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First Meetings in Ender's Universe by Orson Scott Card
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Orson Scott Card Edition: Mass Market Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2004-09-01 ISBN: 0765347989 Number of pages: 224 Publisher: Tor Teen Product features: - ISBN13: 9780765347985
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of First Meetings in Ender's UniverseBook Review: Good if you're a fan of the series Summary: 4 Stars
This is a slightly expanded version of the First Meetings edition that was published a few years earlier, featuring four (rather than three) tales of Orson Scott Card's "Enderverse." All four stories are pretty good, particularly if you haven't read the three stories which had been published previously.
The stories are presented in chronological order of events, rather than the order that they were written, and as such, some of the earlier stories explain away things that play a part in some of the other, full-length books, but not so much in this one. This collection begins with "The Polish Boy," the story of a young genius who is trying to find a way to outsmart the Interstellar Fleet that wants to send him to Battle School. This is followed by "Teacher's Pest" (the new story in this collection), featuring the child as a young man who encounters a graduate student who challenges his intellect in a way that nobody has before. Even if it wasn't spelled out. In the past, the expansion of Ender's universe has mostly gone forwards, showing what happened to his comrade Bean after the war with the Formics or the distant future, showing Ender's life as an adult hundreds of years beyond the war. These two stories go in the other direction, fleshing out the two people who would become Ender's parents in very satisfying fashion. Frankly, I'd never given John Paul and Theresa Wiggin much thought before, and these stories succeeded in making them both as engaging a pair of characters as their children would one day be.
Next is the original 1977 version of "Ender's Game," the short story Card would later expand into the classic novel. People who have read the novel will find that virtually everything in this short story did make it into the full version of the story, but there are a wealth of subplots and characters missing. The story works quite well on its own, fortunately. It does, however, pose a slight problem for the final story in the collection, "Investment Counselor." This story flashes forward to a time when Ender -- subjectively 20 years old, but hundreds of years past the War -- visits a new world where a bizarre computer program begins to give him advice about the fortune that has accrued during his years of interstellar travel, and tries to protect him from an unscrupulous tax collector. This, again, is a really good story, but it's missing something in this book. This is the tale of how Ender first encountered his computer companion, Jane, who evolved from a computer game he played as a child. The game subplot is vital to the Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) novel, but was absent from the original short story, so people who read this book without having read the novel are missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
Overall, this is a strong collection of short stories, but I recommend it more for people who have read the other Ender books (or at least Ender's Game), so they'll have the proper context in which to view these tales.
Summary of First Meetings in Ender's UniverseMeet Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the unforgettable boy-hero of Ender's Game--winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel--and enter his Universe through this collection of stories.
"The Polish Boy" is John Paul Wiggin, the future father of Ender. In the years between the first two Bugger Wars, the Hegemony is desperate to recruit brilliant military commanders to repel the alien invasion. They may have found their man--or boy--in John Paul Wiggin....
In "Teacher's Pest"-a novella written especially for this collection--a brilliant but arrogant John Paul Wiggin, now a university student, matches wits with an equally brilliant graduate student.
"The Investment Counselor" is set after the end of the Bugger Wars. Banished from Earth and slandered as a mass murderer, twenty-year-old Andrew Wiggin wanders incognito from planet to planet as a fugitive--until a blackmailing tax inspector compromises his identity and threatens to expose Ender the Xeoncide.
Also reprinted here is the original award-winning novella, "Ender's Game," which first appeared in 1977.
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