This is a quick summary of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Hall.
This is a story about a boy named Ender who
lives with his mother, father, and two older
siblings, Peter and Valentine. All of the
children are highly intelligent, but unlike
his siblings, Ender shows promise as a brilliant
military leader. As such, he is taken away
to be trained by Colonel Graff for the war
against the buggers, an alien race looking
to invade Earth.
When Ender arrives at battle school, he is
put through a series of tests and introduced
to various battle simulators, video game-like
simulations of space battles. He excels and
is placed into one of the several armies.
At first he is told to stay out of the war
games, but he develops a superior strategy
for winning. Despite his success as a tactician,
Ender is further hated, but teaches those
who want to learn from him on the side.
Meanwhile, Peter and Valentine create fake
personas and begin political discussions on
the net.
After graduating early from battle school,
Ender is trained on a dedicated battle simulator.
And when that becomes too easy, he trains
with Mazer Rackham, an old war hero.
Under this new training, Ender is pushed to
the limit and nearly breaks down as his battle
simulations become increasingly more difficult.
Ender finally has one last battle simulation
that involves a planet and several thousand
ships. He wins the game, but then is told
that all of it was real. That he was commanding
real ships in what he thought was a simulation.
Ender is proclaimed a hero, but still fears
Peter, who has great political influence on
Earth. In the end, Ender finds a bugger cocoon
and takes it with him as he travels in space
with Valentine.
As always a lot can be said about this story,
but what draws my interest and attention is
the idea of using children in intergalactic
war.
Throughout the story, it is sometimes difficult
to remember that most of the main characters
are children. In Ender's society, children
are often forced into maturing quickly for
military endeavors.
But why children? Wouldn't it make more sense
to train more physically mature individuals
to fight? The explanation given is that the
military wants individuals who are willing
to react to situations without thinking about
the consequences. Children are able to act
this way because they haven't lived long enough
to understand scope and bigger consequences
of their actions.
While cruel, this type of thinking is valuable
and necessary in the battle against the buggers
because of how the buggers learn and adapt.
Also, a lot of the battles are battle simulations,
or at least perceived as battle simulations
to the children. It's this perception of a
game that allows the children to learn, strategize,
and take risks that would not be possible
had they known it was happening in real time,
which says a lot about how children learn
and how humans learn in general.
What do you think of this story? Let me know
in the comments below.
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