Ender's Game

From Orson Scott Card Wiki

Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card, set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an alien society, the insectoid "Buggers" (more formally known as "Formics"). Having barely survived two separate Bugger invasions, humanity is obliged to accept the rule of a heavy-handed hegemony and select children are sent into military training at a very young age to supply commanders for their fleets in hopes of surviving a projected 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.

Contents 1 Story Summary 2 Praise 3 Story Details 4 Awards

[edit] Story Summary

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.

But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender's two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military's purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine's abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.

While Valentine and Peter are away writing and seducing politicians on the world, Ender is in space undergoing an immense amount of training.

Newsday said of this novel "Card has done strong work before, but this could be the book to break him out of the pack." It was. Ender's Game took the sf world by storm, sweeping the awards. It won both the Hugo and Nebula, and rose to the top of

[edit] Praise

"Card understands the human condition and has things of real value to say about it. He tells the truth well -- ultimately the only criterion of greatness. ENDER'S GAME will still be finding new readers when ninety-nine percent of the books published this year are completely forgotten." - Gene Wolfe

"A gripping tale of adventure in space and a scathing indictment of the military mind. Recommended." - Library Journal

"The games are fierce and consistently exciting. The cast...offers memorable characters....And the aliens leave an intriguing heritage to mankind." - Locus

". . . an affecting novel full of surprises that seem inevitable once they are explained. The key, of course, is Ender Wiggin himself. Mr. Card never makes the mistake of patronizing or sentimentalizing his hero. Alternately likable and insufferable, his is a convincing little Napoleon in short pants." - The New York Times Book Review

[edit] Story Details

Warning: Plot or ending details follow

The story begins as Ender Wiggin is getting his Monitor removed. Andrew Wiggin (Ender) is a brilliant six-year-old boy, born as a third child into a United States that only permits families of two children each, thus his very existence required permission from the government. He has been closely watched for years through a monitor on the back of his neck. As a Third and as an exceptionally smart student, he invites scorn from the children surrounding him. After he gets his monitor removed, he goes back to school .At the end of the first school day after the removal of his monitor, the bullies of the school begin teasing and mildly attacking him for it. In response and to defend himself, Ender beats the ringleader, Stilson in a brutal assault, to end not just that fight, but all future fights with the bully and his gang. Although Ender did not know until years later, Stilson later died at a hospital.

When Ender returns to his home, the reader meets Ender's oldest 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. Later the same day, Ender is bullied again, this time by his brother Peter. Although he is usually cruel, Peter later tells Ender he is sorry and loves him. 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.

When Ender is first introduced to the other children, he finds that his caretaker, Colonel Graff, isolates him from the others. This is to force Ender to face his problems alone and to become stronger from it, rather than relying on others for his strength. 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. On Ender's trip to Battle School, Colonel Graff intentionally isolates Ender from the other 18 children, even allowing one child to hit him multiple times. In response, Ender grabs the child, who's name is Bernard, and throws him across the shuttle, breaking Bernard's left arm. For the rest of the journey, no one talks to Ender. At Battle School, Bernard becomes a leader and most of the launchies join his group.

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(Short for platoon). The elder Dink begins to look after Ender. Meanwhile, Ender's psychological development is monitored by the "Fantasy Game", a complex computer game embedded in the school's computer network, and manipulated to a large extent by Colonel Graff.

Following Ender's removal to battle school, his two siblings Valentine and Peter continue their own unique lives. 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. Though dealing with fresh recruits, including the precocious Bean, 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 hurts Bonzo so badly that it kills him. 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. 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 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 Fantasy Game at the Battle School. Following the steps from the Fantasy 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.

[edit] Awards

Nebula Award - Best Novel, 1985
Hugo Award - Best Novel, 1986
Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award - Best Novel, 1986