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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is number 6 on my all-time top 10 list of Science Fiction stories you need to read. Written as a novella in 1977 and expanded into a novel in 1985, it won both both the Hugo and the Nebula awards that year. The follow up sequel Speaker for the Dead won both awards the subsequent year making Card the only author to ever win both awards in two consecutive years. Few people will dispute putting this novel on any top 10 list especially considering it also won an award for “long term impact” on science fiction earlier this year.
Summary: While many claim to “see the ending coming,” I know of no reader who would call the story predictable or derivative. For this series Card created a fantastic yet believable future Earth and exploited it to tell a wonderful set of stories.
I first read Ender’s Game in first year University only a year after my indoctrination into science fiction during my senior year of high school. It enthralled me and took me captive. I ended up skipping two or three assignments (costing me 2-3% of my final mark for a few courses) just to read this book as quickly as possible. It was worth every F- I got :)
I loved the battles, the characters and the setting. But what ultimately solidified this book for me was Card’s 1999 addition to the series Ender’s Shadow. The idea of having two books that follow the same time-line, story and events but from a different character’s point of view was magic to me. And Card did it REALLY WELL. Ender’s Shadow made Ender’s Game real for me and both books are one in my mind.
If you have never read either, I recommend reading them back to back to get a really special experience.
Why #6? It just seemed like the right place to me. I don’t really think many books in this list are better or worse than the others. If you can only read 10 SciFi books in your life, this series is my suggested list.
Oh, and obviously since this is on my top 10 list, it’s a 5/5 in my mind.
4 responses so far ↓
1 James // Mar 24, 2008 at 7:52 am
A worthy choice as #6. It’s the second book I try to get friends new to science fiction to read!
For some reason I enjoyed the shadow series more then the Ender series (Ender’s Game aside) and Speaker for the Dead obviously rocked the Hugo’s but it was a year that also saw the nomination of L. Ron Hubbard’s Black Genesis, so I wouldn’t say competition was fierce.
I suspect I like the shadow series due to the military history and strategy that Card references heavily in the later books, but I totally agree that both Enders Game & Shadow make a stunning read.
Kind Regards,
James
2 Cam // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I still can’t bring myself to read Speaker for the Dead. I don’t want to taint Ender, so I don’t want to see more of him. I’m more than happy to watch the universe unfold through the eyes of the rest of the characters and the shadow books.
3 Dan // Mar 24, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Definitely one of my all-time favourites as well. I’ve recently been reading the Shadow series and enjoying them immensely too, especially the first one.
4 A Science Fiction Primer - Top 10 MUST READ Books | I Read Science Fiction // Mar 26, 2008 at 1:31 pm
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