"Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive"

Best Sci Fi novel(.) | Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) | Orson Scott Card

books:


	• Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) Orson Scott Card Tor Science Fiction, 1994 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 2697 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Forced reading vs. selective reading

The book was required reading for my 15 year old daughter. She hated it. While discussing the necessity of completing the required reading whether she liked it or not (I discussed loudly, she whined loudly) I picked it up and was fascinated with it from the beginning and was totally blown away with the ending. For a sci-fi and abstract reading junkie it's a gold mine. For a concrete thinker like my daughter it's a nightmare. One of the issues is that if someone is not a sci-fi or abstract reader they view the dialog as tortured and the plot as shallow because they can't get through the fiction to the "real" story that is abundant throughout the book. If someone can accept the fictional setting without trying to analyze it then they start to see the story within the story and that is where this writer excels.

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"Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive"

"Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive"
Ender is six years old when his is sent to Battle School, an elite school where Colonel Graff and Major Anderson oversee the training of these young children into the commanders and leaders who will save Earth from an impending fleet of aliens, called Buggers.

I Liked:
I read this book ages ago, when I was a teen, and it absolutely resounded with me. Once again, I feel the same connection.
The focus is tightly on Ender, with maybe two sections from Valentine's point of view and one from Bean. This works perfectly for this novel, allowing us to really get inside Ender's head and feel what Ender feels. As I read this book, I, in a way, became Ender, as he was placed in an unfamiliar, hostile environment, as he was forced to out-perform and as he saw flaws in the way people attacked and battled. I could relate to his feelings of loneliness, of isolation, of his delving into the Fantasy Game, of being unable to put something aside (again, the Fantasy Game), and his drive to succeed. Ender is a hero to those of us who have all experienced something harsh, in school, at work, with family. That is why I believe he is so relatable.
Card mentions in his introduction that he was initially an archaeology student, then a theater student and then eventually a journalism student. I mention this because he writes in a fairly hard scifi genre really well. He has a really good grasp of zero-g and didn't hand-wave faster-than-light travel (though he does have faster-than-light communications, but, again, this isn't hard-hard science fiction) and aliens (making them near humanoid, etc.). Being an engineer who has studied her fair share of chemistry, physics, and astronomy in and out of the classroom, I was impressed with his knowledge and how he wielded it.
Similarly, I was impressed at how well Card wrote the battle scenes that he did show. Obviously, a problem can occur in fiction, where you have a supposedly brilliant strategist or tactician but the author isn't. Card takes the "Tell don't show" route for all but a few of the most important, most necessary battles, which only helps Ender's character.
The story is brisk, well-written, and easy to read. Card doesn't linger over unimportant details, strikes a nice balance between too little and too much description and doesn't write in an "elitist" manner.
While the story is outwardly about the buggers and the Third Invasion, the story is also inwardly about the effects of war and battles on the mind of a child. Ender is never older than 12 during the war, and he is forced through things that most of us would be appalled should our children experience. He has to think outside the box, he loses faith and hope, he despairs. Constantly, he is pushed, his superiors believing him to be the "Savior" of mankind. Constantly, he must redefine the rules and be better, to never lose. It is a rough journey, it is a perilous quest, and I think it is something that all of us can associate with in one way or another.
Lastly, I was so amused how Card predicted the usage of the Internet (called "Net" in his book). I am sure that there are earlier examples of Internet phenomena, but I still find it amazing that Card basically predicted blogs, online forums (are there any other than online these days?), trolls, several identities, and the whole wondering who you are when you have an online persona that is different from you (something that Valentine especially has to come to grips with). In my "online" life, I've experienced it, and I must say that Card has written it very well, particularly when he had nothing to go on other than his imagination!

I Didn't Like:
Sometimes the children tended to act older than their age.
The conclusion, I felt, was rather hastily written. It was almost a broad summary instead of a nice, succinct ending. I mean, it left room for a sequel, which was good, but none-the-less, I felt the story could definitely have ended sooner.

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
Lots and lots of talk of "farts", "p***", and other sorts of body humor. Other than that (which got overwhelming at times), there isn't a whole lot of d***, h***, or b*****d.
Petra is one of the few girls, and her first appearance is in the nude (non-sexual). The way that Valentine and Ender feel for each other could be construed as borderline incestuous.
Gobs. Ender beats up a kid outside school enough so that he dies (he doesn't learn this until much later). Peter threatens to kill Valentine and Ender (where are the parents?). Ender experiences much torment at school and ends up in numerous fights.

