The Authorized Ender Companion Read online

  THE

  AUTHORIZED

  ENDER

  COMPANION

  By Orson Scott Card from Tom Doherty Associates

  Empire

  The Folk of the Fringe

  Future on Fire (editor)

  Future on Ice (editor)

  Invasive Procedures (with Aaron Johnston)

  Keeper of Dreams

  Lovelock (with Kathryn Kidd)

  Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

  Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

  Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

  Saints

  Songmaster

  Treason

  A War of Gifts

  The Worthing Saga

  Wyrms

  THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER

  Seventh Son

  Red Prophet

  Prentice Alvin

  Alvin Journeyman

  Heartfire

  The Crystal City

  ENDER

  Ender’s Game

  Ender’s Shadow

  Shadow of the Hegemon

  Shadow Puppets

  Shadow of the Giant

  Speaker for the Dead

  Xenocide

  Children of the Mind

  First Meetings

  Ender in Exile

  HOMECOMING

  The Memory of Earth

  The Call of Earth

  The Ships of Earth

  Earthfall

  Earthborn

  WOMEN OF GENESIS

  Sarah

  Rebekah

  Rachel & Leah

  From Other Publishers

  Enchantment

  Homebody

  Lost Boys

  Magic Street

  Stonefather

  Stone Tables

  Treasure Box

  How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

  Characters and Viewpoint

  THE

  AUTHORIZED

  ENDER

  COMPANION

  WRITTEN BY

  JAKE BLACK

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  --THE AUTHORIZED ENDER COMPANION

  Copyright © 2009 by Hatrack River Enterprises

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Card, Orson Scott.

  The authorized Ender companion / Orson Scott Card and Jake Black.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4299- 6348-0

  1. Card, Orson Scott—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Wiggin, Ender (Fictitious character)—Miscellanea. 3. Wiggin Peter (Fictitious character)—Miscellanea. I. Black, Jake. II. Title.

  PS3553.A655Z74 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2009031592

  First Edition: November 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To

  Michelle and Jonas—my companions forever

  and

  Ian and Cathy—my parents

  —J.B.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Orson Scott Card

  How to Use This Book

  The Ender Encyclopedia

  Ender’s Time Line

  Ender’s Family Tree by Andrew Lindsay

  Getting Ender Right: A Look at the Ender’s Game Screenplay Development by Aaron Johnston

  The Technology of Ender’s Game by Stephen Sywak

  Friends of Ender

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  I needed this book to exist, for my own selfish purposes. It’s just a bonus that Tor is publishing it so you can have it, too.

  I need it because the Ender books are a series I never intended. When I first wrote the novelette Ender’s Game back in 1974, I had no thought of its ever becoming a series. I felt lucky that I had managed to turn it into a story.

  All I had was the battle room, the orbiting Battle School, the ansible (borrowed from Ursula K. Le Guin’s word for a faster-than-light communications device), and the fact that kids were using a “simulator” to control distant fleets of starships.

  Ten years later, when I set out to write the novel version of Ender’s Game, I was primarily using it to set up Speaker for the Dead. It’s not that I was careless or lazy with Ender’s Game; I was simply paying most attention to the elements of the novel that I needed for Speaker.

  If I had known how often I’d come back to the world of Ender’s Game—and, most specifically, Battle School and the war—I would have taken more care to jot down all the choices that I made, so I could refer back to them later.

  Instead, I invented things on the fly and forged ahead. I remembered the choices I had made long enough not to contradict them within Ender’s Game, but not for a single moment longer. (I long ago discovered that, having filled my brain with excessive reading as a child, I had no room for new information. I certainly wasn’t going to give up any of my memories of those early books!)

  The sequels to Speaker—Xenocide and Children of the Mind—did not refer back to the events in Ender’s Game very often, and when they did, I relied on memory alone. I take no pleasure in rereading my own fiction—I keep rewriting it in my head, conforming it to the skills and concerns of my present self instead of trusting in that younger self who wrote the original. So when I can avoid rereading, I do.

  As I wrote these books, however, time passed and the world changed. The Internet (with the World Wide Web) was not available to the general public when I had Peter and Valentine change the world by writing anonymously on “the nets.” But there were services like Delphi and CompuServe.

  I got on Prodigy when it appeared, because its graphical user interface (GUI) made it friendly enough for my family to use, and there I first began to talk to readers of my books. Prodigy was a nightmare, however, because they policed the forums so rigidly that I could not answer questions about “Orson Scott Card” in first person!

