Ender's Game

War breaks out between humans and an insect-like alien race called the Formics. The humans achieve a narrow victory then create the International Fleet (I.F.) and train gifted children to become commanders at their orbiting Battle School.

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is born a "Third": a rare exception to Earth's two-child policy, allowed by the government due to the promise shown by his two older siblings. The eldest, Peter, is an intelligent sociopath who bullies Ender. His sister, Valentine, is deeply empathic. The I.F. remove Ender's monitoring device when he is six years old, seemingly ending his chances of Battle School. He is bullied by a fellow student, Stilson, but Ender turns violent and attacks him. Stilson later dies from his wounds. Colonel Hyrum Graff visits Ender after hearing about the fight. Ender attests that by showing superiority now, he has prevented future struggle. Graff offers him a place in the Battle School.

Once at Battle School, Graff and the other leaders covertly work to keep Ender isolated. Ender finds solace in playing a simulated adventure game that involves being killed by and eventually killing a giant. The cadets participate in competitive war simulations in zero gravity, where Ender quickly masters the competition with novel tactics. To further wear Ender down, he is promoted to command a new army composed of raw recruits, then pitted against multiple armies at once, but Ender's success continues. Ender's jealous ex-commander, Bonzo Madrid, draws him into a fight outside the simulation, and once again seeking to preemptively stop future conflicts, Ender uses excessive force, and Bonzo dies from his injuries.

Meanwhile 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 then as a powerful politician. Valentine, despite not trusting Peter, agrees to publish alongside him as "Demosthenes". Their essays are soon taken seriously by the government.

Ender, now ten years old, is promoted to Command School. After some preliminary battles in the simulator, he is introduced to Mazer Rackham, a hero from the Formic war who saw key patterns in the Formic behavior. Ender participates in space combat simulations created and controlled by Mazer. As the fighting become harder, he is joined by some of his friends from the Battle School as sub-commanders. Ender grows depressed by the battles, his isolation, and by the way Mazer treats him.

For his final test, under observation by I.F.'s commanders, Ender finds his fleet far outnumbered by Formic ships surrounding their homeworld. He sacrifices his entire fleet to fire a Molecular Disruption Device at the planet. The Device destroys the planet and paralyzes the surrounding bugger fleet. The commanders cheer and celebrate. Mazer informs Ender that the "simulations" were real battles, directing human spacecraft against Formic fleets via an ansible, and that Ender has won the war. Ender realizes that he has committed genocide.

Ender and Valentine join a group of space colonists. On their new planet, Ender becomes the colony's governor. He discovers a structure that matches the simulation of the giant game from Battle School, and inside finds the dormant egg of a Formic queen. The queen telepathically communicates to Ender that before the first Formic war, they had assumed humans were a non-sentient race, for want of collective consciousness, but realized their mistake too late. Instead, she had reached out to Ender to draw him here and requests that he take the egg to a new planet for the Formics 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 age 77 with a failing heart, recognizes Ender as the author of The Hive Queen. He asks Ender to write a book about him, which Ender titles The 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. Ender and Valentine leave the colony and travel to many other worlds, looking for a safe place to establish the unborn Hive Queen.

The original "Ender's Game" is a short story that 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.[6] Additionally, in the post-script of the 20th anniversary audiobook edition, Card mentions that he named Ender so that he could have a name that sounded like "endgame" from chess.[7] 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.[6]

Ender's Game was the first science-fiction novel published entirely online, when it appeared on Delphi a year before print publication.[8]

Ender's Game won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985,[9] and the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986,[10] considered the two most prestigious awards in science fiction.[11][12] Ender's Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986.[4] 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.[13] Ender's Game was included in Damien Broderick's book Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.[14] It ranked number nine on Locus's top SF novels published before 1990.[15]

The 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 criticism for its portrayal of 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 Ender's Game as in part a justification of "Western expansion and genocide".[19] However, more recently, science fiction scholar Mike Ryder has refuted the claims of Kessel and Radford, arguing that Ender is exploited by powers beyond his control.[20]

The U.S. Marine Corps Professional Reading List makes the novel recommended reading at several lower ranks, and again at Officer Candidate/Midshipman.[21] The book was placed on the reading list by Captain John F. Schmitt, author of FMFM-1 (Fleet Marine Force Manual, on maneuver doctrine) for "provid[ing] useful allegories to explain why militaries do what they do in a particularly effective shorthand way".[22] 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".[22] It is also used as an early fictional example of game-based learning.[23]

The weeks ending June 9, August 11, September 1, September 8, October 27, November 3, November 10, and November 24, 2013, the novel was No. 1 on The New York Times' Best Sellers List of Paperback Mass-Market Fiction.[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]

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.[38]

Ender's Game has been translated into 34 languages:

• List of Ender's Game characters
• Formics
• The Last Starfighter - 1984 film with a similar premise

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ender's Game.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ender's Game.

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