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Ender's Game

Ender's Game (1985) is the best-known novel by Orson Scott Card. It originated as a science fiction short story in Analog Magazine (1977) and is set in a future where mankind is facing annihilation by an aggressive alien society, an insect-like race known as colloquially as "Buggers" but more formally as "Formics." Genius children are seen as the ultimate leaders of the protection of Earth and are recruited into training for an upcoming battle against the alien race. The protagonist, Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, is one of these child soldiers. During his training at 'Battle School' he learns to fight and to lead armies, while his psychological development is revealed through a computer game embedded in the school's computer network and manipulated to a large extent by the cynical Colonel Graff, who runs the school.

Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers.

Card went back and expanded the short story into a novel after realizing that he wanted to use Ender as a main character in another novel, Speaker for the Dead. The series subsequently gained two further books (Xenocide and Children of the Mind) and has spawned a companion series of novels, the Shadow series (Ender's Shadow - a parallel novel to Ender's Game, telling some of the same events from the perspective of Bean, a mostly peripheral character in Ender's Game - and its sequels, Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets to date). The original short story is merely a snapshot of Ender's experiences in Battle School; the full length novel is a deeper and more complex work dealing with Ender's life before, during and after Battle School, and the consequences of his final battle with the alien 'Buggers'.

Some military colleges have used Ender's Game as a textbook on leadership.

Ender's Game was the winner of the Hugo Award for best novel in 1986 and the Nebula Award for best novel in 1985, the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. It was reprinted in a slightly revised edition in 1991.

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