  So I quickly migrated to America Online, where I formed a user group called “Hatrack River” and began to discover how much better some of my readers knew my books than I did! America Online eventually jettisoned us—they wanted higher numbers than I could attract—and we migrated to the Web, where we still are (all my websites can be found by going to http://www.OrsonScottCard.com).

  One thing remained consistent in all our websites: When I couldn’t remember some detail when writing in any of my series, I could post a question to my readers and somebody would come up with the answer so quickly that there is no way I could have found the same information myself!

  While my other series—The Tales of Alvin Maker, Homecoming, Empire, Women of Genesis—were intended to stretch across several books, the Ender books are an accidental series. (The Shadow books, within the overall Ender series, were planned as one long story.) I had no overarching plan. I did not systematically develop the universe in w
hich all the stories take place.

  As a result, the Ender universe was not consistent. At the end of one book, thinking I was wrapping everything up, I would send one character off on a voyage; then in a later book, forgetting I had done so, I would have him conveniently hanging around on Earth.

  I would give some obscure character a family, and then later forget that I had done so and give him a different family or make him childless. Then that minor character would become important, and I had to decide which set of facts I was going to go with.

  When I set out to write Mazer in Prison, I couldn’t remember if, in all the mentions of him in all the books and stories, I had ever bestowed on him a wife and children. My readers soldiered through my books and got me the information I needed—but how much easier it would have been if the information had already been collected into a single database, where I could look up “Mazer Rackham” and find out every speck of information that I needed.

  This book is the fulfillment of that wish. I met Jake Black through other unrelated projects, and he became both a friend and a reliable resource. When I talked to Beth Meacham at Tor and got the go-ahead to bring this book into being, Black was the obvious first choice to take the lead in researching and writing the book. But we continued to use and rely on information we got from the participants in our online community. (They have been credited in each book they helped me with.)

  On a purely volunteer basis, the kids at Philotic Web (http://www.philoticweb.com) created a time line that I often used as a resource when writing Ender stories. That time line has now been added to this book.

  Stephen Sywak long ago analyzed the Battle School as I had described it and determined a possible shape for the thing. While the artists creating the Marvel version of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow have a pretty free hand in what they design, I have referred to Sywak’s work when thinking about story possibilities. Naturally, I asked for his permission to include his ideas here.

  For many years we had a “Virtual Battle School.” It was not a game; rather it was a kind of on-the-fly collaborative fiction, where characters of the participants’ own invention would interact in a large ongoing story.

  It happened that some of these fanfiction writers had their characters break into the ventilation system of Battle School and start wandering through the ducts. Such a thing had never crossed my mind, but the idea was too good to ignore, so in a kind of homage to my readers, I sent Bean into the ducts in the book Ender’s Shadow.

  This back-and-forth between author and readers is not really all that new. Writers and readers have long corresponded, and it’s a foolish writer who does not listen to the fans of his books. I don’t always do what my readers wish, but I never reenter a series now without taking into account the story threads they care about and wish to see resolved.

  That’s because in my mind I do not write in isolation. In fact, I do not “write” at all. I conceive of myself as telling my stories orally to an (imaginary) audience that has gathered around the fire after the day’s work is done. I type fast enough that my writing really does come out at the speed of speech, and scientists now assure us that written language is still processed through the aural speech centers of the brain, being perceived as sound rather than as visual images. (We might imagine visual images from the “sounds” we “hear,” but they do not come from and are not related to the marks on the page, which merely cause us to know which sounds to “hear.”)

  When I am actually telling a story or making a speech to a live audience, I interpret the audience’s responses continuously. If I can sense (through movement, coughing, etc.) that they are bored, I move on to a more interesting topic; if I can sense hostility or doubt, I make my statements more clear—or soften them, if that is appropriate; and when they are paying close attention, then I know I am providing something they’re enjoying, and I keep on doing it. All good speakers do this; and when my readers write to me or post their responses or concerns online, it’s the next best thing to having them there listening as I tell the story.

  All of this explains why I have relied on my conversations with readers on my websites, and why I asked Jake Black to write and assemble this book, and how I intend to use it.

  But what in the world will you do with it? There will be stories in the Ender universe written by people other than myself—Black’s script for a one-shot Marvel comic about Valentine was just authorized, and there will be others—but that hardly applies to most readers.

  As I write this, I’m in the midst of a semester of teaching at Southern Virginia University; one of the courses I’m teaching is on the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. In this course, we have found it useful to consult books about the books we’re studying. Annotations, critiques, studies of particular issues or subject matters from the books, all are useful.

