Ender's Game

Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card and is set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an aggressive alien society, the insectoid "Buggers" (more formally known as "Formics"). Faced with extreme odds, humanity prepares to gamble all by preparing a coordinated all-out assault on the alien worlds. To achieve success, they train specially bred genius children, one whom they hope will make the perfect military leader for the upcoming conflict.

Controversy

There is controversy around the morality behind this book and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead. In particular several authors have made the case that that it is an apologia for Hitler and a justification for his actions of genocide. Some of this controversy is dealt with in the later Ender book, Children of the Mind where genocide is said to be morally wrong by Ender. The cricicism seems invalid however, for Ender is not really a leading force in the conflcit, in fact he is more like a tool used for an end.

Related Topics:
Speaker for the Dead - Genocide - Children of the Mind

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Ender and Hitler: sympathy for the superman

Elaine Radford makes her case in the article Ender and Hitler: sympathy for the superman, published from Fantasy Review in 1987, that the character of Ender is based on Hitler, and the novel parallels the genocide of the Jews during World War II. SF author Roger Williams claimed credit for some of the ideas behind Radford's essay. Williams goes on to theorize the books may not have been written by Card at all, but were actually crafted by a committee of writers from the Mormon Church as a propaganda tool to persuade people to forgive murder and genocide.

Related Topics:
Elaine Radford - Fantasy Review - 1987 - Hitler - Genocide - Jew - World War II - Roger Williams

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Card responded to the attacks in the same issue of Fantasy Review, stating that no such parallel could reasonably be drawn because Ender kills unknowingly.

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Both Radford's and Card's articles were later reprinted by Literary Review.

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Creating the Innocent Killer

John Kessel published in the spring, 2004 issue of Foundation, the International Review of Science Fiction an article titled "Creating the Innocent Killer," which is an extensive and critical deconstruction of the moral world view Card propounds through Ender. He describes there how Card (and the superior officers within the book) manipulate the reader's point of view throughout the book so that Ender can commit murder several times and, ultimately, genocide, while retaining our sympathy and remaining innocent. He takes issue with the idea of Card supposedly stating that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting.

Related Topics:
John Kessel - 2004

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He fears reading the book might incite teenagers to feel that the abuse they might suffer from others is jealousy for how special they are and that retaliation can be performed guiltlessly. However, he accepts Card's claim that any similarities (beyond committing genocide) between Ender and Hitler were coincidental (see 'Ender and Hitler', above).

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Other Criticisms

Norman Spinrad also critiques Ender's Game in several of his essays collected in Science Fiction in the Real World.

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