Note: I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because they promised me remuneration, and like any good novelist I am for sale. (lw)
People have been telling me I needed to read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game for years, but I resisted. Science Fiction generally doesn’t interest me a lot, and to be honest Card’s LDS faith put me off. But now the book is coming out as a film, and gay activists want everybody to boycott it because Card’s a pro-family Mormon. So suddenly he’s an ally, and I’m almost obligated to see the film. And if I’m going to do that I might as well read the book. Which I did.
I’m glad I did. It’s very strange, very intense, and heartbreaking.
Andrew (Ender) Wiggin is the result of genetic experimentation in a future where reproduction is regulated by law. His brother and sister were part of the same experiment, and they’re all brilliant, but the brother is a sociopath and the sister too empathetic for the purposes of the program.
The purpose is to create a super-general, a military genius who can lead the forces of Earth against the insectoid “Buggers,” who attacked and nearly destroyed us a generation previously. Knowing we can’t survive another such attack, the world government has created a space station Combat School and filled it with hotshot young students, all of them geniuses. But it’s actually all about Ender. The whole thing exists to hone little Ender (he’s only six when he’s recruited) into a master strategist and tactician, without mercy or hesitancy.
Ender’s compassionate side – which is part of what the government wants from him – agonizes over the choices he has to make, and the things he must do, not only to win the war games but to survive in an environment where several other kids, most of them older than he, envy him enough to kill him. His handlers are ashamed of what they put him through, but they do it anyway, in order to forge their perfect human weapon.
Some have complained that the kids in this book don’t talk like kids, and they’re right. I had to keep reminding myself that these were children and pre-teens. But Card himself responds that we’re talking about geniuses here. There’s nothing normal about the situation. And realism isn’t exactly the point.
I don’t think I’d have guessed a Mormon wrote this book if I hadn’t known beforehand, though there are a couple clues. I was surprised by a kum-bah-ya element in the final resolution. I don’t know enough about LDS theology to know whether they believe (as this story seems to suggest) that there’s no such thing as evil. Or (more likely) I’m reading it wrong.
Intense, compelling. Recommended.
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