Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card

…Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

The battle for self discovery is probably matched in intensity by one’s endeavor to understand others. We encounter in our daily lives people who treat all things living – plant or animal – as equal and some for whom anyone outside a narrow band defined by caste, creed, color or country is a stranger to be treated with fear and animosity in equal measure. Neither of these extreme positions is right or wrong but is probably something that we inherit in our race for survival. “If it is me versus someone/something else it better be me”, is the thought that predominates our thinking in these matters. Speaker for the Dead attempts at looking beyond this narrow parochial view and asks us to question these inheritances in our thinking.

Its 3000 years after Ender Wiggin annihilated the Buggers in Ender’s Game. Now entrusted with task of resurrecting the same species he destroyed Ender hops from planet to planet trying to find the place where the Queen can hatch and live again. Ender, as Speaker for the Dead, has demonstrated to humanity that Buggers meant no harm with the result that he is now the greatest holocaust villain in all human history. Meanwhile, in faraway Lusitania a new species of beings (Pequeninos or Piggies) are discovered and humankind is yet again faced with the choice of understanding if they are capable of communication and peaceful co-existence with the human race. The book outlines the journey of Ender, the residents of Lusitania, Piggies and other characters as they come to terms with each other and try to find a common ground where all can co-exist.

Speaker for the Dead, is a unique sequel since it not only carries the story of the main character forward but also takes ahead the essential idea in the first book. It matches and even exceeds the original in terms of the ideas that form the bedrock for the plot. It is however not as fast paced as the original book and the excitement and intensity in the narrative is lacking. However, for those who liked the philosophical underpinnings in Ender’s Game this is a must read.

Related Posts – Ender’s Game

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?