  A growing number of schools are using Ender’s Game and other books from the series in their coursework. While this book certainly offers no critique, it will be a valuable resource to teachers and, perhaps, students in these courses.

  But what if you’re not a teacher—or a writer who has received authorization to write within the Ender universe?

  I don’t know about you, but when I got to the end of The Lord of the Rings, I was reluctant to leave the world in which such powerful stories had been told. So I went straight on and read the appendices. They did not give me the story again, but they gave me more of the world of the story, and I was happy.

  So if you read Ender’s Game—or another book or story in the Ender saga—and cared about the people in it, perhaps consulting this book will return you to that world and shed further light on events that took place in the future or past. If that is your goal in picking up this book, I believe Jake Black has done a fine job of providing a book that you will enjoy.

  Since I’ve already had the manuscript of this book for some time, I have consulted it in writing the latest Ender’s Game/Ender’s Shadow screenplay, and in developing the stories for the pre–Ender’s Game series of comics and short stories and novels about The Formic Wars. I consulted this book as I was writing Ender in Exile.

  I hope that you, too, will plunge into these pages and find much to enjoy, enlighten, or inform you about matters you came to care about in my fiction. Be assured that as you read, you are looking into the very same resource I work with. You can’t look over my shoulder as I’m writing—but you are certainly looking at the notes I look at while I write!

  —Orson Scott Card

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  This book is an encyclopedic reference to the events, characters, locations, and technology found within Orson Scott Card’s Ender Universe. While every effort has been taken to be as thorough as possible, this book is not meant to replace the actual reading of any of the novels, short stories, or comic books in the Ender series. It is designed as a resource for fans of the series to augment their understanding of all Ender-related material.

  The entries are listed alphabetically, with additional synopses of the novels and short stories included at the end of the encyclopedia portion of the book. Additional essays, charts, and time lines are also included to help readers further appreciate the universe of the Ender books. It is hoped that readers will refer to this book while reading the novels and short stories.

  THE

  ENDER ENCYCLOPEDIA

  Key to Book Title Appearances (listed roughly chronologically):

  “Polish Boy”—PL

  “Teacher’s Pest”—TP

  “Mazeri n Prison”—MP

  “Pretty Boy”—PB

  “Cheater”—CH

  “Ender’s Game” (Short Story)—EGS

  Ender’s Game (Novel)—EG

  War of Gifts—WG

  “Ender’s Stocking”—NS

  Ender’s Shadow—ES

  “Ender’s Homecoming”—EH

  “Gold Bug”—GB

  “Young Man with Prospects”—YM

  Ender in Exile—EE


  Shadow of the Hegemon—SH

  Shadow Puppets—SP

  Shadow of the Giant—SG

  “Investment Counselor”—IC

  Speaker for the Dead—SD

  Xenocide—XN

  Children of the Mind—CM

  Note: Titles with [ ] refer to character referenced, but not appearing in the book.

  ^Graff (ES)

  ^Graff was the screen name used by Bean Delphiki to break into the Battle School computer.

  4gang (XN)

  4gang was a computer password used by Han Qing-jao to access the Lusitania Fleet project. It refers to the allies of the wife of the first Communist Chinese leader.

  Abo University (CM)

  Abo University was a school on the planet Outback that supported the Lusitanian rebellion and the preservation of the sentient computer Jane, contrary to orders from Starways Congress.

  Abyssian Hunter (IC)

  Ender and Valentine Wiggin sought a room to rent on the planet Sorelledolce. They found a place owned by a man described as the Abyssian hunter. He was both their landlord and roommate.

  Adornai, Brother (SD)

  Brother Adornai was a teacher at the Catholic School in the monastery called Children of the Mind of Christ on the planet Lusitania. He worked with Grego Ribeira, and was once physically injured by the little boy.

  Afraima (EE)

  Afraima was an assistant xenobiologist in Shakespeare, the first human colony on a former Formic world. She was married to a man named Evenezer, but wanted to carry the child of her boss, Sel Menach, who was heralded as the smartest man in the colony. She felt that his genes would be the best for her potential child to have. Sel refused her advances, and even left his position as her superior to avoid the temptation.

  Ahmed (WG)

  Ahmed, a Pakistani, led a group of his fellow Muslim students at Battle School in daily prayer, violating Battle School rules of no religious observance. Ahmed had been put up to the rule-breaking by Christian zealot Zeck Morgan, who was offended that a secret celebration of Christmas and Santa Claus had gone unpunished. Ahmed and his fellow Muslims were arrested and taken away in handcuffs for praying.