Ender's Game (Ender Wiggins Saga)

speak.
    Yet I knew--I knew --that this was one of the truest things about Ender's Game.   In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me, there on the lawn in front of the Salt Palace, to write a story in which gifted children are trained to fight in adult wars.   Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along--the same person that I am today.   I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires.   And in writing Ender's Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective--the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult's.
    The nasty side of myself wanted to answer that guidance counselor by saying, The only reason you don't think gifted children talk this way is because they know better than to talk this way in front of you . But the truer answer is that Ender's Game asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way--especially those whose whole career is based on that--are going to find Ender's Game a very unpleasant place to live.
    Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves. And Ender's Game,   seen in that context, might even be a sort of revolutionary tract.
    Because the book does ring true with the children who read it.   The highest praise I ever received for a book of mine was when the school librarian at Farrer Junior High in Provo, Utah, told me, “You know, Ender's Game is our most-lost book.”
    And then there are the letters.   This one, for instance, which I received in March of 1991:
     
    Dear Mr. Card,
    I am writing to you on behalf of myself and my twelve friends and fellow students who joined me at a two-week residential program for gifted and talented students at Purdue University this summer.   We attended the class, "Philosophy and Science Fiction," instructed by Peter Robinson, and we range in age from thirteen through fifteen.
    We are all in about the same position; we are very intellectually oriented and have found few people at home who share this trait.   Hence. most of us are lonely, and have been since kindergarten.   When teachers continually compliment you, your chances of "fitting in" are about nil.
    All our lives we've unconsciously been living by the philosophy "The only way to gain respect is doing so well you can't be ignored." And, for me and Mike, at least.   "beating the system" at school is how we've chosen to do this.   Both Mike and I plan to be in calculus our second year of high school, schedules permitting. ( Both of us are interested in science/math related careers.) Not to get me wrong; we're all bright and at the top of our class.   However, in choosing these paths, most of us have wound up satisfied in ourselves, but very lonely.
    This is why Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead really hit home for us.   These books were our "texts" for the class.   We would read one hundred to two hundred pages per night and then discuss them (and other short stories and essays) during the day.   At Purdue, it wasn't a "classroom" discussion, however. It was a group of friends talking about how their feelings and philosophies corresponded to .or differed from the books'.
    You couldn't imagine the impact your books had on us; we are the Enders of today.   Almost everything written in Ender's Game and Speaker applied to each one of us on a very, very personal level.   No, the situation isn't as drastic today, but all the feelings are there.   Both your books, along with the excellent work of Peter Robinson, unified us into a tight web of people.
     
    Ingrid's letter goes on, talking of the Phoenix Rising, the magazine that these students publish together in order to maintain their sense of community. (In response I have given them this introduction to publish in their magazine before its appearance in book form.)
    Of course, I'm always glad when people like a story of mine; but something much more important is gong on here.   These readers found that Ender's Game was not merely a 'mythic" story, dealing with general truths, but something much more personal.   To them, Ender's Game was an epic tale, a story that expressed who they are as a community, a