- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publication Date: 2013
- Print Copyright: 1985
- Disc Count: 9
- Listen Time: 11 hrs 57 minutes
- Author: Orson Scott Card
- Read by: Stefan Rudnick, Harlan Ellison, and others
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is the classic 1985 military science fiction book. The novel won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award in 1985 and 1986 respectively.
Sometime in the indeterminate future, Earth has survived attacks by an insectoid race, commonly known as the ‘buggers’. Humanity narrowly avoided disaster in the last invasion and has come together under the International Fleet. The fleet recruits the best and brightest children to send to battle school to prepare for the next invasion which is inevitably coming soon. The Earth is overcrowded and no one is allowed to have more than two children. Based on the exceptional qualities of the Wiggins’ first two children, they are allowed to have a Third, Andrew “Ender” Wiggins.
Bullied at school for being a “Third” and at home by his brother, Ender’s only true connection is with his sister, Valentine. Ender proves to have the genius of his siblings, but without quite the psychopathy of his older brother, Peter, or the overly empathetic nature of his sister. At six years old, he is recruited into the battle school that takes place off-Earth. Most of the novel takes place in these military schools and training exercises where Ender proves brilliant in his strategies and tactics and quickly takes on a leadership role amongst the students. The administration of the school puts great pressure on him as they believe him to be their best bet to help lead in the next bugger war which they suspect is very close.
This is a really great book. It is one of those timeless works that makes you think on multiple levels. How much is survival worth? What are we willing to do to increase our chances of ‘victory’? Do individual people have more worth than humanity? What is the cost to individuals in participating in war and killing? Do we need a universal foe to come together as humans?
Ender’s Game is really one of the ‘must read’ science fiction books. If you have never read it, you really should. If it’s been a few decades like it had for me, it’s probably time to revisit it. The twists are not as surprising on a re-read, but it is still a great story and a great book.
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Another great story…
Matt Truxaw’s newest book is Monster. This urban fantasy, horror, thriller will keep you turning the pages.
He is also the author of the hard science fiction thrillers: “Plastiphobia/Plastivore” and “Anthrophobia: A Teacher’s Tale”
You can find them all on Amazon in Paperback, Hardback, Kindle and/or free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
When you read any of them, he would really appreciate a review/rating on Amazon or your favorite book seller/book reader site.
More about Matt:
He was born in Orange County California many years ago and he still lives there. He has been reading books for most of those years and writing up book reviews for the last few years. He gets MANY of his books out of the library/Libby so expect a lot of old science fiction classics book reviews and other science related reviews in addition to newer books he comes across.
If you want to be ‘in-the-loop’ on these and other works, you can follow his website( MattTruxaw.com), his author’s page on Amazon or his Facebook page.
For more reviews and articles by Matt here on Amazing Stories (Click here).
Monster: A Novel by Matt Truxaw
