The Ender's Game Series (or simply Ender Series) is a series of science fiction books by Orson Scott Card. The series started with the novelette "Ender's Game", which was later expanded into the novel Ender's Game. It currently consists of nine novels, ten short stories, and two books yet to be published. The first two novels in the series, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, each won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and were among the most influential science fiction novels of the 1980s. It has been referred to as the Enderverse. The series is set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an aggressive alien society, an insect-like race known colloquially as "Buggers" but more formally as "Formics." The central character, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, is one of the child soldiers trained at Battle School (and eventually Command School) to be the future leaders of the protection of Earth. The year is never specified, although the ages of the Wiggins children are specified to change throughout space, also carefully taking in the relative of space and time.
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Ender series
Card went back and expanded the short story into a novel after realizing that he wanted to use Ender as a main character in another novel, Speaker for the Dead. That novel takes place three thousand years after Ender's Game, although due to relativistic space travel Ender himself (now using his own name, Andrew) is only 35, making him only 13 years older than he was at the end of Ender's Game. While the first novel was soft science space opera with armies and space warfare, Speaker for the Dead and its two sequels Xenocide and Children of the Mind are more philosophical in nature. They deal with the difficult relationship between the humans and the "Piggies" (or "Pequeninos"), and Andrew's attempts to stop another xenocide from happening (after the one caused by himself in the Bugger War). Currently a prequel book to Speaker for the Dead, named Ender in Exile: Ganges, is planned on being made as well. It is said to be about Ender meeting a character from the Shadow series. A new book entitled "A War of Gifts" was released in October 2007. [1] It is set during Ender's first year in Battle School.
Shadow series
Starting with Ender's Shadow, four more novels have been released which tell the story of the people whom Ender left behind — this has been dubbed the Shadow series (also known as the "Bean Quartet"). Ender's Shadow is a parallel novel to Ender's Game, telling many of the same events from the perspective of Bean, a mostly peripheral character in Ender's Game, while Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant tell the story of the struggle of world dominance after the Bugger War, in which the Battle School children, as well as Ender's brother, Peter Wiggin, are involved. Currently a sequel book to Shadow of the Giant, named Shadows in Flight, is planned on being made as well. It is said to finish the Enderverse as a whole and explain some unanswered questions.
Novels in the series
To date there have been nine novels in the Ender's Game series. According to Card, there is no strictly preferred order of reading them.[2] The books can be read in the order they were originally written in or in chronological order.
Publication date
- Ender's Game
- Speaker for the Dead
- Xenocide
- Children of the Mind
- Ender's Shadow
- Shadow of the Hegemon
- Shadow Puppets
- Shadow of the Giant
- A War of Gifts: An Ender Story
Chronological order
- Ender's Shadow
- Ender's Game
- A War of Gifts: An Ender Story - set during Ender's Game
- Shadow of the Hegemon
- Shadow Puppets
- Shadow of the Giant
- Speaker for the Dead
- Xenocide
- Children of the Mind
Short stories in the series
Shorter works set in the Ender's Game series can be found in the short story collection First Meetings by Orson Scott Card and in his webzine InterGalactic Medicine Show. Card has promised to publish an Ender story with each new issue.
First Meetings
InterGalactic Medicine Show
- "Mazer in Prison"
- "Pretty Boy"
- "Cheater"
- "A Young Man with Prospects"
- "The Gold Bug"
- "Ender's Stocking"
References
- ^ Orson Scott Card at Fantastic Fiction
- ^ Card, Orson Scott. "Question: What's the 'preferred' order of reading the Ender series?". Frequently Asked Questions. Hatrack.com. Retrieved on 2007-05-15.
See also
- List of characters in the Ender's Game series
- Concepts in the Ender's Game series
- List of works by Orson Scott Card
