Ender game author biography example

Orson Scott Card is an American author and columnist, most widely known for being the author of the novel Ender's Game and most other Enderverse media. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Women of Genesis), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts.

He collaborated with Aaron Johnston on the Formic Wars: Burning Earth and Silent Strike comic books, and later on the First Formic War Trilogy. He is currently writing side-by-side with Johnston on the Second Formic War Trilogy.

Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He recently began a longterm position as a professor of writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.

Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret Card.

Trivia[]

• His favorite novel in the Enderverse is Shadows in Flight due to its emphasis on fatherhood. He wrote it shortly after he experienced a stroke, making him re-evaluate his life and what was most important to him.

Links[]

Introduction

This is the first article in a series about the inspiration for classic science fiction novels and author characteristics that spur them on to create such masterpieces as Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card), Dune (Frank Herbert), Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert A. Heinlein), The Foundation Series (Isaac Asimov), and Battlefield Earth (L. Ron Hubbard).

These authors and titles are based on a 2021 national survey of Battlefield Earth readers to find out which author/novel mostly compares to Battlefield Earth. Following are some of the results:

• 34% compared Battlefield Earth to Asimov/The Foundation Trilogy
• 30% compared Battlefield Earth to Frank Herbert/Dune
• 19% compared Battlefield Earth to Orson Scott Card/Ender’s Game
• 15% compared Battlefield Earth to Robert Heinlein’s works of science fiction

Also interesting is that 20% of those surveyed stated that Battlefield Earth is to science fiction as Lord of the Rings is to fantasy.

We will begin the series with Orson Scott Card’s inspiration for the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel Ender’s Game. This book about kids training for interstellar war has impacted generations of readers and left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre.

Early Influences and Inspiration

Nurtured during his upbringing in the 1950s and ’60s, Card’s fascination with military history and sci-fi shaped Ender’s Game. As a teenager, he pondered the challenge of training soldiers for zero-g combat in space, a seed of inspiration that germinated over a decade. How would you train soldiers to fight in space where up and down lose meaning?

Faith and underdog determination influenced Card, too, as a devout Mormon who admired biblical unexpected winners. Then reading and studying from Tolkien to Asimov, he began to craft intricately woven fictional worlds with big ideas. Little did he know this eclectic mix would someday cataly

American science fiction novelist (born 1951)

Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. As of 2024, he is the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for his novel Ender's Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986). A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card coproduced, was released in 2013. Card also wrote the Locus Fantasy Award-winning series The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987–2003). Card's fiction often features characters with exceptional gifts who make difficult choices with high stakes. Card has also written political, religious, and social commentary in his columns and other writing; his opposition to homosexuality has provoked public criticism.

Card, who is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, was born in Richland, Washington, and grew up in Utah and California. While he was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), his plays were performed on stage. He served in Brazil as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and headed a community theater for two summers. Card had 27 short stories published between 1978 and 1979, and he won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1978. He earned a master's degree in English from the University of Utah in 1981 and wrote novels in science fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, and historical fiction ge

"They stayed away from the nets that required use of a real name. That wasn't hard because real names only had to do with money. They didn't need money. They needed respect, and that they could earn. With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets....They were not bland, and people answered. The responses that got posted on the public nets were vinegar, the responses that were sent as mail, for Peter and Valentine to read privately, were poisonous. But they did learn what attributes of their writing were seized upon as childish and immature. And they got better."

At a time when most Americans had still not logged onto the net, Card was imagining the ways that one could create an on-line reputation through words and thoughts, how access to the net might allow one to circumvent traditional barriers to entry into political life, and how children might become world leaders in the information age. Card also recognized that the construction of on-line personas would change who we are in more fundamental ways: "The character of Demosthenes gradually took on a life of his own. At times she found herself thinking like Demosthenes at the end of a writing session, agreeing with ideas that were supposed to be calculated poses. And sometimes she read Peter's Locke essays and found herself annoyed at his obvious blindness to what was really going on. Perha