Ender's Game

How this novel affects you depends strongly on your age when you first read it. If you discovered this book in your pre- and early-teen years, perhaps when you were heavily into video- and computer-games, and/or feeling somewhat alienated from your peers, you are likely to have felt "OMG! This is the Best Book EVAH!" If you come to the book as an adult, the 'manipulating' is a bit more visible and you might be slightly less moved.

Ender's Game

The plot follows Andrew Wiggins, called Ender after his older sister's mispronunciation of his name. A 'third' (a family's unusual third child, rarely allowed), he is uniquely gifted, and at six is picked for special training.

Earth has been at war for decades with an alien race about which very little is known. In desperation, Earth has begun to train a cadre of elite space-fighters from a very early age. Ender is sent to Battle School to learn to command space fleets in battle against the 'Buggers'.

The novel also follows the machinations of Ender's siblings, Peter and Valentine, as they work to manipulate the political process on Earth. Both geniuses of the same caliber as Ender, but unsuited psychologically for military command, they hide their youth by engaging only in cyberspace, changing the political landscape.

"Graduation"

Ender and his peers learn military strategy, space navigation, and engage in increasingly more challenging computer battles against the simulated Bugger fleet - these simulations are the 'games' that the children play. As a final test, they take part, Ender commanding, in a massive simulation that they successfully complete.

Only at the end of the 'game' do they learn that the 'simulation' was real, that the children were commanding ships in actual attack, and that their 'win' was ultimate. They succeeded in destroying the 'queens' of the bugger race, effectively dooming them.

Before he is even an adult, Ender has committed genocide.

After Ender

Ender's subsequent life, dealing with what he considers his 'crime', are told in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.

Card also retells the events of Ender's Game in Ender's Shadow, told from the point of view of 'Bean', a lesser character, not as central to the story as Ender. Bean's story continues in Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giants.

A movie version of Ender's Game has been in the works for some time.

Orson Scott Card

Card has become a rather controversial figure in sci-fi culture, due to his Mormon beliefs, particularly his 'family values' beliefs that many characterize as actively homophobic. Science fiction fandom is notably laissez faire on social issues, and many a sci-fi discussion on Card has degenerated into whether or not you can support, by your purchase of his books, a writer whose beliefs many anathematize. Oddly, these beliefs have not permeated his fiction, as Heinlein's did in his later writings, so one can read his fiction and remain supremely unaware of them.

Whatever his personal beliefs, Card is very generous with his knowledge; he has written a number of books on writing, including Characters and Viewpoints and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, and his personal website, Hatrack River, includes a number of very useful essays and lessons on writing.