The Battle Simulator
Where games become war and children learn to command the stars.
The battle simulator is the device on which Ender Wiggin trains at Command School, after his promotion from Battle School at the age of ten. After some preliminary battles in the simulator he is introduced to Mazer Rackham, who creates and controls the space combat simulations that follow.
Lore & Background
As the fighting grows harder, Ender is joined by friends from Battle School, who serve as his sub-commanders. Ender grows depressed by the battles, his isolation, and the way Mazer treats him. For his final test, watched by the I.F.'s commanders, he finds his fleet far outnumbered by bugger ships around their homeworld, and he sacrifices the fleet to fire a Molecular Disruption Device at the planet.
Reader's Guide
Afterwards Mazer tells Ender that the "simulations" were real battles: the commands directed human spacecraft against bugger fleets by ansible, and Ender has won the war. In the original short story, Mazer Rackham likewise tutors Ender in the use of a space battle simulator and tells him that the battles are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy.
More in Story & Timeline
Elsewhere in Ender's Game
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