rom a short story in Analog magazine to a Hugo- and Nebula-winning best-seller, Ender's Game launched the career of prolific author Orson Scott Card. The novel, about a boy who becomes Earth's greatest hope against an alien invasion, has sold well over 1 million copies since its release in 1985. Now, eight novels later, the series has become one of the most popular and lasting franchises in science fiction.
The eighth book, Shadow of the Giant, was just released on March 8. Giant is the fourth and final book in the Shadow cycle, a spinoff of the original Ender. The series, which began with the 1999 release Ender's Shadow is a parallel narrative focusing on Ender's best friend, Bean. In the latest story, a grown-up Bean searches for refuge from his enemies and a home for his family.
Science Fiction Weekly recently conducted an interview via e-mail with Card about the new novel, his writing process and his love for science fiction.
Shadow of the Giant is the eighth, and reportedly last, book in the Ender series. What made you decide to conclude it here?
Card: None of these books began as a series. Speaker for the Dead was the core novel; I wrote the novel version of Ender's Game in order to set up Speaker. Xenocide/Children of the Mind was supposed to be a single book, based on an idea I had before I came up with the idea for Speaker; it only got added to the "series" when I decided it would work better with Ender as the hero.
Ender's Shadow was supposed to be a single book about Bean, with only a few chapters that would parallel Ender's Game. But I fell in love with some peripheral characters and the story grew into the four volumes of the Shadow books.
So I don't think of Giant as the eighth book of anything. It's the fourth volume of the books that, though they were supposed to be about Bean, ultimately became equally about Peter and Petra as well.
There will be at least two more books in the Ender universe, but again, the order is not terribly important to me. I try to write all the books so that you can start with any of them and each book will contain all the information you need to know in order to comprehend the story.
Is this ending something that you envisioned from the beginning?
Card: I ended Giant exactly as planned. I can't write a book until I know the ending, because without knowing how it ends, how can I know where to start? The opening has to promise the ending, so it feels fulfilling to the reader when the ending comes.
How has it changed over the course of your writing it?
Card: The primary change during the writing process of any of my novels is that I try to treat each character as the hero of his or her own story. That means that I develop even minor characters in my mind, and sometimes I get so fascinated by minor characters that they become major, and the storyline bends to accommodate them. This always lengthens a book. That's how the book about Bean became four volumes, and why my Alvin Maker trilogy will have seven volumes before it's done.
Could you imagine returning to this world for more stories at some point in the future?
Card: Shadows in Flight will come after Children of the Mind but will include some loose ends from Shadow of the Giant. It's not properly a sequel to Giant, though.
Ender in Exile: Ganges, the working title right now, is also not really a sequel to Giant, though it likewise picks up a couple of plot threads from Giant and brings Ender himself to a colony world where a woman named Randi and her child now live.
There also may someday be a Mazer Rackham novel.
Which characters are your favorite to write for?
Card: Without question, the Alvin novels are the most fun to write.
Which are more problematic?
Card: Stand-alone novels are always harder, because I don't know anything about the characters going in—I have to find them as I go.
What kind of research have you done on military training and game theory for the books?
Card: A lifetime of reading and game playing and design, plus thinking about them and drawing conclusions about how the world works. The most important element in my thinking is: Nothing ever has just one cause, and nothing ever has just one effect. It keeps my thinking broad and open and keeps me watching for multiple possibilities in the story.
As technology and society catch up with your fictional world, how has that affected your writing?
Card: I don't write about technology, primarily to avoid becoming dated. When a technology is important, it rises to the surface. But generally I deal with obvious extrapolations from present technologies. I'm not a hard-science writer. My technologies are all black boxes. I only tell you what goes into the machine, and then what comes out of it.
How have current events shaped the stories you tell in these books?
Card: The main problem was that I don't know how current events are going to turn out. So I had to leave the past of the novel ambiguous enough to accommodate all possible outcomes of the present war on terrorism.
It's been reported that Warner Brothers is making a film adaptation of the Ender series. Where does that venture stand at the moment?
Card: Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow are under option from Warner Brothers to be made into a feature film entitled Ender's Game. Wolfgang Petersen is slated to direct, and he is guiding the development of the script, along with Robert Chartoff and Lynn Hendee of Chartoff Productions; David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are writing the next draft of the script. Until there's a camera-ready script, nothing will be scheduled.
What attracts you to science fiction?
Card: When I write science fiction, I get an amazing tool set and the most open-minded, yet sophisticated, audience available. They still care about story rather than the manner of its telling, and they don't want to read the same book over and over—they're looking for new and surprising worlds and tales.
Do you think it's easier or more difficult to write science fiction than any other genre?
Card: To learn the tools and avoid the beginner mistakes, it requires that a writer be familiar with the genre—but that's easily done with some reading. In a way, though, science fiction's insistence on story makes it harder to write than literary fiction, which largely allows very thin stories under a veneer of flamboyant and artificial style. In sci-fi, you have to have the skeleton and muscles; in many other genres, you can get by with the skin alone.
What makes for good science fiction?
Card: Deep and wide world-creation, especially plausible human societies. Then you select from a menu of character, adventure, world-shaking events and intriguing mysteries.
Do you write specifically for your established fans, or do you try to keep new readers in mind as well?
Card: I always write for the same audience: An imaginary group of people who care about and believe in exactly the same kind of story as me. The only difference between them and me is that I know the story and they don't. So I write it as clearly as possible so they will understand it, simply assuming that they'll care about it and believe in it.
You work a lot with aspiring writers in your classes and workshops. What is the most important piece of advice you have to give them?
Card: What are you doing in this class? Why aren't you home writing? You learn more from writing a 100,000-word novel than from any number of classes supposedly preparing you to write one.
Study history. That's where you learn how humans behave in different societies and under different circumstances.
Writer's block is your friend. It's your unconscious mind telling you that what you just wrote or are about to write is wrong—you don't believe in it or care about it, and so you can't stand the thought of writing it. Go back and reinvent the story, which may involve throwing out everything you've written up to now.
Finish the story and mail it out. Get it out of the house. After a couple of days, unmailed manuscripts start to smell and keep you from writing anything else.
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Also in this issue:
Paul Schrader, director of Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist
