Book: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game brought immense fame and recognition to its author, Orson Scott Card. It is a science fiction book, set in the future with a ‘military’ theme.

“Superb! This is Card at the height of his very considerable powers–a major SF novel by any reasonable standard.”

— Booklist

The novel won the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985, and the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986. Ender’s Game was also nominated for a Locus Award in 1986.

The World

Ender’s Game is situated far ahead in the future, where human beings have left the confines of the earth and started expansion to other planetary systems. During this expansion, humans encounter another species on a similar expansion drive. This results in two wars between the two species. At the end of these wars, both species retreat to locations near their mother/ home planets. There is no communication between the humans and the alien species, who are officially called ‘formics’ and unofficially called ‘buggers’ (because they look like insects) by the humans.

In the face of the alien threat, hostilities between the various human factions are kept in abeyance. The humans get down to preparing for the next encounter with the aliens – they start developing new military technology and identifying new, highly capable, potential military leaders – by training brilliant pre-teen children to be military commanders.

The Story

The protagonist of the story is one such pre-teen boy – Andrew Wiggin (‘Ender’). Ender is identified as a potential commander at a very early age, removed from his family, and enrolled in a ‘battle school’ located in outer space along with other such bright children (mainly boys). As the teachers identify Ender as having an enormously high potential, they make him face extremely challenging and  unfair situations – to give him the experience and also check his abilities.

Does Ender become a high ranking military leader? Is there another war with the aliens? What happens in the war? Well, you will have to read the book for more details. The pace is terrific and the end is even better.

Ender’s Game: The Movie

The book was made into an English language movie in 2013 starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, etc. Though the movie did reasonable business, I think I enjoyed movie because I had already read the book.

Here is a youtube video of the trailer of the movie:

If the video does not load, click here: https://youtu.be/SVlgzbuqsn0.

As mentioned earlier, read the book before watching the movie.

About the author

Orson Scott Card is an American novelist, critic, public speaker, essayist and columnist, and is best known for his science fiction. His Ender’s Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead won the Hugo and the Nebula awards.

Card has written books on the subject of creative writing. Card hosts boot-camps and workshops for writers, and is a judge in many contests for writers – The Writers of the Future contest being the most prestigious one.

Card has also written under multiple pseudonyms like Frederick Bliss, PQ Gump, Byron Walley, Brian Green, etc.

“Card is skilled at pacing and good with an action scene, but he has raised to a fine art the creation of suspense by ethical dilemma, and in doing so has raised his work to a high plane.”

— New York Times

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