Kiddie Kommander

kw: book reviews, science fiction, political fiction, child prodigies, gifted children, morality plays

I just re-read Orson Scott Card's 1985 classic Ender's Game, based on a 1977 novelette by the same name. This must be the third time. The book has sufficient depth that I find much I forgot I'd read before with each re-reading.

While Ender's Game wasn't the first, it has become the prototype "Young gaming expert defeats alien foe—unknowingly" story. It is also a morality play. (If you haven't read it, I'm about to spoil it for you. Skip a paragraph to avoid pollution!) When Ender (Andrew Wiggin) meets the last surviving "bugger" Queen, who communicates telepathically, he finds the alien species he destroyed, planet and all, hadn't realized they were at war until the end of the "Second Bugger War," upon which they retreated to their home system, hoping to be left alone. Thus, Ender has become the first to commit Xenocide, and in the sequels he attempts to atone by finding a planet for the Queen to colonize.

Ender is a moral child: though capable of ruthless violence he feels neurotically guilty over it. He is thus the combination of his brilliant siblings, the ruthless, amoral Peter and the loving, empathetic-but-practical Valentine. In this he is like Shedemai in Card's Homecoming series. The original protagonist of the early books, Nafai, is the most overly-good person in literature that I've read. He becomes a partial Christ figure in the fourth Homecoming book, altruistic to a near-fatal fault, even though he wears the mystical Cloak of the Starmaster, that confers invincibility. He is convinced by the Oversoul (a computer that watches over humanity) to yield the Cloak to Shedemai, who is nearly as well-intentioned as Nafai, but just ruthless enough not to he overborne by the evil older brother Elemak. Shedemai becomes the heroine of the last book.

In a sense, if the story had a happier ending, it would make great Disney fare: abused but talented child escapes family, but suffers even greater abuses (horrendous ones, actually) at the hands of his rescuers, finally triumphs. This is a story of manipulation taken to as great an exteme as one can, and still keep a reader in sufficient "suspense of disbelief" to continue reading.

Everything I've read by Card (he's prolific: Orson Scott Card Bibliography) is an exploration of the limits of morality in a tragic universe. Card is a Mormon...I was going to say "serious Mormon" but that's redundancy. Mormonism is a vigorous and rigorous faith, as mine is, so few adult Mormons are lukewarm. You're either active or absent. He once stated that the Homecoming series is a recasting of the migration stories in the Book of Mormon. Thus, he explores nobility and altruism, and their opposites, in all his fiction. It is what is in him.

In that, I like him very much. I care not about the difference in beliefs. I find all too few writers care a whit about appealing to their readers' nobility, and the majority seem entirely the opposite, making sales by appealing to people's taste for vice. Writers like Card that explore nobility, sacrifice, and empathy tend more to ennoble us.