Overall:
I am not the one for gushing over books, at least I like to believe I don't. Of course, I have my favorites, but I try to be objective as I can.
This is a very good book. It really brought back the "child" in me, if you will. It made me look into myself and see my struggles, my hardships, my brick walls. To me, this is a classic scifi novel, a classic "coming of age" novel. I highly recommend.

Brought to you by:
*C.S. Light*

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Best Sci Fi novel(.)

This story resonated with me. If I never read it, I would be worse for it.

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One of my new favorite sci-fi books

I hadn't picked up a sci-fi/fantasy book in over 15 years before I went looking to have something to read while on vacation. When I was younger I mostly read Dragonlance and Star Wars books. While browsing on Amazon I came across this book due to the number of positive reviews and the story being based around futuristic space combat. I have to say this has been one of the best and easiest to read books I have ever opened. Once you pick the book up it's difficult to put down. I finished reading it in less than two days and wished it'd been another 300 pages longer once I'd flipped over the last page.

I won't go through the summary of the book since this has been done in countless reviews so I'll just add my thoughts on points of the book that stick out to me.

One of the biggest positives for me was the ease of reading of the book. I don't remember having to re-read any sentences in the book to grab the meaning and I didn't even notice myself turning the pages as I read.

There wasn't a bunch of characters to keep up with and the side characters were written in a way that they were easily identifiable when they showed up each time in the book. One reason for this is the book stays mostly focused on Ender's point of view and doesn't try to write a point of view for each friend/enemy he comes across.

The ending has two twists that I thought fit very well with the story and unfortunately I ruined one of them for myself by reading too many Amazon reviews and reviews of other books in the series. Without spoiling it for someone else I will say I really liked how the author used the dream sequence throughout the book and tied a meaning to it near the end.

Something I found different about this book compared to the books I'd read as a kid was the books I was used to reading had an adult/adults protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist of the book starts out at 6 years old but acts like and is written more as an adult. It took a few chapters of reading to suspend disbelief of this concept and treat the character as a special case (The author on countless occasions makes sure you remember the age of the characters). The book makes references to Ender and his siblings being "special" but doesn't go into detail whether it's through genetic manipulation or something else; only that his parents were authorized to have a third child when the first two didn't pan out (couples by law weren't allowed more than two children). His two siblings are also written more like adults than kids and end up manipulating world politics in their pre-teen years.

The main character is also portrayed as having ruthless fighting tactics which was hard to picture for a 6 year old hero (or maybe I should say anti-hero) character. His fights weren't knocking someone out, rendering them unconscious or blooding someone's nose but to permanently put kids (close to his own age) out of commission. The writer tries to justify this by dropping the hero in "odds stacked against him" situations but it's still hard picturing a 6 year old launching killing maneuvers against other kids less than ten years of age; regardless what they did to him.

The ending to the book wraps up a little abruptly and due to one of the twists near the end there isn't much suspense built up when the climax of the book comes.

I haven't yet decided if I'll read the other books in the series. From reading reviews of those books they don't appear to live up to the first in the series and the writing style seems to be more about political and social issues as opposed to interstellar war.

Overall I highly recommend this book to anyone that likes science fiction/fantasy and especially futuristic fiction.

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Space Kids Save Planet Earth

Young readers love this story of a young boy who is identified as a candidate for training for command in the war with the Boogers, space aliens who have been repelled once, but are coming again to conquer Earth. The child is put through rigorous training in computer simulations and virtual reality theaters to ascertain his qualifications for command of a military force to defend Earth and even to attack the Booger's home planet.

Young people, for whom computer games and vitural reality theaters are common, will accept without qaueston the premise that a youth can become the defender of Earth. While the tale is exciting and fast paced, it lacks verisimilatude. Personnally, I would want the older, experienced, wiser commanders to hold my fate in the balance than a young kid who was out of diapers a little more than a decade ago.

Orson Scott Card is a prolific writer of adventure and this novel is very fast paced and will provide enjoyment, as long as you segment it from your logical, calculating left side of the brain.

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Winer of the Hugo and Nebula Awards

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut?young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

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