Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
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Book Reviews of Ender's Game
Book Review: Intelligent science fiction, both well plotted and well reasoned. A true classic, and highly recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
After a devastating war with an alien race referred to as buggers, mankind is in search of brilliant commanders to lead the next assault; Ender is one gifted six-year-old boy selected for Battle School, where he is trained to be mankind's only hope in war. Battle School is an immersive environment where Ender pitted alongside and against his peers in order to develop leadership skills, and is instructed to play a number of games in order to learn how to think and to fight. In the Battle Room, he learns to fight in a zero-g atmosphere and then conducts battles against teams of fellow students. An fast-learning and capable fighter, Ender is advanced through his courses at an incredible speed, and the rules of the Battle Room begin to break down as he is pushed, time and time again, to fight better against increasingly bad odds, all in mankind's desperate hope to find a commander before it is too late. The novel is incredibly intelligent, both in concept and in plot: the science-fiction elements, both in alien race creation and inventions such as Ender's games, are contentiously created with a rational explanation and useful purpose. The young children that make up the bulk of the characters are exceptionally gifted, and so sometimes read too much like grown adults--but Ender's development in particular takes into account his young age. The end of the novel comes as little surprise, but that failing is an unavoidable consequence of the way the plot is scripted. This is a famous, innovative, accessible text, and I enjoyed it and highly recommend it.
I prefer some science in my science-fiction--at statement which seems self-evident, but too often falls short in books in the genre that have inadequate or flawed scientific reasonings. Ender's Game, however, contains science and integrates it seamlessly into the fiction of the novel as a whole. The alien race of the buggers is increasingly investigated and developed through the course of the book, and what Card reveals about them is original and logical. The games that Ender plays, and the course of Battle School itself, are equally well thought out and explained, without tedious detailed scientific sections but with complete integration into the course of the novel. The skillful intermesh of science and fiction is one of the things that makes the novel so successful, and I really appreciated it as a fan of the sci-fi genre.
The choice to make the main character and many of the secondary character children is an unusual one, and a mixed blessing. The children are gifted--exceptionally intelligent, and as a result, well-spoken, thoughtful, and often mature. As a result, they sometimes read as adults, which both undercuts their brilliance and makes them seem unrealistic as characters. It also makes the real adults seem stiff and fake in comparison; their dialog in particular is clunky and exaggerated to the point of melodramatic. Card does tackle some of these problems head on: he stages interactions between the gifted Ender and his normal, largely unintelligent peers, drawing attention to the differences between gifted and nongifted children, and has Ender's siblings discuss some of the difficulties that gifted children face when interacting with patronizing adults. On the whole, the age of the characters can throw the reader off and make the text seem unrealistic at points, but Card handles the difficulty as best he can, in particular in regards to Ender's character, who's progression, on the whole, is that of a brillaint but still immature gifted child.
Ender's Game is a classic text of the sci-fi genre, and when reading it it's easy to see why. The science is existent and well-developed, but seamlessly integrated into the course of the story. The text is well-paced and accessible--almost too accessible and, by the end, too completely explained and laid out--but as a result, the core philosophical issues of the book are openly and honestly presented. I found myself thinking about this book for days after I had finished reading it, and went on to pick up the sequel. To me, that's a sign of a good novel--one that captures the reader during the reading of the text, and continues to provoke his thought after the final pages. I highly recommend the book, even with its faults, and I was happy to have the chance to read it.
Book Review: Huge, comprehensive, and interconnected realities
Summary: 5 Stars
I like Science Fiction just fine but must not love it because there have been many years I haven't read even a single SciFi title. I had read a few of the standards over the years without much prompting and recommend them all - Frank Herbert's Dune Series, Philip Dick's Valis Trilogy and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (became the movie Bladerunner), Asimov's I, Robot, Ray Bradburry's Farenheit 451, Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Arthur Clarke's 2001: Space Odyssey, C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet trilogy, and I'm sure others.
My son Merrick introduced me to Orson Scott Card and his child genius Andrew Wiggin - Ender. A slow start - probably because of my own low expectations - and an ending that was so unexpected that it made me want to read the book again. Immediately. I'll leave it at that so I don't even stray towards a spoiler. My reading of preferred genres goes in streaks I admit, but I devoured all the books in Card's series as quickly as I could get to them: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out. (Thanks Merrick!)
