Speaker for the Dead

I really liked this book. I also had some problems with it. Speaker for the Dead is Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) all grown up. This book is more intellectual and complex, it delves into relationships and morals a little more, and imagines a very unique alien system. That being said, there many places in the book that were confusing in some way, whether it was from Portuguese being spoken, the confusing political/church affairs, or trying to keep all the dang names and occupations straight. Anyway, these confusing things kind of bored me and forced me to fill in some events on my own. There were cliffhangers that seemed like they would never be answered, which annoyed me a little, but kept me reading nevertheless. The ideas in this book are wonderful and a majority of the book had me quickly flipping pages to see what was going to happen next. It was a great science fiction with the right amount of sophistication and fun.

Worse than I remember.

Card is obsessed with family; (view spoiler)[the happy ever after involves giving a mother of six another six children (hide spoiler)]. It was Plikt, the good Lutheran, who taught Valentine to conceive of Ender’s life in religious terms; the powerful stability of her family life and the miracle of each of her five children combined to instill in her the emotions, if not the doctrines, of faith. Parochial Catholic norms somehow persist in a galactic empire. He has a slightly bizarre faith in the power of books to move entire populations. His names for things are often childish (buggers and piggies). He continues to make his young characters absurdly precocious (consider the 12yo Olhado, leet hacker). But no matter: he is a master storyteller. He manages to use one village and one forest as if they were giant panoramas. If you found Ender's Game didactic, unrealistic, contrived - well, you're right, but give him another chance. He's also slightly alien to me, which makes him good at scifi. Underneath Card's extreme Great Man Theory (where 3 people determine half of human history) there's a pretty realist account of how social forces work. Some sort of rigid hierarchy always emerged as the conservative force in a community, maintaining its identity despite the constant variations and changes that beset it. If there were no powerful advocate of orthodoxy, the community would inevitably disintegrate. A powerful orthodoxy is annoying, but essential to the community... She compared the priestly class to the skeleton of vertebrates. This means that he has to eventually drop his mockery of the narrow and pompous bishop, who is exactly this skeletal force: dumb, reactionary, regularising. Card really likes communitarian shit: constraints, norms, rituals, and roles. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. I wonder about the Descolada, the horrifying mutagenic disease that perfuses the planet. Ender accepts it without hesitation, even knowing that he'll never be able to leave. This echoes Card's fetish for family: "constraints are good". (view spoiler)[The entire plot turns on one insane decision of Novinha. "she would have no other death on her conscience". The desire for clean hands as sick iron law, more important than the desire for a good world. Ender's guilt is much the same. Card views the sickness as honourable, but also a sin, "the pride of universal guilt". (hide spoiler)] (view spoiler)[Everyone is very blasé about letting Miro leave town while infected with a universal ecocidal disease. Yes, he ends up not contacting any ecosystems, but this is a late development. (hide spoiler)]

Human's belief in afterlife, Ender's subsequent justification against it and the irony surrounding their arguments about religion and faith are both hilarious and brilliant. Orson has managed to show the negative side of light-speed interstellar travel in touching fashion.

