too brutal and Valentine too meek. So Ender's birth was allowed, and he seems to be right in the middle of his siblings. Like them, he was monitored from birth by means of a device called a monitor in the neck, which allowed the observers to see through his eyes and hear with his ears and thus judge whether the child possessed the qualities they were looking for. On his sixth birthday, the monitor is removed and Ender is apparently left to his own devices. As a third-born (called “third”), Ender is poorly regarded and his extraordinary intelligence makes people envious. So far, the monitor had ensured that no one dared real attacks. When the monitor is gone, Ender is intercepted after school by a group of children who have been waiting for the opportunity to take their envy out on him. Ender struggles and knocks Stilson, the leader, to the ground. To prevent further attacks in the following days, he decides to brutally abuse the already defeated Stilson and threatens to do that to anyone who attacks him (towards the end of the book it is learned that Ender unwittingly kills Stilson in the process).

Ender does not return to school anymore. The next morning the family is visited by Colonel Graff, who invites Ender to come to the fleet's combat school, which is in space. What Ender doesn't know is that the IF is desperately in need of a fleet leader and there is no other candidate in sight. Even before the rocket launch, Graff pointed out that he was “the only one with something on his mind” in front of his group, thus initiating his plan to put Ender in a position of isolation, to leave him on his own. He should learn that he can never find help from others if he does not help himself. A child named Bernard promptly begins to annoy him with small attacks during the flight. Ender quickly recognizes the pattern behind the attacks and grabs the child's arm when it tries to hit him again. He tears his arm, but forgets the weightlessness. Bernard is thrown by the shuttle and breaks his arm.

Ender's empathy qualities are evident in the combat school, for example he succeeds in looking through the video games used for tactics training in the shortest possible time and defeating both computer opponents and human opponents without a chance. The older kids pretend they're laughing at him but are quick to adopt the tactics they saw Ender do. In his starting group, Bernard begins to form a gang to use them to get revenge on Ender. With skill, Ender can put forward a mutual friend of his and Bernard as a leading figure and unite the group.

During their time in combat school, the children are given a kind of pad that they use as a writing and learning tool and on which a psychological game - the fantasy game - runs. It's a kind of adventure game with lots of little tasks. The instructor dialogues show that the children's play style is analyzed. One task in the game is deliberately designed to be unsolvable: a giant who offers two potions to choose from, one of which is said to be poison; the other takes the player to “fairy tale land”. But every time it's poison. Ender tries for so long that his instructors suspect that he may be suicidal. When Ender is transferred from his starter group to an army abruptly and far too early (see below), his mood makes him ignore the potions and attack the giant. He is successful and, to the surprise of the instructors, ends up in “fairy tale land”, which was previously thought to be impossible.

For Ender, this success means a psychological crisis. At home he suffered from the harassment of his cruel older brother Peter, he always tells himself that he is not like Peter - but the argument with Stilson, with Bernard, other incidents as well as the victory over the giant lead him to believe that he possessed Peter's aggressiveness, but was only better at using it purposefully. He fears this side of his personality.

In the fantasy game, the fairytale land is followed by a land “at the end of the world”, which further upsets the instructors. Because the “fairy tale land” was mentioned in the familiar part of the game, the “end of the world”, on the other hand, is completely unknown. The fantasy game may have been designed to respond to the child's mind, but this level of adaptation is new. At the end of the world, Ender gets into the tower of a castle, where a snake attacks him. He kills her and finds a mirror from which Peter's face looks at him. Horrified, Ender throws away his pad, and just as horrified, the instructors wonder what the fantasy game is doing with this. They do not yet understand that Ender's fear of Peter's personality is one of his main drivers.

The actual training in the combat school takes place through a war game in which the children in armies of 40 soldiers (divided into four groups) have to compete against each other under a commander in weightless combat rooms. As soon as Ender has managed to pacify Bernard, he is promoted and joins such an army young and inexperienced. Bonzo de Madrid, his commander, hates him for this because Ender's place was vacated by the removal of one of his squad leaders. Bonzo does not want Ender to mess up his army and forbids him to train with or fight. Instead, he wants to swap it out as quickly as possible. Ender finds a way out by starting to train himself in his spare time with his friends from the beginner group. An attempt by older kids to beat up the group ends up with Ender's group knocking out the bigger ones with the new tactics she invented. Then there are other, older children who have recognized Ender's talent, want to learn from him and protect him through their presence. When Ender finally ignores his instruction not to fight in one of the regular army battles, thereby preventing the defeat of his army, he is exchanged by his commander. For Bonzo, obedience is more important than anything else, he is unable to recognize and use Ender's talent.

In his new army, Ender is allowed to train and fight and quickly learns that the children's tactics are very schematic. Nevertheless, he adapts to his army, learns the basics of the fighting game and quickly finds himself at the top of the comparison tables.

