It’s easy to mistake them for the real thing. Card presents these “battles” with verve and clarity. Much of the action in the story takes place in the war games that Ender and other students play at their school, to hone their skills and strategies. But he pays a steep physical and emotional price, even suffering something of a nervous breakdown at a couple of points. Indeed, his two older siblings were considered, but his brother Peter was too cruel and his sister Valentine too compassionate.Īt level after level of his training, Ender rises to the challenge. And, now, the planetary military forces are preparing for a third and decisive clash.įor this, a commander of the highest genius is needed, so the powers-that-be set about to create one.Įnder is just one of a plethora of children who are candidates. Humanity has survived two incursions by the ant-like, telepathic, highly centralized buggers - just barely. Over those five years, he has endured isolation and ostracization, has fought off two crowds of bullies with deadly results, has become a star at Battle School and a superstar at Command School, and has been asked to win a war with an alien people known as buggers.

He recently began a longterm position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.Ĭard currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.Ender Wiggin is six at the start of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and eleven by the time the novel’s action has concluded. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.īesides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.Ĭard was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card