After books 2 and 3 and 4 and whatever they’re up to now, I just assumed “Ender” was meant as more ironic than cute.
Lamia took away my only actual observation, dammit. It’s a story about a really smart, really isolated kid–which a great many science fiction fans can empathize with, particularly when really first getting into the genre–who despite all his suffering, never loses–which is beyond appealing to that large segment who can empathize deeply with the first bit. The character makes for a marketing slam-dunk.
It’s one of those books that I’m hesitant to ever read again, for fear of knocking down the memory of how good it was.
The big boys in charge base this belief on the fact that Ender’s test scores are quite plainly the best ever. They developed a sophisticated battery of intelligence and personality tests to find kids like Ender, and he’s the best example they’ve ever come across. They doubted that they’d ever find anyone else just as good, certainly not anytime soon.
And, as Shalmanese points out, in Ender’s Shadow it is revealed that Bean was considered The Next Best Thing and was being groomed to replace Ender if necessary. He was inferior to Ender physically (because he was so small) and in terms of personality, but he was smarter. Not as great of a leader, but the high command was willing to run with him if Ender cracked.
As Peter says in the book, if their kid brother is supposed to be the great hope for all humanity, why shouldn’t his big brother and sister amount to something also? They were both at least as smart as Ender, and were only passed over for Battle School because they didn’t have the proper personalities for military leaders. Heck, it was Peter and Val’s extraordinary qualities that made the government allow, or rather ask, the Wiggin family to have a third child. Peter and Val’s fame and influence may require some suspension of disbelief, but I think it would require even more to think that they spent their lives working at the mall and watching TV rather than accomplishing something great.
Card’s reason for the name Ender was stated in one of his books, I believe he wanted something like “end game” in chess. It’s no worse than the other names in the book, anyway. Bean? Dink Meeker? Rose the Nose? It’s the sort of names kids give each other.
And actually, the Buggers are called Formics, but Bugger is the word used by the general public. There’s a bit in Ender’s Shadow about it, and this will probably make it into the Ender’s Game movie.
Railing on Card for using SF cliches is kind of silly when he uses them well… most things in SF are cliches anyway, and it makes sense in the book. Why do they fight us? They can’t understand us! I liked it.
If you thought his naming in Ender’s Game was wacky, you’d really dislike the Alvin Maker series. A guy named Taleswapper that tells stories! That crazy Card!
Ender’s Game, the novel, was written in 1985, not the 1970s.
“Ender’s Game”, the short story that the above novel was based on, was written in 1977 – but I don’t believe it had any of the more computery stuff that appeared in the later novel.
Terrifel asked, in the OP:
To me, it’s pretty obvious:
Ender is the person that every Science Fiction enthusiast sees himself as.
He’s smarter than average, exceptionally good at video games, and a social outcast. He gets to command vast space armadas at the age of 14. The whole world is full of stupid people that are out to “bring him down” to their level, but he won’t let them. And, best of all, he is never wrong.
Sounds like your average Science Fiction reader – or at least, your average Science Fiction reader’s fantasies of greatness.
Ender’s Game: The Movie. There’s a thought to boggle the mind. Wonder if there’ll be any kind of video game tie-in…nah.
How the heck would that even work? A claustrophobic, talky movie that features eight-year olds beating each other to death, or being browbeaten and terrorized by older kids with the sanction of faceless military authorities? Clearly a film for the whole family. Spielberg should direct.
So, evidently the general consensus is that Ender’s Shadow is a worthwhile read. Although it goes totally against my principles, I may just have to pick it up at the library. If nothing else, I’ll be interested to see how Card handles telling the same story twice, and if he more plausibly addresses some of the elements of the first novel that struck me as incomprehensibly weird.
I have to say that, reading Ender’s Game, I never picked up on the idea that the kids were supposed to be genetically engineered. Clearly there was some sort of eugenics program going on, but it seemed awfully halfhearted. Surely if you have 70-plus years of warning that the survival of the species is going to hinge on having a super-bright kid on hand, you’d want a few countries’ worth of them before Zero Hour rolls around. Are we meant to understand that somewhere outside the main storyline there are thousands of other Ender clones being raised by other families, and this one just happens to be the pick of the litter? Or has the science of genetics languished in the same manner as their artificial intelligence research?
