Ender in Exile
Ender governs a colony and discovers a Bugger hive queen pupa.
Ender in Exile is a science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, part of the Ender's Game series, published on November 11, 2008. It takes place between the award-winning novels Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and can also be considered a parallel novel to the first three sequels in the Shadow Saga. The novel concludes a dangling story line of the Shadow Saga while expanding or replacing the last chapter of the original novel Ender's Game.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Orson Scott Card
- Cover artist
- John Harris
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Ender's Game series
- Genre
- Science fiction
- Publisher
- Tor Books
- Released
- November 11, 2008
Facts from the source article.
Plot
One year after the Buggers were defeated, Ender cannot return to Earth because countries would fight over him. He is offered the governorship of the first human colony on a former Bugger world, later called Shakespeare. His sister Valentine accompanies him, wanting to escape their brother Peter's control and restore her relationship with Ender. During the voyage, Valentine writes her History of the Bugger Wars, while Ender has an unspoken power struggle with the ship's captain, Admiral Quincy Morgan.
A romance develops between Ender and a girl named Alessandra. After landing, Ender, who learned the names and lives of the colonists during the trip, takes charge and wins them over. He serves as governor for several years. Near the end of his term, Ender and a boy named Abra search for a site for a new settlement, wanting it far enough away to avoid competition.
During this search, Ender finds a structure resembling a game from Battle School, which turns out to be a note from the Buggers containing a living, fertilized pupa of a Hive Queen. This discovery leads Ender to write his first book as the Speaker for the Dead, titled The Hive Queen, from the Buggers' perspective. Later, Peter Wiggin, nearing death, asks Ender to write a book for him, which becomes The Hegemon. Ender then resigns as governor and moves to a colony called Ganges, led by Virlomi. There he meets Randall Firth, who believes himself to be the son of Achilles de Flandres and calls himself Achilles.
Original publication as short stories
Several chapters of the novel were originally published as short stories in Card's webzine Intergalactic Medicine Show. The story 'Ender's Homecoming' comprises the entire first chapter, unchanged except that the email message at the end was moved to the beginning of chapter 2; it was published in the January 2008 issue. 'A Young Man with Prospects' makes up the entire fifth chapter, with an added email at the beginning describing how the Toscanos were selected for the colony; it was published in the February 2007 issue.
The story 'Ender in Flight' was published in the April 2008 issue and is spread throughout the book, spanning from the end of chapter 7 through the end of chapter 10, continuing in chapters 13 and 14, and finishing in chapter 16; an email from Admiral Chamrajnagar to Admiral Quincy Morgan is included in the book. 'The Gold Bug' was published in the July 2007 issue and reprinted in 2011 in the anthology Alien Contact; it was also adapted into an Ender comic and appears as a bonus in the Marvel Comics hardcover edition of Red Prophet: The Tales Of Alvin Maker.
Parts of 'The Gold Bug' occur in chapters 14, 15, and 16 of the book, though some parts, including a large portion of the beginning, are not included. While writing 'The Gold Bug,' Card began thinking about how Ender got to the colony and conceived a story involving a power struggle between Ender and the ship's captain. Not wanting the story to focus only on that, he added a mother and daughter on the ship. When he began writing about Alessandra and Dorabella Toscano, it was meant as the opening for that story, but as he planned the scenes, it developed into its own story, 'A Young Man with Prospects,' later incorporated as chapter 5.
More in Characters
Elsewhere in Ender's Game
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