Ender's Game

Let’s talk about books. Everybody has a favorite book, or at least, one that would read once and once again. I’ve always loved to read, and one of my favorite books since I first read it is “Ender’s game”, by Orson Scott Card. Do you know it? It’s set in a future where mankind has barely survived two invasions by the "buggers", an insectoid alien race, the world's most talented children, including the extraordinary Ender Wiggin, are taken into "Battle School" at a very young age to supply commanders for the expected Third Invasion. If you want to know more about it, read the text in italics, if not, skip it!!!

**SPOILER**

Andrew Wiggin (Ender) is a brilliant six-year-old boy, born as a third child into a United States that only permits families of two children each, thus his very existence required permission from the government. Ender is the youngest in a family of 5, both his older brother and sister (Peter and Valentine) are very intelligent, but Peter is evidently cruel and sadistic, while Valentine's temperament is nurturing and sweet. He has been closely watched for years through a monitor on the back of his neck. As a Third, and as an exceptionally smart student, he invites scorn from the children surrounding him. At the end of the first school day after the removal of his monitor, the bullies of the school begin teasing and mildly attacking him for it. In response and to defend himself, Ender beats the ringleader, Stilson, until he could no longer get up, to end not just that fight, but all future fights with the bully and his gang.
The next morning, members of the International Fleet, or IF, arrive at Ender's home to offer him a place at the Battle School, a space station where children are trained for military command. Colonel Hyrum Graff, the leader of the Battle School, believes that Ender is the last hope for the survival of mankind against the alien Buggers. He reluctantly accepts.
Life at the Battle School isn’t easy for Ender. His caretaker, Colonel Graff, isolates him from the others, which forces him to face his problems alone and to become stronger from it, rather than relying on others for his strength. It also makes him work hard to make friends and stay ahead of his enemies.
Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students, and becoming the best of all of them.
Ender is promoted to command of his own army, years earlier than usual, setting him up for resentment from his peers and pushing his abilities to the limit (intentionally). Despite having only 3 weeks to train instead of the standard 3 months before their first battle, his army completely annihilates their first opponent with almost no casualties. After that, he never loses a battle, despite engagements that are (deliberately) weighted against them.
After some time, he is allowed to go home on a short leave. Not wanting to see his family, he is kept isolated from everyone at a small lake in the woods. The IF, worried that he is no longer motivated to continue his studies, employs his sister Valentine to motivate him.
After these three months, Ender returns and is promoted to Command School, almost six years early, to learn to combat the Buggers in space instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He is taught by Mazer Rackham, the genius behind the previous human success against the buggers. He will be augmented by a cadre of his best friends (and the best commanders) from Battle School; Ender assigns them to individual flights or squadrons of ships while he remains in overall charge.
Ender and his "dream team" begin to fight ever-more-challenging battles, in which his team must frequently fight with outmoded hardware, and the enemy frequently outnumbers them and quickly learns to adapt to Ender's tactics—even the ones that won yesterday's battle. Fatigued in mind and body, his team slowly succumbing to exhaustion, Ender begins to lose hope.
In Ender's final exam before graduating from Command School, he and his team find themselves in possession of a small fleet, approaching a planet that is literally swarming with Bugger ships, outnumbering his own force a thousand to one. Ender duplicates his final battle at Battle School and destroys the planet around which the Bugger fleet is orbiting (taking the surrounding fleet with it), demonstrating that he is far too ruthless to be trusted with command of an actual battle fleet.
When the simulation ends, Rackham and Graff tell Ender that he has not been playing a game, and had never played against Rackham, but instead has been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; this task was made possible via the ansible, a form of instantaneous communication making use of Philotic Energy. He has just commanded the fleet attacking the Buggers' home planet, and destroyed the entire race once and for all.
When Ender learns that he has been playing a game with real peoples' lives, he lapses into four days of exhausted depression, completely void of reality, dozing in and out. Feeling the full weight of the deaths he has caused, made heavier by his apparent love and respect of the Buggers, developed over his interaction with them, he refuses to respond to anyone for a time, until conflict breaks out at the command center. Immediately after the end of the Bugger War, war breaks out on Earth in a dispute about who gains control of Ender. The impact is clear: Ender cannot return to Earth because he would simply be used as a tool of the dominant government on Earth, eventually led by Ender's older brother, Peter Wiggin. Fearing for Ender, his sister blackmails Peter into leaving Ender in peace, allowing him to be sent out on one of the first colonization ships as the governor of the new colony on a former bugger planet.

**END OF THE SPOILER**

Orson Scott Card wrote it in 1985. The novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2007) winner of both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, but they’re nothing comparable to Ender’s Game. Many generations have enjoyed the novel, and if you haven’t read it yet, try to find some free time to do it, because its really worth it! keep tuned!