I guess this would imply that all the other kids in Battle School were also superintelligent transgenics. If nothing else, then, the Ender’s Game movie will probably be the only sci-fi film ever to make the case that genetically engineered superior humans actually should be in charge of things. Unless they downplay or bowdlerize that particular message, which they probably will.
I agree with all this, but do oyu want to know something really interesting? I had my sophmores read Ender’s Game, and the kids who really, really loved it were the special ed kids and the other-wise indifferent students. Now, I don’t have any geniuses or close to geniuses–I weeded out the couple that I started the year with and sent them to pre-AP (one of the hardest parts about teaching only regular kids is that the best thing I can do for a kid is kick them out of my class), but I actually worried before I started the book that I would alienate the really slow ones. But they loved the fucking book. They didn’t neccesarily **get[/ib] alot of it, but they began to be engaged and interested in a book for the first time ever.
I think the book worked so well because 1. the cruelty and viciousness of kids in the book resonates with my kids and 2. as much as we smrt, ugly, unpopular kids tohught we were the most alienated kids in school, the stupid, ugly, unpopular kids could have taught us all a lesson in the pains of alination. They responded very well to Ender’s feelings of isolation, lonliness, and rage. Furthermore, virtually all of my kids come from non-traditional homes–out of 26 in that class, I have two kids with parents in jail that I know of, and several kids who are shuttled between various family members for all sorts of reasons. They so got Ender’s fear of becoming like Peter–it’s a fear alot of them live with every day.
The only problem I had was that it was so damn long for struggling readers. I had to read the whole thing outloud because they couldn’t/wouldn’t read it on their own, and it took 9 weeks. Next year we may do the novella instead.
This is understandable, as there is nothing of that nature in the book. I’ve been puzzled myself to see people in this thread mention it. Ender was not genetically engineered in any way. In Ender’s Shadow it is revealed that Bean (and apparently Bean alone of all Battle School students) is the product of a genetic engineering experiment, but this was not an experiment conducted, or even authorized by, the government.
There’s an editorial, I think from the early 90s but it could be the late 90s, called “The Emperor of Everything” and I know it’s in either Analog, Asimov’s, or F&SF. Card’s work featured prominently in this editoral, although I think it was more the Alvin Maker series than the Ender series. Anyone know what I’m talking about? I’m sure I’ve got it in one of my issues here with me, but I don’t really want to search all of them.
Ah, here it is. I grabbed an issue on a hunch and it turned out right, even though I was wrong about the time. The January 1988 issue of Asimov’s; the On Books column by Norman Spinrad. He spends some time talking about the cliche, present in everything from Star Wars to Dune to The Lord of the Rings, not to mention countless pulps. For what it’s worth, Spinrad finds Songmaster and Hart’s Hope to be far superior to Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.
I’d suggest reading the editorial if you can find it somewhere. The only reason I even have a copy is because I found this particular issue in a used book store when the story I was really interested in locating was Connie Willis’ Ado (for reasons I won’t go into unless asked.)
Ado?
I now pronounce you Man and Wife.
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
Wrong! Cite. The internet, a.k.a. ARPAnet, came about in the sixties.
But everybody knows that Al Gore invented the Internet in 1991! 
I haven’t read the novella but I’ve read about it, and they changed quite a bit. Originally, there were no ‘buggers’ - the war was between two factions of humans, those centered around the government on Earth and a colony in another star system. In the novella, Ender had no idea that he was playing anything more than games until the very end, and there was no need to empathize with his enemies - they were just dots in a holographic projection, all the battles were in space, and the final one ended in the destruction of the rebels planet.
I liked it, I don’t think I would like the novel, though.
The original short story is availible for free on OSC’s website (www.hatrack.com). Its pretty poor IMHO.