Doug Lewars's Blog - Posts Tagged "douglewars-sci-fi-genocide"

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Reading this book resulted in a feeling of daja vu. I think I probably read it in novella form so the basic story was familiar but, having been filled out into a novel I wasn't so familiar with the contents that I could feel that I was rereading it.

The basic story is classic science fiction. Aliens have attacked Earth, were beaten back through the heroic efforts of a hero, and now rebuilding is taking place with a view towards defending the planet against a further attack. The powers that be elect to create a new hero by examining children until they find one of sufficient intelligence that he or she can be groomed to command the fleet and eliminate the threat once and for all.

Of interest is the means by which they manipulate the chosen individual, have him engage in battle while thinking that he's working in a complex simulation device and then eventually deal with the political fall-out of victory. There are a number of complex sub-plots involving the heroes siblings and the relationships he has with them and then there's his difficulty with handling the realization that he's committed genocide or at least was tricked into doing so.

One thing I did find a little confusing was that while the aliens communicated telepathically with one another, and while humans didn't, somehow the aliens were able to read Ender's brain, alter a computer so as to display the information he would need at the end of the story, but be totally unable to simply communicate their existence to him - or anything else for that matter. In any event I think that's a quibble. The author needed such communication to take place and therefore it did.

For anyone who likes science fiction I highly recommend this book. It's exciting, never fails to be interesting, and raises some interesting questions regarding expediency in times of crises. In addition, it positions the reader to explore the author's other books. I haven't read them yet although I do plan to, but it appears that he'd done quite a bit of world-building by starting with the society we know and then extrapolating it while the characters work out their various destinies.




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