Plot Summary
The Hugo Award-winning novel Ender's Game, now available as an audiobook, is the first book in a popular series that follows the eponymous Ender, his brother Peter and sister Valentine, as well as a number of other characters in a sprawling and intriguing story that spans thousands of years. While we won't try to determine which is best, Ender's Game is likely the best known of the series, and for good reason. Once you hear it, you won't soon forget it.
Ender's Game follows Ender Wiggin, the youngest of three children, born by special government decree because most families are not allowed more than two children. For some time, Earth has been at war with the Formics, a bug-like alien species that said 'hi' to humanity by killing thousands. The military hopes that Ender will be the great military leader to defeat the Formics once and for all. While he is still quite young, they send him to Battle School, an intense training program that molds him into a soldier, tactician, and leader.
All of this training eventually leads Ender to his final test, a massive battle simulation which will have lasting consequences for him, for humanity, and for the Formics. Fans of The Hunger Games will recognize some of the themes in Ender's Game, though they are very different books. The story is intense, unsparing, and always gripping.
Orson Scott Card is an American science fiction writer. Besides Ender's Game and its sequels, he has written a number of other science fiction series and standalone novels. A well-known figure in the world of science fiction and fantasy, he initially conceived of Ender's Game as a short story, later transforming it into a novel.
""Ender's Game" is one of the science fiction classics and should be required reading for every high school and re-reading for every adult. It tells the story of Ender Wiggim, a boy genius who grew up in a world at war and gripped in its subsequent fear. It is about strategy, ambition, and the potentially inhuman decisions made during a (fictional) war by one child who could tilt history.
If you watched the film and thought that was the whole story, an injustice was done. The book tells the minutiae that no film has successfully covered. It tells the whole story and highlights the genius of character of Ender."
—
Matthew (5 out of 5 stars)
Publisher Summary
The worldwide bestseller, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card comes to the screen at last in a major motion picture event in November 2013. Starring Hugo's Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, and Ben Kingsley, the movie is sure to inspire a new audience of fans to read the book that started it all. Once again, Earth is under attack. An alien species is poised for a final assault. The survival of humanity depends on a military genius who can defeat the aliens. But who? Ender Wiggin. Brilliant. Ruthless. Cunning. A tactical and strategic master. And a child. Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender's childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn't it?
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About Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card, the author of the New York Times bestseller Ender’s Game, has won several Hugo and Nebula awards for his works of speculative fiction. His Ender novels are widely read by adults and younger readers and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy, American-frontier fantasy, biblical novels, poetry, plays, and scripts.
About the Narrators
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.
Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo Award nine times, the Nebula Award four times, the Bram Stoker Award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.
Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.
Kiff VandenHeuvel, voice talent and audiobook narrator, is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is an alumni of the Second City comedy theater. He is an accomplished improviser and sketch comedy director, and he teaches voice-over, improv, and directing at Second City Hollywood. He has appeared in hundreds of television and radio commercials and is well known in the video game community as the voice of Zachary Hale Comstock in Bioshock: Infinite.