At the same time on earth: Peter, Ender's brother, notices through his research in the global computer network (comparable to the Internet ) that the Warsaw Pact is secretly moving troops to its western border. But since nobody would believe a child and the IF is controlled equally from East and West, he sees no possibility of informing the public about it. Therefore, he persuades his sister to make a name for himself in the network under pseudonyms and slowly draw the public's attention to it with opposing views. But Peter wants more: He wants to put himself at the top of world power, on the one hand to avoid war, but also because of his hunger for power. In the networks Valentine appears under the pseudonym " Demosthenes " and plays the demagogue who incites against the Warsaw Pact, Peter seeks communication as the alleged statesman " Locke " - both in contrast to their personality. As expected, you will gain attention and, as planned, will be offered your own comment columns in news networks.

Some time goes by. Ender is the best soldier in the combat school and has become an army platoon leader. But he's stuck in his development. The fantasy game no longer offers him any opportunities to play, only “fairy tale land” and “the end of the world”, where he repeatedly finds Peter in the mirror. Graff visits Valentine on earth and learns about the dominant role that Peter plays in Ender's, but also Valentine's thoughts. From an early age, Valentine Ender kept saying that he was not like Peter, and this appeased Ender's fear of himself. Graff realizes that Ender needs this now and causes Val to write a letter that says exactly this. Ender sees through the intention and is desperate. Even Val is being used against him. He starts the fantasy game and chooses an insane solution: Instead of fighting the snake, he takes its head and holds it to his lips. But the snake doesn't bite. Instead, his character kisses the snake, whereupon it turns into Valentine and the mirror opens to a passage. Ender's mental blockage is released.

Shortly afterwards, a new army is set up for Ender, made up of many inexperienced children and some older ones, who, however, have shown no particular achievement. In addition, he is forbidden to trade soldiers with other armies. With these children, Ender implements all the ideas that made him the best soldier in combat school and is surprised at the qualities they display. He forms five instead of the usual four groups and trains them not in the usual formation warfare, but in flexibility and initiative. As a result, he succeeds in winning all army battles in the near future, although the school management is manipulating the battles more and more to his disadvantage.

Ender is now eleven years old. Many of the older children, especially his first commander, Bonzo de Madrid, cannot accept his rapid rise and success. After a particularly unfair fighting game that Ender only wins by exploiting a rule loophole, they lie in wait for him in the shower. Ender manages to take advantage of Bonzo's Spanish sense of honor and get him into a duel. He manages to use his knowledge from a hand-to-hand combat course and to hit Bonzo in such a way that he falls into shower fittings and no longer gets up. Ender does not find out that he dies in the process. After this fight, Ender was promoted prematurely from the combat school (usually when he was 18 years old) and transferred to the command school on the asteroid Eros together with Colonel Graff .

Before that, however, Ender is brought to earth for a stopover. A visit from his sister Valentine is arranged there. After the constant fighting at school, Ender is burned out and can no longer motivate himself to continue. His sister should make it clear to him that humanity is worth fighting for. Valentine is horrified at how soulless Ender now appears. Much of his empathy was drained off at combat school. Although he sees through Valentine's intention to persuade him to go back to school on behalf of Graff, Ender finally gives in. However, he sees himself finally betrayed, he realizes that he cannot expect any kind of support or security, even Valentine, his only girlfriend, has ultimately betrayed him. At the command school, Ender is introduced to an old man who is supposed to train him: Nobody other than the legendary commander Mazer Rackham, who was sent on a dilatation flight after his victory over the crawlers , is supposed to finish his training. As sub-commanders, Ender is given the children from school with whom he got along best there. Together with them he should learn in simulated space battles how to defeat the crawlers. Rackham explains to Ender that he was only able to defeat the crawlers by accident: he noticed at the time that the enemy's fleet was particularly protective of a ship and concentrated all of his firepower on it. With success, because the crawlers are a nation, and the queen was in this ship . Without this, individuals lack intelligence and the battle is over.

Ender learns that people have learned some of the technology from the crawlers, e.g. B. Control of gravity and a device for faster than light communication. For this purpose, a device could be developed that creates a molecule-dissolving field and turns everything in its area of ​​action into dust, the “Little Doctor”. The Little Doctor field is self-reinforcing. As long as it finds matter, it consumes it and spreads, which enables a chain reaction .

Ender also learns that humanity is preparing a preemptive attack. Once the crawling technique was understood and the Little Doctor developed, ships were sent to the crawling worlds. What is missing is someone who can command the fleet with the beacon, and this is what Ender is supposed to learn in many combat simulations. The training is intensive and grueling and stresses the children to the point of collapse because the opponent learns with every fight. As a final exam, Ender is supposed to pass a final combat simulation: He is supposed to attack the crawlers' home planet with a small, hopelessly outnumbered fleet and defeat a fleet that is a thousand times superior to him. Again Ender despairs before the unsolvable task. He decides to solve them in a way that completely disqualifies him as commander: He does not attack the fleet, but directly the planet, sacrificing most of his ships and using the Little Doctor to destroy the planet. As a result, the enemy fleet is also destroyed by the chain reaction.

To his amazement, he is not thrown out. Instead, everyone present celebrates and cheers. Ender has to learn that the simulations have not been such for a long time, but real battles against the crawlers in which their colonial worlds were defeated, and that this battle was the final battle against their homeworld. There are no more crawlers. The species is destroyed. Ender collapses.