Ender grows up in a home with a cruel older brother, Peter, and the love of his life, Valentine, his older sister, the only one who doesn't seem to resent his brilliance. Card does have an ability to see the future - his description of communication over the Internet before Al Gore had the thing really up and going is amazing - and in a world of overpopulation Ender wasn't even legally allowed to be born. Peter and Valentine are both eligible to be selected for Battle School but Peter's anger turns to lethal hatred when it is Ender who is chosen to train as a fighter to repel a hostile alien forces's next invasion.
My description may make this sound trite but the psychological, moral, and physical conflicts are brilliant and emotionally exquisite. Off topic: Did 'they' ever make the Ender movie? I saw ads so I'm sure they did. Was it any good?
Like Frank Herbert in the Dune books, as you read through Card's series you find an author who doesn't just create other settings or even worlds - but whole cosmologies complete with religions, races, histories, and complex moral dilemmas, including definitions of the soul and consciousness. (Yes, there are some slow sections, particularly in Xenocide, but the whole experience is more than satisfactory.)
Just a note or two about Card. He is a descendent of Brigham Young and graduated from BYU and the University of Utah, and did doctoral work at Notre Dame. He served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While passing through Salt Lake City on a Delta flight I saw that he has also written the novels Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel and Leah, which are known as the Women from Genesis Series. The Internet says he lives in North Carolina now. I don't know anything about his ongoing personal religious life but would simply observe that as with other author's from a high identity religious background, there is a discipline and training of thought that seems to spawn a counter-intuitive imaginative freedom with the ability to dream up huge, comprehensive, and interconnected realities as he's done in his Andrew Wiggin novels.
Book Review: --
Summary: 5 Stars
Ender's Game
By Orson Scott Card
Review by David White
Is Ender's Game a classic, is it mainstream fiction, or perhaps just an above average sci-fi novel? Such classifications lead to the realization that a book like Ender's Game is all three. Ender's Game started its journey to the acclaim that it enjoys today as a short story about brilliant children learning to fight and win a near hopeless war against an alien enemy by playing sophisticated games. When it made its transformation into a book in 1985, however, many things changed. Ender and company still prepare to fight the Buggers while battling one another, but what becomes more important in the novel is Ender himself.
The book begins with Ender's life as a "third" or an illegal third child granted existence by the government for his potential in government service. Ender is an outcast who is tormented by his schoolmates but gives himself no choice but victory over them. His defeat of the gang leader, Stilson, in the opening pages is all that Col. Graff, the commander of the Battle School, needs to see to know that their commissioning this third was warranted.
Ender is, from the moment of his introduction at the Battle School, surrounded by enemies. It is, in effect, a story coping with this peculiar way of life. A telling fact of the book is that it is the teachers, primarily Graff, who has engineered these series of contests even to the end. Even after everything Ender is forced to endure, he is able to defeat the Buggers, without and because of the fact that he didn't know he was fighting them. This victory was only attained, however, by giving up playing the game when winning; he realizes it is not worth the cost. The moment of victory for all mankind is a moment of defeat for Ender.
As Ender was learning to fight and overcome his enemies, his former foe, his brother Peter is, with the help of his sister Valentine, establishing himself as the heir-apparent to the hegemony of earth. When the war ends Peter decrees that Ender will not be allowed to return to earth, and is essentially banished to the colonies opened up by the end of the war. Ender will spend the rest of his life traveling to these colonies with Valentine working to undo the damage his defeat of the Buggers, who Ender had destroyed, by giving back their place in the galaxy.
Ender's Game began life as a sci-fi short story, but in novel form it establishes itself as a model for all SF which ought to work to show, through the use of spectacular plot and setting, the strength and weakness of the human character. Ender's story is the story of the growth of character throughout life, not just childhood. Even as Graff thinks, and accepts, that he is responsible for the terrible actions Ender was forced to take in his training, Ender puts the weight of the destruction of the Buggers on himself. Ender showed that, although life is not fair and balanced, and surely ignorance of the implications of one's actions does not exempt one from them, each person must take up his burden.
