Formics

Formics, usually referred to by the pejorative term, "buggers," are a fictional insectoid alien species from the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels by Orson Scott Card.

Related Topics:
Insectoid - Alien species - Ender's Game series - Science fiction - Novels - Orson Scott Card

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The term "Formic" is derived from the Latin word for ant, formica.

Related Topics:
Latin - Ant

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The Formics share a single hive-mind directed by a queen. If the queen dies, all the Formics in the hive lose all will and intelligence and will die shortly afterwards. The Formics are able to communicate instantaneously via philotic connections; through studying the Formic technology leftover as wreckage from the Formic Wars, humans learned to harness gravity, and faster-than-light communication via the ansible which uses the same type of philotic connections that the Formics used. They live in vast underground colonies in complete darkness.

Related Topics:
Hive-mind - Queen - Philotic - Faster-than-light - Ansible

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In the novel Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin unknowingly commits xenocide, destroying their homeworld, and wiping out all the Formics except for a single queen cocoon. The initial reaction at the destruction of all of the Formics was jubilation on the part of humanity. However, following the release of Ender's book, The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, under the pseudonym of The Speaker for the Dead, humanity came to realize the destruction as a xenocide, and Ender's name was vilified. Ender eventually finds the only remaining egg on the colony world that he is sent to colonize. The Formics placed the egg on the colony world in a landscape terraformed to match the outlay of the landscape in a psychoanalytical game that Ender played in Battle School, so that he would recognize it. Ender finds a place for the egg to hatch on Lusitania, a Brazilian Catholic colony world, allowing the Formics another chance at life.

Related Topics:
Ender's Game - Ender Wiggin - Homeworld - Cocoon - Humanity - The Hive Queen and the Hegemon - Colony - Colonize - Landscape - Terraformed - Psychoanalytical - Game - Battle School - Brazil - Catholic

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