Ender's Game
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Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card. It originated as a science fiction short story in Analog magazine (1977) and is set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an aggressive alien society, an insect-like race known colloquially as "Buggers" but more formally as "Formics." Genius children are seen as the ultimate leaders of the protection of Earth and are recruited into training for an upcoming battle against the alien race. Card later expanded the novel into the Ender's Game series.
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Overview
The protagonist, Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, is one of these child soldiers. Like the other child soldiers, he is recruited at a very young age and is sent for training at Battle School, where he learns to fight and to lead armies. Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership, he is advanced through his training much faster than the other students. Meanwhile, his psychological development is monitored by the "mind game", a computer game embedded in the school's computer network, and manipulated to a large extent by the cynical Colonel Hyrum Graff, who runs the school.
The original short story is merely a snapshot of Ender's experiences in Battle School; the full-length novel is a deeper and more complex work dealing with Ender's life before, during, and after Battle School, and the consequences of his final battle with the alien 'Buggers', in which he destroys the aliens' homeworld using a fearsome weapon nicknamed Dr. Device.
Ender's Game was the winner of the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986 and the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985, the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. It was reprinted in a slightly revised edition in 1991.
Some military colleges have used Ender's Game as a textbook on leadership.
Foresight
Though none of Card's pessimistic social visions have yet come to pass, some of the ideas in his book were remarkably prescient. The children Peter and Valentine establish anonymous identities on the "nets" to express their controversial political views and gain public support; his description of their workings is very similar to the operation of newsgroups, blogs, and online message boards on the Internet today.
Influences
Ender's Game is widely regarded as the inspiration for the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, although anime otaku and purists tend to react violently to any comparisons. Nonetheless, the characterization in both the anime and novel are extremely similar, such as drawing parallels between Ender and Shinji, or between Colonel Graff and Commander Ikari.
Character list
Wiggin Family
Battle School Characters
- Petra Arkanian
- Dink Meeker
- Alai
- Julian Delphiki aka Bean
- Nikolai Delphiki
- Colonel Graff
- Bonzo Madrid
- Shen
The 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. That novel takes place several thousand years later. Card has continued to write other sequels, so Ender's Game has spawned the Ender's Game series.
Two series were spawned from the original book.
- First series:
- Ender's Game
- Speaker for the Dead
- Xenocide
- Children of the Mind
- Second series:
- Other
The movie
An Ender's Game movie is currently in preproduction. See Ender's Game (movie) for more information.
Controversy
There is controversy around this book, and the sequel Speaker for the Dead, in particular several authors have made the case that that it is an apologia for Hitler and a justification for his actions of genocide.
Ender and Hitler: sympathy for the superman
Elaine Radford makes her case in the article Ender and Hitler: sympathy for the superman, published from Fantasy Review in 1987, that the character of Ender is based on Hitler, and the novel paralells the genocide of the Jews during World War II.
External links
- The original short story in its entirety (http://www.hatrack.com/osc/stories/enders-game.shtml) (from Card's website)
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- Fresco Pictures news page for Ender's Game (http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/endersgame_update.html)
- Ansible MOO (http://ansible.org/): An online text-based role-playing game based on Ender's Game
- http://www.philoticweb.net: a very good website and forum dedicated to the Ender Books.
- http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034 Article by Roger Williams and discussion about the 'Hitler hypothesis' and other possible hidden motives in Ender's Game.