Ender's Game (short story)


"Ender's Game" is a science fiction short story by American writer Orson Scott Card. It first appeared in the August 1977 issue of Analog magazine and was later expanded into the 1985 novel Ender's Game. Although the foundation of the Ender's Game series, the short story is not properly part of the Ender's Game universe, as there are many discrepancies in continuity.

Plot summary

This story begins as Ender is made the commander of Dragon Army at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy. Armies are groups of students that fight mock battles in the Battle Room, a null gravity environment, and are subdivided into "toons". Due to Ender's genius in leadership, Dragon Army dominates the competition. After his nineteenth consecutive victory, Ender is told that his Army is being broken up and his toon leaders made commanders in their turn, while he is transferred to Command School for the next stage of his education. Here, veteran Maezr Rackham tutors him in the use of a space battle simulator. Eventually, many of his former toon leaders serve under him once more. Once familiar with the simulator, they fight a series of what Maezr tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy. Ender's team wins again and again, finally destroying a planet that the enemy fleet seems to be protecting. Once the battle is over, Maezr tells Ender that all battles were real, the children's commands having been relayed to the extant fleet, and that he has destroyed the enemy's home world and ended the war.

Characters

Children

This short story was later expanded into the 1985 novel Ender's Game. Although the basic plot is the same, the novel changes some elements, and introduces many others. In the novel, Ender's surname changes from "Wiggins" to "Wiggin", and the name of his "teacher" changes from "Maezr" to "Mazer". The novel supplies a detailed background for Ender and the interstellar conflict with the Formics; the short story supplies virtually no background whatsoever; the terms "Earth" and "human" do not occur at all, and the enemy remains nameless and faceless.
In the novel, Battle School is a space station orbiting Earth, and Command School inside the asteroid Eros; in the short story, the former is a terrestrial building and the latter an orbital space station. In the novel, fighting in the battle room is with hand-held weapons, instead of lasers built into the battle room suits.
In addition, several characters are changed: the antagonist Bonzo Madrid replaces Pol Slattery as the commander who loses to Ender during an unfair battle. Carn Carby is written as a much more supportive character. In the short story, Ender says to Bean, "How can they put you under an idiot like Carn Carby!" while the novel instead has him say "Carn Carby's a good man. I hope he recognizes you for what you're worth".
In the novel, the final chapter introduces the sequel Speaker for the Dead.

Publication