Ender's Game
Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set at an unspecified date in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind after two conflicts with the Formics, an insectoid alien species they dub the "buggers". In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, are trained from a very young age by putting them through increasingly difficult games, including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed. The book originated as a short story of the same name, published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The novel was published on January 15, 1985. Later, by elaborating on characters and plotlines depicted in the novel, Card was able to write additional books in the Ender's Game series. Card also released an updated version of Ender's Game in 1991, changing some political facts to reflect the times more accurately (e.g., to include the recent collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War). The novel has been translated into 34 languages. Reception of the book has been mostly positive. It has become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps. Ender's Game was recognized as "best novel" by the 1985 Nebula Award\[3\] and the 1986 Hugo Award\[4\] in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.
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169recommend
524mentions
436people
2007–2026years
35% recommend56% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fiction: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (English translation by Chapman & Hall).
Non-fiction: Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh.
Previous fiction: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. Loved Ender's Game when I was younger, but for some reason never picked this up. It's brilliant, even better than Ender's.
Previous non-fiction: Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Well, I couldn't put it down. What a book.
- Murderbot was 2021. I would defend it as a winner, but take a look at other recent years:
* 2020 - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - a science fiction story set in a future Aztec space empire - quite inventive and odd. The sequel won in 2022.
* 2024 - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - basically a story about growing up as a terrorist in a sci-fi setting, with some wild turns.
* 2025 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Bennett Jackson - a very bizarre Holmes & Watson take set in a land constantly invaded by sea kaiju, and where there's "magic" (or is it science) based on harvesting the dead kaiju's bodies.
These are all excellent books, each of which has something different to recommend them.
Are they as good as Dune? Well, it's very hard to say _now_. Assuming humans still exist in 60 years, will they still read them like we read Dune 60 years from its publication? Maybe.
Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land won in 1961. I've read it, and I don't think it's aged very well. It's certainly not Dune.
How many people are still reading the 1969 winner, John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar? I _have_ read it. It's good, but nowhere close to Dune. And how about 1978's winner, Gateway by Frederik Pohl? It's ... fine. It's not even in the same category as Dune, IMO.
Dune is an outlier among _all_ winners. It's one of the best SF books of all time, with a voice that still seems fresh today. Most Hugo (and Nebula) just don't live up to this standard. There are a few that do, like Left Hand of Darkness, Ender's Game, Hyperion, and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (better than Dune, IMO). But those are outliers just like Dune.
- Ender's Game has arrived! One of my favorite books. Spoiler, read the book. Don't just vibe read it.
- > Possibly better than the original.
IIRC this was the first book in the universe that the author wrote, but publishers insisted it was a bit heavy, so he wrote Ender's Game as an easier entry into the universe. On the topic of Ender's universe, the whole Ender's Shadow thread is also a great read. The first book is covering some of the same events but from the perspective of Bean.
- I'm not the OP but I've been thinking about this for a little bit since I read your question. Part of me says no, what could be more Sci-Fi than a complete and comprehensive story written by a computer. Who wouldn't want Data to have been able to and succeeded at writing a story that connects with his human compatriots? On the other hand, I also understand the concern and feeling of "something lost" when I consider a story written by a human vs a machine.
But if I'm truly honest with myself, I think in the long run I wouldn't care. I grew up on Science Fiction, and the stories I've always found most interesting were ones that explored human nature instead of just being techno fetishism. But the reality is I don't feel a human connection to Asimov, or Cherryh, or any of the innumerable short form authors who wrote for the SF&F magazines I devoured every chance I got. I remember the stories, but very rarely the names. So they might as well have been written by an AI since the human was never really part of the equation (for me as a reader).
And even when I do remember the names, maybe the human isn't one I want a lot of "human connection" with anyway. Ender's Game, the short story and later the novel were stories I greatly enjoyed. But I feel like my enjoyment is hampered by knowing that the author of a phenomenal book that has some interesting things to day on the pains caused by de-humanizing the other has themselves become someone who dehumanizes others often. The human connection might be ironic now, but that doesn't make the story better for me. Here too, the story might as well have been written by an AI for all that the current person that the author is represents who they were (either in reality or just in my head) when I read those stories for the first time.
Some authors I have been exposed to later in life, I have had a degree of human connection with. I felt sadness and pain when Steve Miller died and left his spouse and long time writing partner Sharon Lee to carry on the Liaden series. But that connection isn't what drew me to the stories in the first place and that connection is largely the same superficial parasocial one that the easy access into the private lives of famous people gives us. Sure I'm saddened, but honesty requires me to note I'm more sad that it reminds me eventually this decades spanning series will draw to a close, and likely with many loose ends. And so even here, if an AI were capable of producing such a phenomenal series of books, in a twisted way as a reader it would be better because they would never end. The world created by the author would live on forever, just like a "real" world should.
Emotionally I feel like I should care that a book was or wasn't written by an AI. But if I'm truly honest with myself, the author being a human hasn't so far added much to the experience, except in some ways to make it worse, or to cut short something that I wish could have continued forever.
All of that as a longwinded way of answering, "no, I don't think I would care".
- In my mind his work was the best of the 1980s and that's a decade that produced some pretty powerful stuff like Ender's Game and Forge of God. Vinge coined the term "The Singularity" which is now almost a given to be a future event in some circles. His then wife also wrote some pretty good sci-fi such as The Outcasts of Heaven Belt I liked Vernor's A Fire Upon the Deep a lot but not his later books.
