Author revives hero in ‘Ender in Exile’

Twenty-three years have passed since Orson Scott Card first dazzled readers with “Ender’s Game,” a seminal work that blurred the lines between young adult and adult fiction.

Now he’s back with “Ender in Exile,” which picks up where the 1985 winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards – science fiction’s highest honors – left off.

The revival of Ender, the boy hero who saves Earth from bug-like aliens, goes beyond the novel’s pages with a new comic-book adaptation of the original saga that’s spurring interest in Hollywood as a potential film franchise.

All of this quite surprises the 57-year-old Card, although he suspects the story still resonates partly because of its sad martial tale: He introduces the protagonist as a 6-year-old prodigy who is bred to be Earth’s future hero, but to achieve this, Ender must train to become the perfect soldier – cunning, strong, ruthless.

He is symptomatic of a war-obsessed society, a reclusive character grappling with the very grown-up issues of isolation and loneliness.

With such powerful themes, Card is at times amused by Ender’s popularity among young readers. He never intended to be a “young adult” author.

He is proud, however, that the books speak to adolescents who are reading them and engaging in serious philosophical conversations during their most malleable years.

“In our society, children are kept from adulthood until they graduate college,” he said. “A lot of kids find in Ender an imaginary outlet for an impulse to do something real. It’s like they’re sneaking into an adult conversation.”

When we revisit Ender in “Exile,” he is 17 and exalted as a hero for fending off the third wave of alien marauders that threatened to obliterate Earth.

But his brutal military techniques render him a monster to the very people who trained him to be a killer. He is mercilessly exiled from his home planet and forced into a colony that is light years away.

“Exile” is not the first time Card has dipped back into Ender’s universe; there were three sequels and a spinoff novel. But “Exile” fills in “the lost years.”

That’s because in the original follow-up, “Speaker for the Dead,” published in 1986, Ender is 35 and healed from the trauma of being Earth’s savior.

It took getting married, raising a family and the death of two children to put life into perspective and give Card the necessary material to imagine Ender during his transition to adulthood.

“Most adolescents are trying to disconnect, but Ender wants to root in society, and he really can’t,” he said. “I see someone who is ready for adulthood but declines when he finds it.”

Ender’s biggest challenge is not those threatening to destroy Earth but rather himself. He is ready for adulthood and could find happiness with an intended mate, yet he rejects living a conventional life and instead opts for the role of solitary leader, a protector who reaches into man’s most basic fighting instinct.

“Ender hates what he has to become,” he said. “He is born to be a protector … but he also happens to have the natural talent for war.”