WEDNESDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #54: FIRST MEETINGS IN THE ENDERVERSE By Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is a controversial figure in Science Fiction. Card has publicly declared his support of laws against homosexual activity and same-sex marriage. However, Orson Scott Card is the only SF writer to win both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for both his novel Ender’s Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986) back-to-back. 

Meetings in the Enderverse includes the original story that Card expanded into the novel that won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Ender’s Game. The other three novellas in this collection have connections to the Enderverse.

“Ender’s Game” presents a problem: if humanity is about to be destroyed by an alien threat, is it ethical to train and use a gifted young child to fight the aliens? Ethical dilemmas show up in Card’s work although the perspectives might jolt some readers. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  • The Polish Boy” (2002) – Tells the story of how Jan Paweł Wieczorek (Ender’s father) as a small child gets tested by the International Fleet and convinces them to get his family out of Poland. — 9
  • “Teacher’s Pest” (2003) (Not present in 2002 version of book) – Tells the story of how John Paul Wiggin (Ender’s father) meets and falls in love with his future wife. — 59
  • Ender’s Game” (1977) – First appeared in the August 1977 issue of Analog magazine and was later expanded into the 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. — 103
  • “Investment Counselor” (1999) – Tells the story of how Ender Wiggin first met the artificial intelligence Jane and became a speaker for the dead. It first appeared in the anthology Far Horizons edited by Robert Silverberg. — 165

24 thoughts on “WEDNESDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #54: FIRST MEETINGS IN THE ENDERVERSE By Orson Scott Card

  1. Steve Oerkfitz

    Never liked the novel and could never understand it’s popularity. Everyone who reads the novel should read John Kessel’s criticism of it.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Steve, you’re right about John Kessel’s criticism of ENDER’S GAME. I prefer the stort story version, published in 1977. With Card’s statements about homosexuality and gay marriage, he’ll never win another award.

      Reply
  2. Jerry House

    Not my favorite author. I could never get into the Ender books and thought the original story was just so-so. I do, however, like his Alvin Maker series.

    Reply
  3. Michael Padgett

    I think Card came along right around the time I was moving away from SF to other things. I did read “Ender’s Game” (the story, not the novel) in a magazine. It was quite a while later that I learned he’d become notorious for his views, which I considered repulsive.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Michael, I was still reading a lot of SF in the 1980s so I read a lot of Card’s work during that decade. He was very prolific. However, once Card espoused his views on homosexuality and gay marriage, I stopped buying and reading his work.

      Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, for a couple of decades, Orson Scott Card was producing novels and short story collections at a James Patterson-type pace. I prefer his fantasy stories and novels over his SF.

      Reply
  4. Todd Mason

    But, of course, some of his fantasy work embodies the same contempt for humanity that some (at least) of his sf does…I had the misfortune of reading his “Hot Sleep” stories as they were published in ANALOG, and barely anywhere else, and thus was disinclined to follow up on those aggressively dumb and meanspirited work…but, a few months later, his incredibly awful dark fantasy “Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory” popped up in one of Roy Torgeson’s CHRYSALIS volumes, and that was that in my reading of his fiction till Ed Ferman chose to highlight “Lost Boys” in its original short form…I haven’t read his fiction since. I did watch a collaborative couple of episodes of a science fantasy television series Card co-scripted for the BYU broadcast/cable channel…his tropes watered down some as a result, and the result not quite good but less vile.

    You could say I’m not a fan.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Todd, Orson Scott Card’s tropes vary depending on his genre. I think Card’s mean-spirited aspects come out more in his SF than his fantasy. Card is entitled to his vile beliefs, but he’s paying a price in the marketplace for his stands against homosexuality and gay marriage.

      Reply
  5. Rick Robinson

    Here we go again. Inability to separate the personality from the product. I liked Ender’s Game when I read it, a very good coming of age military SF novel with a nice twist ending. I also like dis 1980 novel Songmaster a lot. I disagree with his opinions on many things, though I don’t seek them out, but I like those books he wrote.

    Reply
    1. Todd Mason

      Here you go again, Rick, blithely assuming that anyone is saying a writer can’t have obnoxious opinions. It’s when their obnoxious attitudes color their work that the work is lessened. Card decided early on that anyone who disagreed with him on anything should be portrayed as a monster, and portrayed them as such. You increasingly seem to be suggesting that anyone whose opinion is different than yours is a tiresome fool. It’s not helpful nor deserved.

      Reply
  6. Byron

    I remember “Ender’s Game” coming out around the time I started working in a college town book store that had a huge science fiction section. I don’t remember anyone I knew reading it at the time and I was absorbed in mid-century American writers at the time so it didn’t catch my eye. It wasn’t until 20 years later that I met anyone who’d read it and they were all thirty-something men who had read it as boys because of the Will Robinson appeal. As I recall, Card burned his bridges very early on not unlike Stephanie Meyer two decades later (if for different reasons). Funny how a genre that is based on forward thinking has more than its share of reactionaries.

    Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        And Card could barely write anything that wasn’t smugly hateful. Well before he made his homophobia known in his 1990s rants. All his terrible work I cited was published in the ’70s and ’80s. If the Alvin Maker stories were better, I already had no reason to pick them up.

      2. george Post author

        Todd, I firmly believe many writers and performers don’t reveal their true beliefs until they have insulated themselves with money.

    1. george Post author

      Rick, you’re right. Wednesday’s are for short stories…but sometimes novelettes and novellas slip in. I have a dandy FORGOTTEN BOOK for this Friday!

      Reply
  7. tracybham

    I don’t think this is for me, because I haven’t read any of the books by this author. No real reason, I just wasn’t reading science fiction and fantasy at the time.

    Reply

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