Ender's Game and beyond

[charlesatan]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

In fairness, Card wanted to write Speaker for the Dead first, but he needed a character with the right background. If I remember correctly, his wife suggested that Ender from that short story he had wrote might be the perfect character. Of course, Card then needed to flesh out Ender's Game into a full novel.

So unlike Forever War, where the idea for the sequel came years later, Ender's Game (the novel) and Speaker for the Dead were always meant to be together .

--
Bill

From my understanding, and I've forgotten the source, but I read somewhere that Card was done with Ender's Game, and then he had the plot for Speaker for the Dead, but had problems with the protagonist.

It wasn't until after the success of Ender's Game that he thought of using Ender as the hero--hence the very different themes of Ender's Game vs. the sequels, or the fact that several scenes in Ender's Game had to be rewritten to match the chronology of the series--so I wouldn't say that they were always meant to be together.

[charlesatan]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I would say a very large number of people really like both books, but yeah, I would say that there are definitely a lot of people who are thrown by how different the two books are.

--
Bill

This xkcd comic strip also comes to mind:

http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=10049

[Penforhire]

charles, you might have got that from Card's own bits and pieces (fore or afterwords) he included in different books. Or possibly from some of his writings about the craft of writing. That's where I seem to remember seeing it.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by charlesatan

From my understanding, and I've forgotten the source, but I read somewhere that Card was done with Ender's Game, and then he had the plot for Speaker for the Dead, but had problems with the protagonist.

It wasn't until after the success of Ender's Game that he thought of using Ender as the hero--hence the very different themes of Ender's Game vs. the sequels, or the fact that several scenes in Ender's Game had to be rewritten to match the chronology of the series--so I wouldn't say that they were always meant to be together.

No, they really were. I just finished rereading both about a week ago, and I read the forward to both books. The books were pitched together. When you remember that the books won the Hugo and the Nebula in consecutive years (Which I think is still unique), then it seems unlikely that Card could have written a sequel and gotten it published in time for that if it had not already been well under way by the time that Ender's Game was finished.

Here is a short quote from the Introduction to Ender's Game.

"At that point I thought of Ender's Game, the novel, existing only to set up the much more powerful (I thought) story of Speaker for the Dead."

--
Bill