Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

            Ender's Game is one of the most popular novels not just of science fiction, but apparently all of literature, particularly among teens despite not necessarily being written for them. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and was nominated for the Locus award. The book is even recommended reading for military recruits in the U.S. Marine Corps, which they placed in their “Professional Reading List”.

            Noticing that it was highly praised in the science fiction field, I had to check it out, and I did while in my teens. Upon my first reading, I really liked it. Wasn't my favorite novel (despite not having read many books yet), but I thought it was well-constructed and had a bit of a neat surprise at the end. A couple of years later, after finishing my Science Fiction Literature class, I decided to read it again, as I sometimes do with books I like.

            And I quickly came to detest it.

            After slugging through a few chapters, I started noticing something deeply wrong with the protagonist, Ender Wiggin. I started thinking back to what I remembered reading before, and realized that Ender Wiggin does terrible things. He is capable of attacking or even murdering those who bother him in one way or another, and not be punished or questioned. Adding to that, he is apparently multi-talented and quite intelligent and all that jazz. He is, in this novel, shown as a human with advanced capabilities, almost like a superhuman.

            What I'm getting at is that this novel seems to be supportive of nazism. I'm not the only one who made this connection by myself, either. This novel actually does, despite its still apparent and fluctuating popularity, happen to be notorious now because of a review written by another science fiction author, Elaine Radford, who even compared Ender Wiggin directly to Adolf Hitler. Orson Scott Card responded to the criticism in the same magazine in which Radford's criticism was published, but it didn't convince me of anything to the contrary thanks to his poor debate skills. In fact, from what I've heard, the next novel in the series, Speaker for the Dead, does question Ender and the things he does. Considering that, it seems likely he actually took Radford's criticism to heart and fixed things up, despite his response to her.

            But even if we're going to accept that Ender's Game is not intentionally supportive of nazism, it's not exactly written very well. It's easily accessible, which is part of the reason for its continued popularity, but there are certain portions of the novel in which Card tells rather than shows. Instead of showing us, for instance, that some of the characters like to play on computers by simulating a bit of what they do, he just says it flat out. We don't get a frantic scene full of joy and wonder in the world of computers, we just get a description. It’s more fun to read about adventure rather than description whenever that’s possible.

            I don't doubt, however, that what he created was intentional, especially considering his Mormon beliefs (which can explain other aspects of Ender I haven't mentioned here). Orson Scott Card, frankly, is a jerk. Don't believe me? Read his introduction for Ender's Game. I'll let his words speak for himself, but even after reading the introduction, there's more to learn, so send me a message if you'd like to learn more about him. Keep in mind that, yes, sometimes an author's viewpoint in life does sneak into the stories they write. I, too, have done so before.

            And put what I mentioned about teens and military recruiters liking and suggesting this book into perspective after reading my mini-review.

            Additional super fun fact: Speaker for the Dead also won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, which makes Orson Scott Card the only author to have received both awards consecutively. Which is a damn shame, because, while I don't know of the quality of Speaker for the Dead (don't care to find out, frankly), Card is not the kind of person I'd give that honor to. Considering I don't see a lot of his fiction gathered in various collections (of which I've read and seen plenty), I doubt I'm alone in that viewpoint, which makes me wonder even more why it won major awards in the first place.

            EDIT: Check out these two links for more information...

            On the titular character: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

            On Orson Scott Card himself: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034