I re-read this classic with the new intro from Orson Scott Card. I loved this introduction. It is worth finding this edition in a book store or library just to read it. If you have not read Ender's Game, please do yourself a favor and read it. It is a great book. In addition, a movie is coming out in 2013 and I believe in reading a book before it becomes imprinted on you in the form of a movie.
Some excerpts from the introduction:
"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." Intro
"Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about our self." Intro
"This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my test, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.
The story of Ender's Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together."
Introduction to Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Greensboro, North Carolina
March 1991
Book 5
Yes. One of the best books ever written. I re-read it every few years or so, and I can't wait until my children are old enough to read it.
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