Ender's Game

Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled mankind after two conflicts with the "buggers", an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are trained from a very young age through increasingly difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.

The book originated as the short story "Ender's Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.^[1] Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card later wrote additional books to form the Ender's Game series. Card released an updated version of Ender's Game in 1991, changing some political facts to reflect the times more accurately; e.g., to include the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Reception of the book has generally been positive.^[2][3] It has also become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps.^[4] Ender's Game won the 1985 Nebula Award for best novel^[5] and the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel.^[6] Its sequels, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind and Ender in Exile, follow Ender's subsequent travels to many different worlds in the galaxy. In addition, the later novella A War of Gifts and novel Ender's Shadow take place during the same time period as the original.

A film adaptation of the same name written for the screen and directed by Gavin Hood and starring Asa Butterfield as Ender was released in October 2013. Card co-produced the film.^[7] It has also been adapted into two comic series.

Synopsis

Humanity, having begun to explore the Universe and master interplanetary spaceflight, encounters an alien race dubbed the "buggers". The discovery of a bugger forward base in the asteroid Eros leads to war between the species and the destruction of a bugger colonizing force. The battle to recapture Eros results in the discovery of advanced alien technology, including gravity manipulation. Political conflicts on Earth between three ruling parties, the Hegemon, Polemarch, and Strategos, are put aside in the face of the threat from the buggers. Ostensibly in preparation for the expected third invasion, an International Fleet (I.F.) is established, with headquarters on Eros. Increasingly advanced starships are built and secretly launched to attack the buggers' home worlds. To develop commanders capable of defeating the much larger bugger forces, the I.F. creates a crash training program for children with the best strategic minds, the Battle School.

Protagonist Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is one of the school's trainees. He has a close bond with his sister Valentine; but fears his brother Peter, a highly intelligent sociopath. The I.F. remove Ender's monitoring device, seemingly ending his chances of Battle School, and he gets teased by a fellow student, Stilson. Ender beats up Stilson before the fight is broken up; unknown to Ender, the fight was fatal to Stilson. When explaining his actions to I.F. Colonel Hyrum Graff, Ender states his belief that, by showing superiority now, he has prevented future struggle. Graff, on hearing of this, offers Ender a place in the Battle School, situated in Earth's orbit, where Graff quickly isolates Ender from the other cadets.

The cadets participate in competitive war simulations in zero gravity, where Ender's innovations overwhelm his opponents. Graff promotes Ender to a new army composed of raw recruits, but Ender's success continues. He forms bonds of friendship, loyalty and trust with several of his current and former squad members. A jealous commander of another army, Bonzo Madrid, compels him to fight outside the simulation, and Ender unknowingly kills him.

On Earth, Peter Wiggin uses a global communication system to post political essays under the pseudonym "Locke", hoping to establish himself as a respected orator and thence as a powerful politician. Valentine, despite not trusting Peter, publishes alongside him as "Demosthenes". Their essays are soon taken seriously by the government. Though Graff is told their true identities, he recommends that it be kept a secret, because their writings are politically useful.

Ender, now ten years old, is promoted to Command School on Eros after a brief respite on Earth. After some preliminary battles in the simulator, he is introduced to a former war hero, Mazer Rackham. From now on, while believing them to be simulations controlled by Mazer, Ender directs real human spacecraft against bugger fleets via an instantaneous communicator. As the skirmishes become harder, he is joined by some of his friends from the Battle School as sub-commanders. Despite this, Ender becomes depressed by the battles, his isolation, and by the way Mazer treats him.

When told that he is facing his final test, Ender finds his fleet far outnumbered by the buggers surrounding their queens' home world. Hoping to earn himself expulsion from the school for his ruthlessness, he sacrifices his entire fleet to launch a Molecular Detachment Device. The Device destroys the planet and the surrounding bugger fleet. Mazer informs Ender that he has been fighting real battles and not simulations, and that Ender has won the war. Ender becomes more depressed on learning this and of the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo.

When he recovers, he learns that, at the end of the bugger war, Earth's powers fought among themselves. He stays on Eros as his friends return home and colonists venture to other worlds, using Eros as a way station. Among the first colonists is Valentine, who apologizes that Ender can never return to Earth, where he would become dangerous as used by Peter and other politicians. Instead, Ender joins the colony program to populate one of the buggers' former worlds. There, he discovers the dormant egg of a bugger queen, who reveals that the buggers had initially assumed humans were a non-sentient race, for want of collective consciousness, but realized their mistake too late, and requests that Ender take the egg to a new planet to colonize.

Ender takes the egg and, with information from the Queen, writes The Hive Queen under the alias "Speaker for the Dead". Peter, now the leader of Earth and seventy-seven with a failing heart, requests Ender to write a book about him, which Ender titles Hegemon. The combined works create a new type of funeral, in which the Speaker for the Dead tells the whole and unapologetic story of the deceased, adopted by many on Earth and its colonies. In the end, Ender and Valentine board a series of starships and visit many worlds, looking for a safe place to establish the unborn Hive Queen.

