I’m not a big fan of flying. I recently read Orson Scott Card’s 1977 novel, Ender’s Game, on a flight across country, my first in about five years. It was a pretty cool book to read 30,000 feet in the air, since so much of the book takes place in the weightlessness of space.

The book chronicles the story of a child, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who has been genetically engineered to be a master strategist. The future of the planet earth rests upon his prepubescent shoulders in an on-going hundred year war with a marauding alien race nicknamed the “buggers.” At the tender age of only six years old, Ender is drafted into the outer-space Battle School where he is pushed to his limits day in and day out, to prepare him for the final battle where he will lead Earth’s space fleet to the bugger home-world.

Most of the book details the cruel “game” that Ender is placed in by his military commanders during his time at Battle School. They intentionally isolate him from the other boys. They place him into increasingly impossible situations. In short, they seek to break him. If he does not survive, then he is not fit to command the fleet to victory. The game he is caught in is a perfect parable for life at it’s absolute cruelest, when the very forces of the universe themselves seem to be conspiring against you to bring you hardship and pain. It becomes inspiring in the sense that it allows you to imagine that when you own life seems impossibly bleak, that you are perhaps being prepared for something greater and more important than you could ever envision.

Through this grueling routine which lasts years, Ender is molded into a perfect cold-blooded killer. He is uniquely able to re-orient himself into the perspective of his enemies, ruthlessly exploiting their weaknesses and blind-spots. But this ability comes at a great personal cost to him. He is only able to do what he does through an extraordinary helping of empathy and love that he has for his enemies. As he explains in a key passage:

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them -”

“You beat them.” For a moment, she was not afraid of his understanding.

“No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.”

I really like how this book is put together. It’s an interesting story and uses the classic sci-fi mythological set-up of the man-child who has near divine powers flowing through him, but must manage somehow to fit into an all too human world. Despite or possibly because of his exaggerated differences from ordinary people, he becomes sort of an everyman, plugging through larger than life versions of the same struggles we all face day to day. Taken in a new extrapolated sci-fi context, we are better able to see the heroic qualities that we all struggle with in ordinary life.

Card does a great job also of not letting his futuristic world and technology get the better of him. His sci-fi elements are smooth and silky. Through Ender, we are exposed to all manner of strange almost magical technology, but it never gets in the way of the story. In fact, elements of it are used to great effect to instill wonderful dreamlike episodes, such as in Ender’s ongoing struggles with the computerized fairy tale land, the giant and the tower. It’s a really cool way to make a very internal and symbolic struggle into something very concrete and easy to relate to.

There are also some really good philosophical bits comparing the human strategies to the way bugger consciousness works. And it’s very satisfying to see ths dichotomy overcome by Ender towards the end of the book. It is this ability to overcome central plot conflicts rather than use them as a crutch that I think separates a decent writer from a great writer.

I think this is a great book (and a reasonably fast and easy read) that could possibly even appeal to people who aren’t that into science fiction usually. The only thing I could see some people getting hung up on in this book is how much time and detail Card devotes to detailing Ender’s exploits in Battle School. There are maybe a few too many zero gravity combat situations, but I think they are worth sitting through as they contain a lot of worthwhile characterization and plot development. All in all though, I highly recommend checking this book out – whether you’re in zero gravity, on an airplane or sitting quietly in your bed dreaming about the stars and the world to come.