Enders In Exile

because in writing those earlier
books I did
not
have the resource of a community
of generous readers, or didn't think to ask for
their help as I should have, and so thought up cool new ideas for
things that I had already dealt with in earlier books, but forgot about
in the years that followed.
    This, too, I have
resolved.
    I was once a
professional proofreader. I know from experience that even the
brightest, most careful readers, working in teams so we could catch
each other's mistakes, still missed errors. A world as complex, with as
many stories set in it, as this one is bound to contain other
contradictions as yet undetected. Please post any that you find (except
the ones from the former chapter
15 of
Ender's Game
) at Hatrack.com ,
and maybe I can find a way to fix them later.
    Or take it
philosophically, and realize that if these were genuine histories or
biographies instead of works of fiction, there would be contradictions
between them anyway—because even in factual accounts of the
real world, errors and contradictions creep in. There are few events in
history that were recounted identically by all witnesses. Pretend,
then, that any remaining contradictions are the result of errors in
historical transmission. Even if it's a "history" of events hundreds of
years in the future.
    Besides these helpful
friends, I showed my chapters as I wrote them to my usual crew of
unbelievably patient friends. Getting a novel piecemeal is an old
tradition—Charles Dickens's fans always had to read his
novels as they came out in installments in the newspaper. But getting a
chapter every few days and having to respond quickly because I'm on
such a tight writing schedule is making more demands than I should
rightly make of friends.
    Jake Black was, for the
first time, one of those first readers, in order to bring his
encyclopedic knowledge of the Ender universe to bear. Kathryn H. Kidd,
my longsuffering collaborator on the long-overdue-and-entirely-my-fault
sequel to
Lovelock,
called
Rasputin,
has been one of my first readers for years. Erin and Phillip Absher
have also been longtime prereaders of mine, and Phillip bears the
distinction of making me throw out several chapters in order to follow
up on a plot thread that I had thought was a throwaway, and he
convinced me was at the heart and soul of the story. He was right, I
was wrong, and the book was better for it. This time, fortunately, he
didn't make me rewrite whole swaths of my book. But his, Erin's,
Kathy's, and Jake's encouragement helped me feel as though I was
telling a story that was worth the time spent on it.
    My very first reader,
however, remains my wife, Kristine, who also bears the brunt of the
burden of the family when I'm in writing mode. Her suggestions might
seem small to her, but they're large to me, and if she has any doubts,
I rewrite until they go away.
    Kristine and our
youngest child, Zina, the last at home, have to deal with a father who
haunts the house like a distracted, irritable ghost during the writing
of a book. But we do have those nights watching
Idol
and
So You Think You Can Dance,
where we actually
inhabit the same universe for an hour or two at a time.
    I have also had the
help of Kathleen Bellamy, the managing editor of
The
InterGalactic Medicine Show
—who does
not
read my books until they are in page proofs, whereupon she reads them
for the first time—as our very last proofreader before the
book goes to press. That makes her our final line of defense. And our
webwright and IT manager, Scott Allen, keeps Hatrack and oscIGMS going
so that I
have
that community to call upon.
    On this book, Beth
Meacham, my editor at Tor, played a larger role than I usually ask of
my editors. Because this book was so quirky—being a "midquel"
that overlapped with my most popular novel—I did not want to
proceed without her assurance that the book was actually something Tor
wanted to publish! Her suggestions and caveats were wise and helpful at
every stage of the development and writing of this book.
    And I thank the
production team at Tor for the sacrifices they had to make because I
was so late with this manuscript. That this book still came out on time
is owed to their extra work and sharp concern for quality. Even when
rushing, they do their work with pride and so I end up with a book I
can be proud of. Where would I be, if other good souls did not make up
for my shortcomings?
    The character of Ender
as depicted in the original novel was in some