Ender's Game

The front cover of Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game says that it is the author's definitive edition and that it's a winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards.

Read the above wikipedia link for a synopsis or a plot summary of the story. In its entirety the story is quite good and original. It flows nicely and the story makes sense in itself. However, I have several issues:

After the humans have been attacked twice by the buggers, the general public, and even those who train to fight with the enemy don't seem to know much about them. That is completely contrary to what would happen if an alien invasion were to take place. The first thing that everyone would find out would be all the extraneous details such as what do they look like, what do they eat, how do they talk, how would you kill one, what's inside them, where is their brain, where is their weakest point, etc. etc. At the end of the story, we do find out that those who were in the previous fights did know sufficient details and did have pictures and videos. Why aren't those being released? At least to the trainees? I guess, they didn't have embedded reporters like in present-day wars. This, in my view, the author's refusal to let in an important detail early-on in the story but that would have shaped the story better, IMHO.

The human race, after the first invasion, got technologically better at developing really cool stuff like instantaneous communication across light years of distance and a bomb that totally destroys everything, yet they need a child to command the whole fleet? Seriously? I have a difficult time swallowing the strategy of training a bunch of children from 6 years on in order to command a space fleet at the age of about 17 or so. It isn't like any organization, least of all the military, to give up the command level positions to a bunch of kids. And, in the final battle, Ender didn't make a series of 500 mega-decisions in 15 seconds ... he just made a kill-all decision because he was pissed. BFD.

Any space-faring race, no matter how much mind-share they have, needs a way to keep the history, pass on the knowledge to the next generation, organize, etc. They must develop a communication system, at least, between generations. The claim that they don't understand another race's communications or written words, etc is quite far-fetched. Fine, even if they don't understand another species' communication method, they should be able to see the difference between a herd of antelopes running around and a bunch of ape-looking animals driving space ships! I guess, that's why this is (supposedly) a thought provoking novel, but you don't become a space-faring species by thinking alone with a single mind. You need different ideas to clash and debates and such and that means more than one mind and that means there must be a way to put forth opposing ideas and view points. Whatever!

Written in the early 80s, Card seems to have over estimated the power of what a couple of teenagers can do by blogging from their parent's basement. :-)

This is the thing with me and science fiction novels. I tend to find holes in the theories. But, if you ignore the holes and go along with the claims, then this novel is organized and presented really well. Anyone writing such a story in today's environment would have tried to tie the characters into the military tactics of today's wars and the buggers to the international terrorists.