Winner: Hugo Award Best Novel. Winner: Nebula Award Best Novel. Winner: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Nominee: Campbell Award Best SF Novel. Ender’s Game was originally written and published as a short story in 1977. Several years later, Card got the idea for Speaker for the Dead – a sequel – which would only make sense if Ender’s Game were extended into a novel. So he published the novel Ender’s Game in 1984 to critical acclaim. It was followed shortly thereafter by Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. These books collected are known as the Ender quartet. Card's novel Ender's Game introduced Ender Wiggin, a young genius who used his military prowess to all but exterminate the ""buggers,'' the first alien race mankind had ever encountered. Wiggin then transformed himself into the ``Speaker for the Dead,'' who claimed it had been a mistake to destroy the alien civilization. Speaker for the Dead picks up many years later (well, thousands actually), when a new breed of intelligent life forms called the ``piggies'' is discovered. This gives Wiggin the opportunity to atone for his earlier actions in Ender’s Game. As noted, speaker for the Dead takes place three thousand years after Ender’s Game, and Ender has spent most of those three thousand years in interstellar travel, and as a result he appears to be only in his mid-thirties. Valentine is still traveling with him, too. By this time, Ender has learned that he did not really wipe out all of the alien species back when he was young, and he has possession of a cocoon containing a hive queen, whose egg sac is potentially capable of replenishing the species. Ender has learned how to communicate with the hive queen, and he knows that her species is not evil and will never hurt humans again if he allows her to settle on a planet and lay her eggs. In the three thousand years since he wiped out the majority of her species, Ender has gone from being perceived as the hero who saved humanity to being vilified as a ‘xenocide’ – an evil villain who wiped out an entire species in cold blood (even though the military deemed him a hero). His status is semi-mythological, and of course everyone assumes that Ender is long dead and fails to connect the wise, quiet interstellar wanderer named Andrew Wiggin with the horrible murderer of the past. What’s interesting is that Ender isn’t really the protagonist of Speaker for The Dead. This novel is about a group of Portugese-speaking Catholic colonists who have settled a planet called Lusitania. These colonists share their planet with a sentient species that they call the pequininos, or “piggies”. The heroes of Speaker for the Dead are the scientists (‘xenobiologists’) and anthropologists (‘xenologists’) who have been granted permission to initiate closely guarded contact with the piggies. All other humans on the planet are kept contained in an area bounded by an electric fence at all times. The novel really focuses on Novinha. She is a woman whose life – like Ender’s – is circumscribed by guilt. She was part of a family who is charged with studying this species on Lusitania and the small community of the colony in which they live. We see 3 generations of this family over the course of the book, but most of the novel focuses on Novinha and her 6 children. Novinha life is one of constant interactions with death, on several occasions and twice at the hands of the alien species. These deaths deflate humanity's hope of peaceful coexistence with the aliens. Into this mix comes Ender, who is now a Speaker for the Dead, which is a sort of humanist priesthood of people who learn about those who have died and speak the truth of their lives, their hopes, fears, intentions, virtues, and vices. He is called by several members of the family to speak the deaths they have experienced in an act of defiance of the Catholic hierarchy that essentially runs the colony. Ender comes to Lusitania, solves everyone’s problems with his infinite wisdom, falls in love with Novinha and decides to stay with her forever, gets to know the piggies and discovers that – of course – they are not really evil, JUST MISUNDERSTOOD. He figures out why they keep killing off everyone that Novinha loves, and he arranges for them never to do this again. He also reveals his identity as the original Ender and manages not to get murdered by an angry mob. He establishes the hive queen on the planet – which will now be the only known planet where three sentient species will live side by side. It all ends on a very beautiful, hopeful note. Yes, Ender is able to atone for his sins. Seems like the sort of conclusion that is tied up with a nice little bow...except that everyone, including Ender, are just so broken….it makes the ending that much more believable and satisfying. Speaker for the Dead does have a bit of a religious agenda, as all the Ender novels do – and religious proselytizing disguised as sci-fi can be off putting to say the least. Card’s Mormonism is occasionally on display here and it's bothersome. But that aside, there are some fare criticisms of the Catholic church here as well. Catholicism has a long history of abusive missionary work through the use of canon law and crusades to coerce conversions and to subdue heathens. The catholic tradition in the Latin West grew out of the foundations of Rome which claimed the founding of a settlement or a “colony” was in a sense, a military expedition. Card's imaginating of the Catholic church expanding its governmental reach to the stars and its attempt to run the colony of Lusitania is fascinating and raises interesting questions about belief, governing, and politics. And his critique of the church, in the form of Ender as The Speaker for The Dead is spot on. Yet, while Card critiques the Catholic religion he also inserts his own religious stance in the narrative as mentioned. The life stages of the "piggies" in Speaker for the Dead correspond to phases of life in the LDS's plan of salvation which is kind of weird. However, don’t let this stop you from reading this important work of sci-fi. Why? This book has a lot to say about the trans formative powers of isolation and suffering. It has a lot to say about the corruptible nature of humanity and our institutions. It is a book about morality, guilt, and redemption. Yes, this is a heavy, adult themed sci-fi novel about philosophical concepts. Yes, this isn’t the YA novel we loved growing up (Ender’s Game). This is about becoming an adult, dealing with our past, and recognizing the flaws within ourselves and within the systems we create. This book reminds us that: “Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand. The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and therefore should be treated with great caution.” Not only is Speaker for The Dead an amazing work of sci-fi. It’s one of the best pieces of literature ever written.

** spoiler alert ** Killing the buggers wasn't Enders fault!!!! Why won't he understand that?! He didn't know what he was doing, and I wouldn't blame him even if he did! I'm glad he found happiness finally. I wish more people were aware of how awesome he is. Libos death was sad but necessary. Glad Miro and ouanda didn't end up together ( he was too good for her and she didn't appreciate him.)

Admittedly, it had been a while since I had read Ender's Game when I picked up Speaker for the Dead. I found the plot rather slow to develop early on in the book, and the characters didn't pull me in, either. My patience and endurance were rewarded somewhat by the time I finished the book, however, as the last third of the book did finally pull me in. This novel is quite different from Ender's Game, and the two really don't have that much of a connection, other than Ender himself.

Somehow more poignant and haunting then Ender’s Game, but very different.

I didn't think it was possible, but this book was even more intriguing and amazing than Ender's Game. Yup, I said it...and I simply adored Ender's Game so that's a big deal. The depth that this book have just amazes me. I was so invested in all the characters that I found myself getting angry when they made poor decisions. I wanted to jump into the book and yell at them. Or when they made hard decisions, I wanted to give them the companionship they were looking for. It takes a lot for a book to make me cry and only this and the Hunger Games have succeeded in that. This book also has depth in what it addresses in terms of politics, religion and the like. I can see why others were disappointed. It is definitely not as action packed as the first book. However I think that is truly what makes this book so much more touching. It reaches in and wakes up parts of you that you aren't sure you were willing to deal with. I can see why older readers would get more from this than younger readers as well. I am not sure what else to say, besides the fact that this is a great book. If you are a lover of Science Fiction, if you enjoy books that make you think about society, this is a book that you will fall in love with. Orson Scott Card has my undying love now. I cannot wait to see what else he has in store for me.

Just as good if not better than Enders Game. A very different story, but I can see why this won a Hugo award for best novel. I was impressed that OSC was able to draw us into a completely different world for Ender and still empathize with the characters.