Ender's Game 1985 military science fiction novel

Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American authorOrson 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'stactical 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.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 ofEnder'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 theCold War.

Reception of the book has generally been positive.It has also become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps. Ender's Game won the 1985 Nebula Award for best novel[5]and the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel. 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 byGavin Hood and starring Asa Butterfield as Ender was released in October 2013. Card co-produced the film.It has also been adapted into two comic series.

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 dispatched 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. After the I.F. removes Ender's monitoring device, presumably ending his chances of Battle School, he mortally wounds a fellow student, Stilson, but is left unaware of doing so. 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, skipping several years of training. 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' homeworld. 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[edit]

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.
Critical response[edit]

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, considered the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. Ender's Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986. 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 withEnder'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. Ender's Game was included in Damien Broderick's book Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.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."

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.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." 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."

The U.S. Marine Corps Professional Reading List makes the novel recommended reading at several lower ranks, and again at Officer Candidate/Midshipman.[18] 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."[19] 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