Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card’s first published science fiction was based on an idea that came to him when he was 16 years old. Inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac, he got to thinking about a Battle Room, an environment where future soldiers would be trained for combat in space. The result was the 1977 novelette and, later, this prescient 1985 novel, perhaps Card’s best-known book. Ender’s Game went on to win both Hugo and Nebula Awards for asking the startling What if gifted children were trained to fight in adult wars? … He was the third of his parents’ children to be monitored. Peter, his older brother, had been too uncontrollably violent. Valentine, his sister, seemed incapable of violence altogether. So they pinned their hopes on Andrew Wiggin-nicknamed Ender because of Valentine’s childish mispronunciation of his name-and took him to Battle School to begin his military education. He was six years old. Only Earth’s best made it to Battle School, where student armies fought mock wars in zero gravity…”games” intended to develop the tactics and strategies human soldiers would need against the alien enemy. The training was tough, but for Ender they made it tougher still-changing the rules of the game without warning, forcing him to stand alone without friends to rely on, pushing his natural abilities to the limit. For, ultimately, if Ender Wiggin proved himself less than brilliant, there was no hope for the human race.