NovelCritic

I’m not a big Science Fiction person. I probably haven’t read all of the best Science Fiction stories out there. Of all of them that I have read, though, my favorite by far is Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card.

(In fact, I am privileged to have an autographed copy of the book.)

Enders Game originally started as a novelette. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I think he wrote the original story while he was still a student at Brigham Young University. Orson Scott Card later changed it into a full-length novel. Not long after garnering a lot of praise and awards for Ender’s Game, he wrote more books about the same characters including another award winning novel and another novel, Ender’s Shadow, where Ender’s Game is retold from another point of view.

Ender Wiggin is a third, the third child in a family where families are only allowed to have two children unless they receive special permission from the government to do otherwise. The government is constantly fighting against a group of insect-like aliens called Buggers, and Earth is constantly training children up from a young age to be able to fight against them. Earth has already survived two invasions and they are expecting the Third Invasion at any time. The rest of the book recounts his time at “Battle School” where he and his teammates have to compete in a variety of different exercises first against other teams and later against computer-simulated Bugger squadrons.

If I had to pick two words to describe Ender’s Game, I would pick “real” and “entertaining”.

All of the characters in the story are so real. From Ender himself to his siblings to his teammates to the other people at Battle School, you feel like you actually know these people — that you can understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. The way Ender Wiggin grows and figures things out is one of the most well-told “growing up” stories that I have ever read. Set to the backdrop of a very entertaining story line and a very enjoyable and surprising ending, this novel becomes one of the best Science Fiction books ever written. It is certainly the best one that I have ever read.

But you don’t have to just take my word for it. It has one various awards including the top awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. (He won those same awards the next year as well for the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, which I enjoyed, but not nearly so much as Ender’s Game.)

Sometimes these awards are given to books that are technically very good, but not quite so fun to read. Critics often get a little full of themselves in this regard as we often see with the presentation of awards in just about any genre (e.g. the Academy Awards)

But trust me when I tell you…

You will REALLY enjoy Ender’s Game. In fact, I’ll be very surprised if you don’t think it is the best Science Fiction book that you have ever read too.

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