Creation and inspiration

The original novelette "Ender's Game" provides a small snapshot of Ender's experiences in Battle School and Command School; the full-length novel encompasses more of Ender's life before, during, and after the war, and 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, as well as in the 1991 Author's Definitive Edition, 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.^[8] In his 1991 introduction to the novel, Card discussed the influence of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series on the novelette and novel. Historian Bruce Catton's work on the American Civil War also influenced Card heavily.^[8]

Ender's Game was the first science-fiction novel published entirely online, when it appeared on Delphi a year before print publication.^[9]

Critical response

Critics received Ender's Game well. The novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985,^[10] and the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986,^[11] considered the two most prestigious awards in science fiction.^[12][13] Ender's Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986.^[6] In 1999, it placed No. 59 on the reader's list of Modern Library 100 Best Novels. It was also honored with a spot on American Library Association's "100 Best Books for Teens." In 2008, the novel, along with Ender's Shadow, won the Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors an author and specific works by that author for lifetime contribution to young adult literature.^[14] Ender's Game was included in Damien Broderick's book Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.^[15]New York Times writer Gerald Jonas asserts that the novel's plot summary resembles a "grade Z, made-for-television, science-fiction rip-off movie", but says that Card develops the elements well despite this "unpromising material". Jonas further praises the development of the character Ender Wiggin: "Alternately likable and insufferable, he is a convincing little Napoleon in short pants."^[16]

The novel has received negative criticism for violence and its justification. Elaine Radford's review, "Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman", posits that Ender Wiggin is an intentional reference by Card to Adolf Hitler and criticizes the violence in the novel, particularly at the hands of the protagonist.^[17] Card responded to Radford's criticisms in Fantasy Review, the same publication. Radford's criticisms are echoed in John Kessel's essay "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality", wherein Kessel states: "Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault."^[18] Noah Berlatsky makes similar claims in his analysis of the relationship between colonization and science fiction, where he describes how Ender's Game is in part a justification of "Western expansion and genocide."^[19]

The U.S. Marine Corps Professional Reading List makes the novel recommended reading at several lower ranks, and again at Officer Candidate/Midshipman.^[20] The book was placed on the reading list by Captain John F. Schmitt, author of FMFM-1 (Fleet Marine Fighting Manual, on maneuver doctrine) for "provid[ing] useful allegories to explain why militaries do what they do in a particularly effective shorthand way."^[21] In introducing the novel for use in leadership training, Marine Corps University's Lejeune program opines that it offers "lessons in training methodology, leadership, and ethics as well [....] Ender's Game has been a stalwart item on the Marine Corps Reading List since its inception."^[21]

Accolades

The weeks ending June 9, August 18, September 8, September 15, November 3, November 10, November 17, and November 24, 2013, the novel was No. 1 on the New York Times' Best Sellers List of Paperback Mass-Market Fiction.^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]}

Revisions

In 1991, Card made several minor changes to reflect the political climates of the time, including the decline of the Soviet Union. In the afterword of Ender in Exile (2008), Card stated that many of the details in chapter 15 of Ender's Game were modified for use in the subsequent novels and short stories. In order to more closely match the other material, Card has rewritten chapter 15, and plans to offer a revised edition of the book.^[36]

Adaptations

Film

In 2011, Summit Entertainment financed and coordinated the film's development and served as its distributor.^[37][38] Gavin Hood directed the film, which lasts 1 hour and 54 minutes.^[39][40] Filming began in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 27, 2012,^[41] and was released on November 1, 2013 (USA).^[42] A movie preview trailer^[43] was released in May 2013 and a second trailer^[44] was released later that year.

Card has called Ender's Game "unfilmable", "because everything takes place in Ender's head", and refused to sign a film deal unless he could ensure that the film was "true to the story". Of the film that he eventually agreed to, Card said it was "the best that good people could do with a story they really cared about and believed in", and while warning fans not to expect a completely faithful adaptation, called the film "damn good".^[45]

Video game

Ender's Game: Battle Room was a planned digitally distributed video game for all viable downloadable platforms.^[46] It was under development by Chair Entertainment, which also developed the Xbox Live Arcade games Undertow and Shadow Complex. Chair had sold the licensing of Empire to Card, which became a best-selling novel. Little was revealed about the game, save its setting in the Ender universe and that it would have focused on the Battle Room.^[46]

In December, 2010, it was announced that the video game development had stopped and the project put on indefinite hold.^[47]

Comics

Marvel Comics and Orson Scott Card announced on April 19, 2008, that they would be publishing a limited series adaptation of Ender's Game as the first in a comic series that would adapt all of Card's Ender's Game novels. Card was quoted as saying that it is the first step in moving the story to a visual medium.^[48] The first five-issue series, titled Ender's Game: Battle School, was written by Christopher Yost, while the second five-issue series, Ender's Shadow: Battle School, was written by Mike Carey.^[49]

Audioplay

Ender's Game Alive: The Full Cast Audioplay, is an audio drama written by Orson Scott Card, based on the Ender's Game novel. At over seven hours in length, this retelling of Ender's Game hints at story lines from "Teacher's Pest", "The Polish Boy", "The Gold Bug", Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow of the Giant, Shadows in Flight, Earth Unaware, and Speaker for the Dead, and gives new insight into the beginnings of Ender's philotic connection with the Hive Queen.

Ender's Game Alive is directed by Gabrielle de Cuir, produced by Stefan Rudnicki at Skyboat Media, published by Audible.com, and performed by a cast of over 30 voice actors playing over 100 roles.^[50][51]

Translations

Ender's Game has been translated into 34 languages:

See also

• List of Ender's Game characters
• List of Ender's Game series planets
• Formics

Notes

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ender's Game

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Orson Scott Card

• About the novel Ender's Game from Card's website
• Ender's Game title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Intergalactic Medicine Show: Online science fiction magazine published by Orson Scott Card. Features a new Ender's world story in every issue.