First Meetings
Also known as First Meetings in the Enderverse and First Meetings in Ender's Universe.
When ”Ender's Game” was first published as a novella twenty-five years ago, few would have predicted that it would become one of the most successful ventures in publishing history. Expanded into a novel in 1985, Ender's Game won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Never out of print and translated into dozens of languages, it is the rare work of fiction that can truly be said to have transcended a genre. Ender's Game and its sequels have won dozens of prestigious awards and are as popular today among teens and young readers as among adults.
First Meetings is a collection of three novellas – plus the original ”Ender's Game” – that journey into the origins and the destiny of one Ender Wiggin.
”The Polish Boy” begins in the years between the first two Bugger Wars when the Hegemony is desperate to recruit brilliant military commanders to repel the alien invasion. In John Paul Wiggin – the future father of Ender – they believe they may have found their man. Or boy.
In ”Teacher's Pest” – a novella written especially for this collection – a brilliant but insufferably arrogant John Paul Wiggin, now an American university student, matches wits with an equally brilliant graduate student named Theresa Brown.
It is many years since the end of the Bugger War in ”The Investment Counselor.” Ender's reputation as a hero and savior has suffered a horrible reversal. 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 Xenocide.
Also reprinted here is the original landmark novella, ”Ender's Game,” which first appeared in 1977.
Fully illustrated, First Meetings is Orson Scot Card writing at the height of his considerable powers about his most compelling character.
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Orson Scott Card
Before Ender’s Game became required reading in classrooms and a touchstone for science fiction fans worldwide, it was just a short story—one that Orson Scott Card wrote while trying to understand how humanity might survive its own genius. That idea, born of curiosity and a deep interest in moral complexity, would eventually grow into a sprawling series exploring war, empathy, leadership, and the loneliness of brilliance.
Born in Richland, Washington in 1951 and raised mostly in Utah and California, Card grew up in a family where storytelling was a living thing—spoken, passed down, constantly evolving. Though he began his career writing plays and studying literature, he found his true voice in speculative fiction. And when he wrote Ender’s Game—and later Speaker for the Dead—he did something science fiction rarely dared at the time: he treated the genre as a tool for exploring the human soul.
Ender
The Ender's Game Series (or Ender Series), a series of science fiction books by Orson Scott Card.
Ender consists of four primary books, and includes three additional books that complement the series but are not considered mandatory reads. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Main series Enderverse
