Ender's Game Codexery

Second Formic War

The invasion that Mazer Rackham stopped.

The Second Formic War, the Second Invasion of the original novel, is the war that follows the scout ship's attack on Earth in the Ender's Game series. Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston tell it in the Second Formic War trilogy: The Swarm (2016), The Hive (2019) and the planned The Queens.

Lore & Background

After the first invasion, scientists determine that the single ship that devastated China was merely a scout ship, and Earth's government is reorganized for defense: a Hegemon keeps the formerly warring nations in line and a Polemarch organizes the planet's military forces into the new International Fleet. In The Swarm it falls to Bingwen, Mazer Rackham, Victor Delgado and Lem Jukes to create a weapon that can defend humanity. In The Hive they battle the growing forces of the Formics and try to locate and destroy the Hive Queen.

Reader's Guide

In Ender's Game, humans repel the First and Second Invasions by narrow margins. Mazer Rackham is the half-Māori captain who singlehandedly stopped the Second Invasion by realizing that the buggers are a hive mind, and he later trains Ender Wiggin for the Third Invasion, the campaign that destroys the Formic homeworld.

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