When it becomes known on Earth that the war against the crawlers is over, the war that Peter feared between East and West immediately breaks out. Valentine as Demosthenes and Peter as Locke have now gained enough influence to prepare the West for this war. With a first strike, the western troops can secure strategic resources, including the children in the combat school. Also due to Ender's status as the savior of mankind, who is supposedly on the side of the West, the East has to fight desertions and ultimately loses. A peace treaty is proposed by Peter and widely supported. The Warsaw Pact leaves the fleet and withdraws. Peter Wiggin rises to become the leader of the West.

Valentine fears that Peter Ender could now instrumentalize himself, and suggests that she and Ender leave the earth in order to colonize the now uninhabited crawling world with others. After a while, Ender finds something amazing there. Exactly the scenario that the fantasy game always shows him at the "end of the world" is there as a building, including the castle tower in which he was confronted with the snake. Behind the mirror there is a cocoon that contains the pupated last crawling queen. She contacts Ender telepathically and tells him that it was the crawlers who manipulated his computer at the time. Since they did not know verbal or written communication , they tried this way to dissuade Ender from destroying it. The crawlers never wanted to wage war, but because of their mentality, unfamiliar to any individual but queens, they did not understand that killing a few individuals would make people want retribution. Only in the course of the second crawling invasion did the queens understand that they were dealing with a completely different, but nevertheless intelligent species, and immediately stopped all attacks.

Ender writes a book under the pseudonym “Spokesman for the Dead” - “The Swarm Queen”. In it he processes what the queen told him about the origin and way of life of her people into a story of the crawlers from her own point of view and thus manages to make it clear to people what crime was committed. A second book comes into being: “The Hegemon”, the life story of Peter Wiggin. During the period of space flight, when Ender barely aged due to time dilation, his brother ruled the earth and is now an old man. Both works together don't mean much on earth, but in the colonies they become a religion.

Ender now suffers even more from wiping out an entire sensitive species. As a penance, he devotes his life to finding a world for the last queen where she can slip and let her people emerge anew. Together with Valentine he begins the long search.

reception

The novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985 and the Hugo Award for best novel the following year . Nonetheless, the book is not without its critics: in 1987, Card's fellow author Elaine Radford wrote an essay in which she criticized the brutality of the novel and the fascist tendencies she perceived. Radford calls her criticism out of date and recommends the comprehensive essay "Creation of the Innocent Murderer: The Great Game, Intent and Morality" published by John Kessel in 2004. Kessel mainly discusses Card's unrealistic, illogical and mendacious (but "brutally effective") construction of a person who commits genocide and yet remains innocent, since for Card only the intention, not the act, is to be judged morally. (Child) psychology, Cards biography and the continued success in America, especially among young people, support and complement his explanations.

From the United States Marine Corps is Ender's Game recommended as reading material for non-commissioned officers and officer candidates.

Books of this series

  • Ender's Game (1985), German title: Das Große Spiel , Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-52096-3
  • Speaker for the Dead (1986), German title: Speaker for the Dead , Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, ISBN 3-404-24103-7
Second book, but in terms of content it is the third part of this series.
(The first two novels were also published in Germany as an anthology under the title Ender , Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1992, ISBN 3-404-24155-X )
Although it appeared after the aforementioned books in this series, the content is directly linked to the first book ( Ender's Game / Das große Spiel ) and is therefore the second part.

Others

The book Ender's Shadow (German title Ender's Shadow ), also by Orson Scott Card, describing the same events on the combat and command school from the perspective of the boy named Bean (Bean), one of the subordinates Enders.

filming

In February 2012, filming began in New Orleans for the film adaptation Ender's Game , directed by Gavin Hood , who also wrote the script. The main roles are played by Asa Butterfield ( Ender Wiggin ), Harrison Ford , Sir Ben Kingsley and Abigail Breslin . The film was produced by Charoff Productions and Radiant Productions on behalf of Summit Film Studios. Author Orson Scott Card is a co-producer. Constantin Film took over the German distribution . The German film launch was on October 24, 2013. In the USA, Canada and India the film was released on November 1, 2013.

Radio play version

Orson Scott Card wrote a radio play version in 2013, which was released by Audible USA under the title “Ender's Game Alive” at the same time as the film was released. An eight-hour German version of the same script was simultaneously published by Audible Germany under the title "Ender's Game - The Unabridged Radio Play". Ender Wiggin will be spoken by Arne Kapfer, Colonel Graff by Udo Schenk and Mazer Rackham by Erich Räuker .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1985 Nebula Winners. ldtm57.pairserver.com, accessed April 28, 2019 .
  2. ^ 1986 Hugo Awards. thehugoawards.org, accessed December 9, 2005 .
  3. ^ Radford, Elaine (March 26, 2007). "Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman (20 Years Later)".
  4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Kessel, John (2004). Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality. "Science Fiction Foundation.
  5. ↑ "USMC Professional Reading Program (brochure)" (PDF) ( Memento of March 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Reading List by Grade. Marine Corps University.