Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 Read Online Free
Author: Damien Broderick, Paul di Filippo
credits—although they did make exceptions for such luminaries as Robert Abernathy and Vance Aandahl.
By the second edition, from 1993, when John Clute had come onboard as co-editor, Card merits two full pages.
Plainly something had happened to boost his stature. That kickstart was, of course, Ender’s Game , which this later edition of the Encyclopedia revealed, in fact, to have as its seed Card’s very first story sale of the same name that had been ignored in 1979. In his substantial 1990 short story collection, Maps in a Mirror, Card records that
The novel Ender’s Game is the only work of mine… that was truly expanded from a short work that I had not intended to expand. Indeed, I had never expected to do anything with Ender Wiggin again…. I was beginning to work with a novel idea with the working title Speaker of Death …. [S]uddenly it dawned on me that the Speaker should be Ender as an adult…. [A]ll the problems would be solved if I went back and rewrote “Ender’s Game” as a novel, incorporating into it all the changes that were needed to properly set up Speaker .
The explosive effect of the novelized version of that Analog tale cannot be underestimated, on Card’s career or the genre in general. As Clute observes: prior to 1985, after some initial promise, “OSC’s career then seemed to drift.” If not for Ender and his much elaborated exploits, Card today might very well be regarded in the same ranks as Abernathy or Aandahl: a minor, respectable, forgotten craftsman.
And in the sf field at large, Card’s book contributed to the growing popularity of military sf, a subgenre with a relatively small profile circa mid-1980s; to the popularization of teen protagonists driving much of the current YA boom; to the co-opting of videogames into the sf mythos (a process also abetted by the uncannily co-emergent 1984 film The Last Starfighter ); and to the genesis of a million fannish flame wars over perceived sexism, racism, homophobism, elitism and hyper-religiosity in Card’s works . [1]
What stroke of genius propelled this book to such influential heights? It’s simple, in retrospect. Whereas most excitingly controversial novels include one or two hot-button topics at most, Card’s novel is composed of nothing but a half-dozen hot-button issues wrapped in a bildungsroman . In more or less descending order, these include:
An existential threat to the entire human race.
The nature of alien intelligence and person-hood, or, the role of “the other.”
Genocide.
Means versus ends.
The “great man” theory of history.
The limits of government and the proper role of the citizen.
The limits and nature of the educational system.
The military ethos.
The nature of sociopaths and power.
Family dynamics.
Sibling rivalry.
Schoolboy rivalry.
Not even Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers , James Blish in A Case of Conscience or Philip José Farmer in The Lovers , perhaps not even Joanna Russ in The Female Man had packed so much argument-provoking philosophical dynamite into one novel.
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin—bearing a surname indicative perhaps of braininess under one’s “wig”—is the youngest child of three, a mere seven years old at tale’s start, with brother Peter the oldest and sister Valentine the middle one. They are all “odd johns,” quasi-mutant geniuses. Peter, the sociopath, will become a political powerhouse, the Hegemon. Valentine will shape society by her essays. But to Ender falls the greatest burden and glory. He will undergo years of brutal training at the interplanetary military outposts known as Battle School and Command School, all to elicit and mold his unique strategic genius. That genius will ultimately be arrayed against the Buggers, mankind’s implacable alien enemy who almost destroyed our species twice before.
In very sturdy, engaging and transparent prose, Card delivers a kind of Tom Brown’s
By the second edition, from 1993, when John Clute had come onboard as co-editor, Card merits two full pages.
Plainly something had happened to boost his stature. That kickstart was, of course, Ender’s Game , which this later edition of the Encyclopedia revealed, in fact, to have as its seed Card’s very first story sale of the same name that had been ignored in 1979. In his substantial 1990 short story collection, Maps in a Mirror, Card records that
The novel Ender’s Game is the only work of mine… that was truly expanded from a short work that I had not intended to expand. Indeed, I had never expected to do anything with Ender Wiggin again…. I was beginning to work with a novel idea with the working title Speaker of Death …. [S]uddenly it dawned on me that the Speaker should be Ender as an adult…. [A]ll the problems would be solved if I went back and rewrote “Ender’s Game” as a novel, incorporating into it all the changes that were needed to properly set up Speaker .
The explosive effect of the novelized version of that Analog tale cannot be underestimated, on Card’s career or the genre in general. As Clute observes: prior to 1985, after some initial promise, “OSC’s career then seemed to drift.” If not for Ender and his much elaborated exploits, Card today might very well be regarded in the same ranks as Abernathy or Aandahl: a minor, respectable, forgotten craftsman.
And in the sf field at large, Card’s book contributed to the growing popularity of military sf, a subgenre with a relatively small profile circa mid-1980s; to the popularization of teen protagonists driving much of the current YA boom; to the co-opting of videogames into the sf mythos (a process also abetted by the uncannily co-emergent 1984 film The Last Starfighter ); and to the genesis of a million fannish flame wars over perceived sexism, racism, homophobism, elitism and hyper-religiosity in Card’s works . [1]
What stroke of genius propelled this book to such influential heights? It’s simple, in retrospect. Whereas most excitingly controversial novels include one or two hot-button topics at most, Card’s novel is composed of nothing but a half-dozen hot-button issues wrapped in a bildungsroman . In more or less descending order, these include:
An existential threat to the entire human race.
The nature of alien intelligence and person-hood, or, the role of “the other.”
Genocide.
Means versus ends.
The “great man” theory of history.
The limits of government and the proper role of the citizen.
The limits and nature of the educational system.
The military ethos.
The nature of sociopaths and power.
Family dynamics.
Sibling rivalry.
Schoolboy rivalry.
Not even Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers , James Blish in A Case of Conscience or Philip José Farmer in The Lovers , perhaps not even Joanna Russ in The Female Man had packed so much argument-provoking philosophical dynamite into one novel.
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin—bearing a surname indicative perhaps of braininess under one’s “wig”—is the youngest child of three, a mere seven years old at tale’s start, with brother Peter the oldest and sister Valentine the middle one. They are all “odd johns,” quasi-mutant geniuses. Peter, the sociopath, will become a political powerhouse, the Hegemon. Valentine will shape society by her essays. But to Ender falls the greatest burden and glory. He will undergo years of brutal training at the interplanetary military outposts known as Battle School and Command School, all to elicit and mold his unique strategic genius. That genius will ultimately be arrayed against the Buggers, mankind’s implacable alien enemy who almost destroyed our species twice before.
In very sturdy, engaging and transparent prose, Card delivers a kind of Tom Brown’s
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