Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

The question of free will is something that humanity has grappled for eons. Do we have a choice in the paths we take? Or, are we no more than robots that someone – God, Society, Humanity – has a fixed purpose for? The existential dilemma might be for most of us a matter to ponder upon after a good Sunday lunch and having nothing consequential to do but for Ender Wiggin, the protagonist of Orson Scott Card’s amazing novel, it is something that comes up on a daily basis. After all Ender is a kid no more than 10 years old; and the sole reason that he is allowed to exist is that he will save the human race.

Questions like these make for great sci-fi fiction (Asimov’s Foundation Series; Clarke’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey; Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven)  and Ender’s Game is as good as they come (it won both the Nebula and Hugo awards). But what makes this standout from the crowd is that the philosophy is never in the limelight. It is always Ender – Ender the traumatized kid, Ender the brilliant soldier or Ender the supreme survivalist. The questions remain in the background but never become the focus. As a result Ender’s Game is probably a case study in character descriptions and how characters rather than the plot they inhabit are what define a story.

This is a book that will hold you by the collar and kick you straight in the gut. Make no mistakes about that. And it will creep into your thoughts and keep you up some nights. But you can’t put it down. Or at least, I couldn’t.

Note: The success of Ender’s Game has beget an entire universe of ancilliary works. It will be probably too much to expect the same quality in all books. So are there any sequels that I must read?