Ender's Game

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Tor, 1985.

According to Anatomy of Wonder 4, ENTRY 4-92, EG is an expansion of 1978 novelette; it is also the first of the Ender's series, followed by Speaker for the Dead (1986) and Xenocide (1991). See for training of a boy to become the perfect commander against the "Bugger" enemy, insectoid enemies attacking our the solar system (cf. R. A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers). The training involves VR, in a simulation that proves only too real, and deadly — apparently (if — spoiler for later books — not quite) a total xenocide: the extermination of an alien species.

See also, The Quiet War.

See Wikipedia discussion and list of Ender's Game's, so to speak, progeny, with detailed notes and scholarly references.[1]

Discussed by Carl Grafe, "Information Science in Latter-day Saint Theology," in SFRA Review 51.3 (Summer 2021).[2]

[...] Latter-day Saints make the mechanisms and documentation of information obtained from God topics of special study [...]. This is a topic of great personal importance to Latter-day Saints that is seldom visited in fiction. It may follow then, that rather than conflicting with their religious faith, the often underdeveloped archives in fiction may instead inspire Latter-day Saint writers to do a more thorough treatment of such resources, based in part on their detailed understanding of what they believe to be the ultimate source of knowledge in the real world. The Mind Game computer program in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game may be a pertinent example. Rather than a mere plot device to provide information to the characters, the program is almost a character in itself, interacting intimately with the other characters, analyzing them as individuals, and using its seemingly unlimited knowledge to push them—often brutally—to their absolute limits. Rather than as replacements for God, such information sources may instead serve as opportunities for Latter-day Saint writers to explore godlike attributes.[3]

RDE, early, 18/04/00; rev. 25Feb21; addition 11Nov21