Ender's Game -- a Solid Beginning

When asked to list outstanding contemporary authors in the science-fiction field, there are very few people who will overlook Orson Scott Card. Card found his first major success in Ender's Game, and the series has never looked back. The Nebula and Hugo awards granted to him should indicate the esteem awarded to Card by the sci-fi community.

Upon cursory inspection, Ender's Game appears to be a strange combination of children's story and full-fledged fiction. The main character begins the story at the age of six, although he is nearly twelve by the end of the novel. By dent of the ages, the book appears to be aimed toward children, and it has met a fair amount of success in that market. Despite this, the book was originally intended for a much older audience: upward of 16 years, if the vocabulary used and plot-points developed have any say. For all that book stores tend to market it with Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and Pendragon, it's clearly set apart from other young-adult fiction by the sophistication of the text and the deft handling of the characters.

As a character, Andrew (called Ender) is everything you never wanted your child to become. He's a harshly analytical, socially outcast child with a chip on his shoulder and the cognitive ability of a super-computer. When he's sent to a school in orbit around the earth to train as a soldier, he is immediately set apart from his peer group. This doesn't faze him in the least. Instead, while his peers are enjoying their brief moments of social time, Ender develops new tactics to win their simulated battles, completely rewriting the laws of the game.

Ender is, in short, concentrated intelligence. Those who are sent to training in this space station are the best of the best from every nation in the world: approximately four hundred children, with the fate of the earth riding on their shoulders. They are trained to be analytical, tactical nightmares. And Ender stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Despite centering almost entirely around Ender, with brief snippets from his commanding officers, the story is also rife with believable secondary characters. If a character is named, they are memorable, beginning with Ender's horrible brother Peter, and ending with Bean, the child Ender pushes into the same social void in which he himself was trained. The characters are given extremely distinctive names, courtesy of school custom. Ender, Bean, Valentine, Poke and Achilles are only the tip of the iceberg.

Because the characters take the brunt of Card's effort, the actual plot of this novel is often overlooked in reviews.  As a fan of both plot and characters, I feel the need to fill that dearth. Essentially, the premise boils down to this: There is a species of aliens known as Buggers who are attempting to wipe out the earth. In an effort to defend humanity, the nations of the world have ceded control of their most talented children to an organization in space, which attempts to train them to be superior tactical officers. To do this, they play fiercely competitive games within platoons of semi-soldiers in which the ranks are extremely strict. Ender, ostracized from the accepted group of new students, has to make his own way as the last of the draft. The administrators push him the hardest because they see the most potential in him, and while it earns them his disdain (perhaps even hatred), it does push him to become the savior that the earth needs.

This, in the package of a twelve-year-old kid.

Possibly the strongest plot element that Ender's Game has in its favor is the political aspect. If you want a master of subtle, subversive politics, your top choices are Orson Scott Card, Sara Douglass and George R R Martin. Since the latter writers work in fantasy sagas instead of science fiction, Card is your man. The politics behind the administrators of the organization are rich with political intrigue, but that's not where the interest falls. Instead, look to the loyalty divisions between the platoons. Some are allied, some estranged, some violently embittered, and within them all is an unwritten but pervasive social code which controls everything from where you stand in the lunch line to what time you're allowed to use the restroom. This is not imposed from the outside, but rather, is created solely within the minds of the children. Ender is particularly aware of these hierarchical boundaries, as he's at the bottom of the totem pole. From the outsider vantage point, we're capable of seeing the subtle machinations of the higher-ups, and the echoes which are sent down through the echelons until they reach the lowest of the low.

As a novel, Ender's Game is an engaging piece of fiction with more depth than half of the literary fiction I've read in my life. The characters move believably, the plot has sharp turns, the narrative is tight, and the overall effect is one of absolute satisfaction. It holds true to the science-fiction genre while still managing to embrace the character development and thought provocation that are evocative of literary fiction. Mix in an iron-firm sense of how to properly tell a story and a master's hand at stirring the concoction, and this novel is well on its way to the literary summit. Add the final touch: the following books in the series don't seem like hokey, overplayed attempts to wring more money out of people -- the sequel, prequel and subsequent series are all solid books as stand-alones, as well as logical progressions from the original story. In the science-fiction genre, that's nothing short of astounding.

Then again, we are talking about Orson Scott Card.