Ender's Game

Special 20th Anniversary Edition

By: Orson Scott Card

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison, Gabrielle de Cuir

Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut - young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs?

But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Browse more titles in the Ender Wiggin series.

©1977, 1985, 1991 Orson Scott Card (P)2002 Fantastic Audio, an imprint of Audio Literature

Critic reviews

• Nebula Award Winner, Best Novel, 1985

• Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 1986

"'Intense' is the word for Ender's Game." (The New York Times)

excellent story

Listened with my 10 year old daughter and pleasantly surpried by how much she enjoyed it.
A fabulous story, especially for our kids --the videogame generation.

Good scifi

What made the experience of listening to Ender's Game the most enjoyable?

How the story came together

What did you like best about this story?

the military sci-fi aspect

What aspect of Stefan Rudnicki and Harlan Ellison ’s performance would you have changed?

Dont remember anything bad at all

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Neither. It makes you think

New Favorite Book

I really enjoyed the movie and the book is even better. I saw the movie first, and I'm actually glad that I did. Orson Scott Card is a playwright at heart, and that translates into his books. A playwright doesn't normally spend much time describing scenery or the setting of the story, and neither does Card. He writes what is necessary for the story, and let's you create the rest. This is new to me because most of the books I have read are very descriptive when it comes to the setting and scenery. Without having seen the movie first, I would have had a hard time creating the scenery because it's not described much at all. For more experienced readers, this may not be something new, but for me it was.

That being said, it is not a problem or any thing of the like! It is merely an observation.

Also, I really enjoyed the narration. The main narrator speaks as if he were Ender reading Ender's Game, and I loved that. Some people don't, but I thought it was perfect.

Listen to this book, you won't regret it.

Ready to play the game?

A very enjoyable Sci-Fi; classic, yet modern and more relevant than ever. It's a story of survival, politics, the challenges of youth, family, and an unexplainable external threat. Great read. I did not particularly enjoy the narrators voice for this, he sounded tired and forced reading it, but I was able to overlook that for the story.

Captivating Science Fiction

I was extremely skeptical of this book going into it. A sci-fi book about a child ... but the author constructs a fictional universe that is just plausible enough to draw you in. Then, he paints vivid pictures while providing a compelling and engrossing plot. The story is key here, and it differs from the books that follow in as they tend to focus more on ideas. But nonetheless, you cannot help but get drawn into the author's world and then thirst for more chapters of this interesting and thought-provoking tale.

The publisher uses multiple narrators. At first, I found this disconcerting, but ultimately, the different voices add to the story.

Great book, excellent performance.

In the not too distant past, the Earth survived a war with the Buggers, an insect-like alien race. One military man, Mazer Rackham, was able to make the difference in the war for humanity, but it is widely feared that the Buggers will be back. To prepare, the government has taken to monitoring the Earth for the next military genius. Everyone who is considered a candidate is taken from their families at a young age and placed into an orbital Battle School. Ender Wiggin, at 6 years old, is considered to be the best candidate – Ender’s Game is his story.

Ender’s brother (Peter) and sister (Valentine) also play a large role. They are both older than Ender, and both extremely intelligent. They also were both passed over for Battle School, one for being too dangerous and one for being too compassionate. They have their own way of influencing the events of the world, even though they are no longer considered for the military.

Battle School is centered on a game in which teams (armies) of kids fight each other in a zero-g environment. They carry guns that shoot low power lasers and wear suits that react to those lasers by freezing wherever they are hit. By playing the game, the students are training in three dimensional combat, and the competition aboard the Battle Station is fierce.

Ender not only deals with the other students in this competition, but also the teachers of the School as they place him in more and more difficult circumstances. The story has much to say about means and ends, both personal and political.

Even though I had read it three times over the past 14 years, I was glued to this audio version as if I didn’t know what was going to happen. The audio is a treat. Stefan Rudnicki performs the main narrator duties, while a number of others perform the conversations amongst the adults, which occur at the beginning of each chapter. Orson Scott Card also recorded a postscript in which he discusses the origins of Ender’s Game as a novel. First-rate.

Terrific SciFi. Believe it.

If you could sum up Ender's Game in three words, what would they be?

Complex but smooth.

What did you like best about this story?

As SciFi goes, it doesn't get much better.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Loved Bean.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The story challenges our perception of children. It stretches reality pretty far, but it holds together. It wasn't easy to do that.

Any additional comments?

I won't mention that there's surprise ending.

Fantastic reading for anyone with a real inaginati

A complex but easily followed story of the human race facing the enemy we fear in our minds, and that is the advanced and unfeeling destroyer of worlds. Ender the young warrior trained since a very young age torn between love, right and wrong, and fighting violently misled kids, he wins out painfully in the end. And he defeats the real enemy as well as his personal enemy.

A story you won't forget

The war strategies described in this book are very detailed and something Russians are probably dying to get their handa on! Jokes aside (you'll inderstand when you read it) it is an amazing story that will transport you places you'll never forget...

Fantastic story of a young child

I was a little let down at first, when I saw this was a full cast production but only heard one voice actor. The way they use the actors in this audiobook is by having then come in when it's in the characters narrative. When Ender thinks, reasons, or interacts as the main character you get one voice; when it is Valentine you get another voice.

When all was said and done the story holds strong and helped me to relive the childhood fantasy I had of aliens, science fiction, and being put against insurmountable odds.