Speaker for the Dead

Speaker for the Dead is a science fiction novel from 1986 by the American author Orson Scott Card. It is the sequel to his 1985 novel Ender's Game. The story takes place around the year 5270, roughly 3,000 years after the events of Ender's Game. Because Ender Wiggin has traveled at near-light speeds, he is only about 35 years old.

This book is the first to introduce the Starways Congress, a high-level governing body for human space colonies, and the Hundred Worlds, a network of colonized planets connected by Ansible technology, which allows instant communication across any distance.

Like Ender's Game, this novel won both the Nebula Award in 1986 and the Hugo Award in 1987. A slightly revised edition was published in 1991. It was followed by the novels Xenocide and Children of the Mind.

After the eradication of the Formic species in Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin writes a book called The Hive Queen. It describes the life of the Formics, based on information from a dormant Formic Queen he secretly carries. As humanity uses light-speed travel to establish new colonies, Ender and his sister Valentine age slowly due to relativistic travel. Ender's older brother, Peter Wiggin, now the aged Hegemon of Earth, recognizes Ender's writings in The Hive Queen and asks Ender to write for him after his death.

Ender agrees and writes The Hegemon. These two books, published under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead," start a new spiritual movement. Speakers for the Dead are authorized to investigate and eulogize a person and their life's work after death. The Hive Queen also changes public opinion about the Formic war, leading humanity to view Ender Wiggin, once a hero, as responsible for a tragic and cruel xenocide, meaning the killing of an alien species.

Three thousand years after the Formic xenocide, humans have spread across the Hundred Worlds, governed by the Starways Congress. A Brazilian Catholic human colony called Milagre is established on the planet Lusitania. This planet is home to a sentient species of symbiotic forest dwellers. The colonists, who primarily speak Portuguese, call them Pequeninos, meaning Little Ones, but they are often referred to as piggies because of their porcine snouts.

Their society is matriarchal and gender-segregated, and their belief system centers on the forest trees. The Pequeninos are of great interest to scientists. Because humans had destroyed the only other sentient species they had encountered, the Formics, special care is taken to avoid similar mistakes. The human colony is fenced in, contact with the Pequeninos is strictly limited to a handful of scientists, and sharing human technology or culture with them is forbidden.

Shortly after the colony is founded, many colonists die from the Descolada virus, a Portuguese word meaning uncoiled. The virus alters DNA, causing terrible pain, rampant cancerous growth of fungus, extra limbs, decay of healthy tissue, and death. Xenobiologists Gusto and Cida von Hesse manage to create a treatment for the virus before they themselves succumb to it, leaving behind their young daughter Novinha.

Eight years after the Descolada virus is brought under control, xenologer Pipo and his thirteen-year-old son and apprentice Libo have developed a friendship with the Pequeninos. They allow Novinha to join their science team as the colony's only xenobiologist after she passes a test at age thirteen. After accidentally sharing information about human genders with a male Pequenino named Rooter, the scientists find Rooter's body eviscerated with a sapling planted inside. Guessing this might be a torturous sacrificial ritual, restrictions on studying the Pequeninos are enforced, barring humans from asking direct questions.

A few years later, Novinha discovers that every lifeform on Lusitania carries the Descolada virus, which, though lethal to humans, appears to serve a beneficial purpose for native life. When Pipo learns this, he suddenly has an insight and races off to talk to the Pequeninos without telling the others. Libo and Novinha find Pipo's body cut open, just as Rooter's had been, but with no sapling planted. Because Pipo's death seems unprovoked, the Starways Congress now considers the Pequeninos a threat, and restrictions on studying them are tightened. Distraught, Novinha calls for a Speaker for the Dead for Pipo. She is in love with Libo but fears that if he sees her research files, he will make the same discovery as Pipo and meet the same fate. She marries another colonist, Marcos Ribeira, to lock her files from being opened.

Andrew Wiggin, unknown to others as the Ender Wiggin responsible for the Formic xenocide, lives quietly on the planet Trondheim. He responds to Novinha's call, parting with his sister Valentine, who had traveled with him but is now settled with a family. He travels with an artificial intelligence named Jane, who communicates with Ender through a jewel earring. Jane was born in the Ansible network that enables faster-than-light communication and keeps her existence secret.

After relativistic travel, Ender arrives at Lusitania 22 years later, finding that Novinha canceled her request for a Speaker five days after sending it. In the intervening time, Libo died in the same manner as Pipo, and Marcos succumbed to a chronic illness. Novinha's eldest children, Ela and Miro, have requested a Speaker for Libo and Marcos. Ender, gaining access to all the relevant files, learns of the tension since Pipo's death: Novinha has turned away from xenobiology to study crop growth and had a loveless, abusive relationship with Marcos; Miro has secretly worked with Libo's daughter Ouanda to continue their research.