93. First Meetings by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction, short story collection) 208 p.

Twenty-five years after the first publication of “Ender’s Game”, it was re-published in this collection, along with three new short stories set in the same universe. The first two stories are prequels of sorts, starring Ender’s father as a child and as a young man, and the last in the collection is an Ender story set between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead.

The collection is a thematic one, the stories tied together by featuring some of the important first meetings between various characters in the series. It’s a link that seems tenuous but works surprisingly well, since part of the fun of each of the stories is that we, the readers, already know how these new relationships are going to turn out, which gives the stories a similar feel even when they have very different moods.

The only exception to this is “Ender’s Game” itself, which isn’t really a first meeting story, although it does include Ender’s first encounters with two very important people (and was itself many people’s first meeting with Ender.) It’s okay that it doesn’t completely fit in with the other stories–it isn’t just another short story set in the Enderverse, so its inclusion in the collection doesn’t really need any justification.

The Polish Boy

At the age of five, John Paul Wiggin has his first meeting with the man who will shape his family’s lives. This is a fun story, and the one which is closest in feel to “Ender’s Game”, focussing as it does on Ender’s father as a boy. I’m particularly fond of Card when he writes from the perspective of young children, especially brilliant ones like John Paul or Ender.

It was also nice to get an explanation for the unusual interest displayed in Ender’s family later on, which I found a bit strange when I read Ender’s Game. It reaffirms my faith in Card that he was able to produce a valid reason for it–it’s a minor plot thread, but I’m glad it wasn’t left dangling.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Teacher’s Pest

John Paul Wiggin, now a university student–and a rather arrogant and obnoxious one, at that–meets Theresa Brown, his future wife, when he is enrolled in a class that she’s teaching. I started out not liking John Paul is this story; his superior intellectual abilities, though they partly justified his attitude toward the class, in no way excused the way he was planning to behave. His reaction to Theresa was endearing, though, and a character with a vulnerability is much easier to care about, so I ended by enjoying the story much more than I expected.

This story, along with The Polish Boy, illuminated a number of things about Ender’s family life in a relatively short amount of space. For example, John Paul’s and Theresa’s own family backgrounds, and John’s Paul intellectual arrogrance, went a long way toward explaining how they managed to produce a son like Peter.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Ender’s Game (original novella)

“Ender’s Game” originally appeared as a novella in Analog in 1977. Card expanded it and published it as a novel in 1985, and it’s as a novel that most people are familiar with Ender’s Game. I picked up a remaindered copy of this collection for $2, because I’d heard a lot about Ender’s Game and wanted to read it. And of course I couldn’t resist reading the novella first, even though I was worried it would spoil the experience of reading the novel. As it turned out, my fears were totally groundless; it really doesn’t matter which you read first. Essentially, both version tell the story of Ender Wiggin, a brilliant boy who is in military training sometime in the near(ish) future, and of humanity’s war with the first alien species it has ever encountered.

It’s funny, but when I re-read “Ender’s Game” today, I realized for the first time just how many things in it are different from the novel. Card didn’t just expand the novella when he transformed it into a novel, he re-wrote it and made many small but telling changes. For example, “Ender’s Game” is a novel which includes no women, not particularly surprising for a short piece of Military SF written in the 1970’s. Ender’s Game, however, contains several important female characters, two of whom are absolutely critical to the story Card tells in the novel, which is not quite the same story as the one he told in the novella. Likewise, Ender is given a family and a psychological history that are quite different to the one off-handedly mentioned in “Ender’s Game”, and the nature of humanity’s enemy, and the war being fought, is startlingly different.

All these changes are for the better. Without disparaging the novella in any way–because it is, without question, among the best short pieces of science fiction ever written–there was not one change made in it’s transformation into a novel that was not for the better. Given that, I think it’s a testament to the quality of “Ender’s Game” that even though the novel is superior, the novella is still an entertaining and absorbing story that is worth anyone’s time–even if that someone has already read Ender’s Game.

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Investment Counselor

An avaricious accountant’s attempt to blackmail Ender is foiled by his new investment software, a helpful, human-like program called Jane.

This is by far the weakest story in this collection, but in a way that isn’t primarily Card’s fault. Unfortunately, the story depends on a lot of background material from the novel Ender’s Game. Since that material isn’t in the novella, “The Investment Counselor” has to summarize a great deal of information about Ender and Valentine that anyone who has read the novel will already know. This story is the most frivolous in the collection, and it’s simply too light to carry the weight of so much exposition–it isn’t worth giving so many explanations in order to tell what is essentially a joke.

Card is certainly talented enough to have found a more graceful way of weaving the necessary backstory into this tale, but it would have lengthened it considerably and been more effort than the story itself is worth–not to mention that it would have been a rehashing of the same material Card did a beautiful job of presenting in Ender’s Game. Frankly, I think Card should have cut most of the exposition and let the story be dependent on Ender’s Game. (Since it first appeared in an anthology, I understand why he didn’t, but it still diminishes the quality of the story.)

Ender’s encounters with Jane were delightful, but the story glossed over the serious events–the near-exposure of Ender’s identity, which would certainly have been fatal for both him and Valentine, and the fate of Benedetto–so fast that I hardly had time to take them in. The tone of the story was very light, but a lot of the events in it weren’t, almost as if Card didn’t understand their significance, which I don’t believe for a second. All in all, a very odd little story, far rougher in its execution than I’ve ever seen from Card before, but still a good read.

Rating: 7 out of 10

It’s a shame that First Meetings ends on a weak note, but the quality of the first three stories is such that it doesn’t matter much. Even the book itself is quite attractive, a nice little hardcover with a decent cover. The inside is even better, with lots of fun, quirky illustrations by Craig Phillips, and a better font and layout than any other Ender book I’ve read (including the 20th anniversary hardcover edition of Ender’s Game, which has a great cover but an unattractive interior.)

This collection will have limited appeal to anyone who hasn’t read Ender’s Game, but I urge anyone who loves that book to pick up a copy of this collection: these stories shouldn’t be missed by any Ender fan! And if you haven’t read Ender’s Game, go out a get a copy right away–it’s certainly the most entertaining, well-written, thought-provoking, and emotionally honest work of science fiction I’ve ever read, and very accessible even to non-SF fans.

Overall rating: 9 out of 10 (10 out of 10 for the first three quarters)

Pages read:27,239

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Cardathon Challenge Redux, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card, short story collection