Beginning of the Ender

I'm a professional computer geek by day and have been for a long time. As such, I remain in awe of the work of SF writer Orson Scott Card in creating the acclaimed Ender series, which began with Ender's Game. The major motion picture of the same name, soon to be released, will no doubt inspire another generation of readers to savor this novel of special children, hand-picked from all over the world, who are ripped from their families and brutally prepared to save the Earth from deadly alien invaders. This visionary book, published in 1985 (before the World Wide Web was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye), foresaw so much related to my day job in IT: ubiquitous networking, virtual reality, multi-player online gaming so immersive that it blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Beyond that touch of brilliance, I loved the fact that - in the end - the invading aliens turn out to be, not monsters, but intelligent, sympathetic beings so fundamentally different from us that they simply didn't recognize our sentience in time to avert a catastrophic confrontation.

So Ender's Game, the first in the series, won every major award the SF literati had to offer. But here's the punch line: Card wrote this novel primarily to set the stage for the sequel he really wanted to write, Speaker for the Dead. Wow - are you kidding me? The novel written just to "establish the backstory" becomes an SF classic. Now that, my friends, is talent!

I loved Ender's Game - as well as the 3rd and 4th novels in the "main sequence," Xenocide and Children of the Mind - but Speaker for the Dead remains my personal favorite. Card's genius allows him to cover the entire "speculative idea spectrum" in these novels, from hard SF concepts like FTL communication or travel; advanced future technologies like nanotech and bioengineering; sociological insights about how economics, culture, and politics intertwine; and profound spiritual questions about the nature of intelligent life in (and outside of) our universe. But in Speaker for the Dead, he also weaves an intricate ecological tapestry in which a biosphere-destroying virus forces indigenous species to band together in a symbiotic dance with each other and the pathogen that threatens them. Only by adapting their reproductive processes and life cycles to interweave, to unite in common biologic cause against the virus, can the survivors avoid extinction.

Throughout these novels (and the many others that have subsequently sprung from the fertile ground of Card's Ender-verse), Card serves as our "speaker for the read." (Ouch... forgive me.) Just as a speaker for the dead helps those left behind to see the raw, unvarnished truth of the departed's life - in all its beauty and with all its scars revealed - Card delivers lyrical insights into the universal truths that guide us all. As a writer, I recall reading the Ender novels and thinking, "That's wisdom. It feels like a piece of the divine puzzle we all want to solve."

So, if you haven't already, begin with Ender. Who knows where your own journey of enlightenment will end?

#SFWApro