Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card - Audio Book
Brand New : (still shrink wrapped) Unabridged
10.5 hours 9 CD
This Special 20th Anniversary Edition of the science fiction classic is now digitally remastered with a full cast production. It also contains an exclusive bonus original postscript written and recorded by the author himself, Orson Scott Card!
In the novel's opening, the government selects Andrew "Ender" Wiggin for training at the elite Battle School. At Battle School, the commander Hyrum Graff publicly recognizes Ender as the most intelligent attendee. This acknowledgment causes other students to resent Ender, isolating him from most of the other children. Ender soon ranks among the school's elite child soldiers, eventually achieving the school's top rank. Even after his success the other children continue to ostracize him. Ender attempts to escape his isolation and frustration in various ways, but experiences little comfort until he receives a letter from his older sister Valentine, reminding him of his reasons for attending Battle School in the first place.
Ender realizes that he is at Battle School to protect his sister. The Battle School brass soon promote him to commander of a new army in the school's zero-gravity wargame league. He molds his young soldiers into an undefeated team, despite working with an inexperienced army. Ender's army implements innovative tactics, abolishing old methods like the use of formations in the battle room.
The Battle School administration promotes Ender to Command School ahead of schedule. In command school, Ender plays a game very similar to the Battle Room, only he commands ships in a 3-D space battle rather than soldiers. His subordinate officers are fellow students advanced early from the battle school who later become known as "Ender's jeesh." Each day the games become increasingly grueling, and Ender is slowly worn down to exhaustion. Waking and sleeping blend together as Ender nearly loses his sanity, though still maintaining his military innovation and leadership. Eventually, Mazer Rackham, a legendary hero of the Formic wars, is brought in to train Ender for his final test.
Ender's "final exam" consists of a scenario where bugger ships outnumber Ender's fleet 1,000 to 1 near a planetary mass, the bugger home world. Ender orders the use of a special weapon, Dr. Device, against the planet itself, destroying the simulated planet and all ships in orbit. Ender makes this decision knowing that it is expressly against the respectable rules of the game, hoping that his teachers will find his ruthlessness unacceptable, remove him from command, and allow him to return home. After Ender orders the destruction of the bugger planet, Rackham tells him that all the simulations were real battles taking place in Formic space. After Ender realizes that he is responsible for the destruction of an entire race, the guilt of the genocide sends him into a coma.
When Ender recovers, Valentine convinces him to leave on the first colony ship to another world. On this colony, Ender discovers an unborn Formic queen who can communicate with him through a psychic link. She tells him that her race was not aware that humans were sentient creatures. The Formic defeat in the Second Invasion awakened them to humanity's true nature, and they had resolved never to attack Earth again. Realizing his crime, Ender writes a book under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead" entitled The Hive Queen, wherein he tells of the compassion and pain of the Formic race, which becomes the foundation of the Ender's Game sequels.
About the Author Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic and public speaker. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986) both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both of American science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years.
He first wrote the short story "Ender's Game" while working at the BYU press, and submitted it to several publications. It was eventually purchased by Ben Bova at Analog Science Fiction and Fact and published in the August 1977 issue. Meanwhile, he started writing half-hour audioplays on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the New Testament, and other subjects for Living Scriptures in Ogden, Utah; on the basis of that continuing contract, some freelance editing work, and a novel contract for Hot Sleep and A Planet Called Treason, he left Ensign and began supporting his family as a freelancer. He completed his master's degree in English at the University of Utah in 1981 and began a doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame, but the recession of the early 1980s caused the flow of new book contracts to temporarily dry up. He returned to full-time employment as the book editor for Compute! Magazine in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1983. In October of that year, a new contract for the Alvin Maker "trilogy" (now up to 6 books) allowed him to return to freelancing.
Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2008) to win both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, and the 2007 release of A War of Gifts. Card has also announced his plan to write Shadows in Flight, a book that connects the "Shadow" series and "Speaker" series together, and Ender in Exile, a book that takes place after Ender's game and before Speaker for the Dead. Furthermore, Card recently announced that Ender's Game will soon be made into a movie. The film does not currently have a director lined up to work on Ender's Game. Wolfgang Petersen had previously been scheduled to direct the movie but has since moved on to other projects. It will be produced by Chartoff Productions. Card is writing the screenplay himself. Other works include the alternate histories The Tales of Alvin Maker, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, The Homecoming Saga, Robota, a collaboration with Star Wars artist Doug Chiang, and Empire, which is about a near-future civil war in the United States. |