Book Review: Playing For Keeps!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ender Wiggin is one of the children chosen by the world government of Earth. For the last three years, from age three to six, he's worn a monitor-a device designed and used to watch him day and night, so finely tuned that he'd started to believe that it could read his thoughts. Then, when he was six, the device was removed. Ender's whole world changed. Hated by his brother Peter, loved by his sister Valentine, Ender suddenly became prey for the bigger boys at his school. After an altercation in school and a display of viciousness and cold cruelty on Ender's part, he's told he made the program for the International Fleet, the first line of defense against the Buggers, an alien enemy encountered nearly fifty years ago that came short of destroying the planet. Graff, the man from I.F., tells Ender that he qualified for the Battle School program, where Ender will learn how to fight Buggers. The downside is that he won't get to see his family for ten years. And Battle School doesn't turn out exactly the way Ender had envisioned it would.Orson Scott Card is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer. In addition to the Ender Wiggin series (ENDER'S GAME, SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, XENOCIDE, CHILDREN OF THE MIND, ENDER'S SHADOW, SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON, and SHADOW PUPPETS), Card has also written the Homecoming series (THE MEMORY OF EARTH, THE CALL OF EARTH, THE SHIPS OF EARTH, EARTHFALL, and EARTHBORN) and the Tales of Alvin Maker series (SEVENTH SON, RED PROPHET, PRENTICE ALVIN, ALVIN JOURNEYMAN, and HEARTFIRE). HOMEBODY, TREASUR BOX and LOST BOYS are three of his works that heavily involve the supernatural in today's world. He's also written two novels about women from the Bible (REBEKAH and SARAH), and several stand-alone novels and other trilogies.
ENDER'S GAME is a wonderful read for old-time science fiction fans that cut his or her teeth on Robert Heinlein. The same depth of character in a young protagonist that Heinlein was noted for is present, and the world-building skills are sharp. At the same time, Card embraces the younger readers of SF by laying much of Ender's story in action and gameplay. Every young reader out there is living in an SF world when he or she plugs into a PlayStation game, and Card entices those players by showing how much fun his vision of the future is with null-gravity and gameplay. Ender comes across always as a real person with real problems. The pacing is quick, always pulling the reader into the next situation, providing tidbits of information that locks in the bigger picture by the time the reader gets there. Card's creation of words, situations, and tech-and the ease with which his characters (and the readers!) interface with it-is amazing.
This book is heartily recommended for readers already familiar with SF through Heinlein and Asimov, and to new readers who want a deeper and more immersive experience than the world presented by the latest video game. Well-written books are the closest things to virtual reality that exist at this time, and ENDER'S GAME is one of the best.
Book Review: Ender is a genius
Summary: 5 Stars
"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
Many thanks to Borders and Barnes & Noble for allowing me to read this in the store while my wife checks out books and magazines for herself.
This is quite the story.
Ender is a genius. He has been followed by some 'monitor' (inside his head or skin? Or just hovering around him?), so the government/military can make sure of his growth and development as well as his safety. He has grown up in a normal enough family: Mother, Father, brother and sister. He has just started school and is adjusting to this new life. There is a stigma associated with excess children, the world being a closed system, it can only support so many people. One or two children is all that is normally allowed; a third is taking advantage of everyone else, and is given a very bad social stigma. This is what Ender is: a third. When the 'monitor' is taken away, nobody knows it is just another test for his quality or fitness to be who he has to be. He passes and is taken away, after appropriate fussing and fuming, from his family to command school. It happens to be miraculous how prescient and adept the teacher Graff is in helping Ender become great, but it is fiction, so I guess the author can have the story do whatever he finds necessary.
It is hard for us 'normal' folks to understand all a genius thinks, so Mr. Card does not go into that, he just gives the impression of quality and intelligence exhibited in the actions and conversations of the heroes. I have read this sort of thing before (Robert Henlein). There I felt that the heroine was not shown to be such a great genius, in fact, she showed some very silly mistakes, not at all what a genius would do, as far as I am concerned.
In the edition I read, Mr. Card wrote an introduction. It was funny how different people took the notion of exceptional children. A teacher said it was all bosh. A bunch of exceptional children said he really got the problems and attitude shifts they use very correct. But some of that is odd, because he puts Ender in a school of exceptional children, so why the problems, etc.?
Mr. Card developed a full story. He gave the characters something to do and problems to work out, and in the end you felt very good about the future of the characters.