[This overview and review was written by staff member ‘Game Over’. It contains his personal opinion and not that of this site.]

I was fortunate enough to get an advanced review copy of Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game from Smart Pop Books. This book contains 14 essays from Science Fiction and Young Adult writers, as well as military strategists and others about various aspects of Ender’s Game. It is edited by Orson Scott Card with Enderverse Questions & Answers sections before and after almost every essay.

“How It Should Have Ended” by Eric James Stone
Sci-Fi writer Stone discusses the ending of Ender’s Game after the Ender ends the war.

“The Monster’s Heart” by James Brown
Epic fantasy author Brown discusses Card’s stylistic choices made in Ender’s Game.

“The Cost of Breaking the Rules” by Mary Robinette Kowal
Kowal, an author who attended Card’s Literary Boot Camp, describes how Card broke his own literary rules in Ender’s Game.

“Winning and Losing in Ender’s Game” by Hilari Bell
Bell, a Sci-Fi and fantasy author, explains the different aspects of “winning” and “losing” in relation to Ender’s Game.

“Parallax Regained” by David Lubar and Alison Myers
Writer Lubar and his daughter, English teacher Myers, have a back-and-forth dialogue on Ender’s Game and how it applies to their professions and lives.

“Mirror, Mirror” by Alethea Kontis
Author Kontis explains what readers can learn about themselves from Ender, Bean, Valentine, and Peter.

“Size Matters” by Janis Ian
Songwriter Ian talks about how Card has shown positives to being short in Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.

“Rethinking the Child Hero” by Aaron Johnston
Co-author of the Formic Wars stories, Johnston discusses Ender in comparison to other classic literary children.

“A Teenless World” by Mette Ivie Harrison
Author Harrison discusses how Ender’s Game speaks to teenagers as a story from childhood to adulthood.

“Ender on Leadership” by Colonel Tom Ruby (USAF, Retired)
Colonel Ruby explains what military leaders can learn from Ender.

“Ender Wiggin, USMC” by John F. Schmitt
Military consultant explains why Ender’s Game is an important military work and includes an example of a tactical decision game like those used at the Marine Corps University.

“The Price of Our Inheritance” by Neal Shusterman
Young Adult author Shueterman described what it means to save your race from an alien invasion.

“If the Formics Love Their Children Too” by Ken Scholes
Author Scholes talks about the children’s lives in Ender’s Game.

“Ender’s Game: A Guide to Life” by Matt Nix
Creator and executive producer of the television show Burn Notice, Nix talks about reading Ender’s Game as if the reader is Ender.

The book is a great read, especially for anyone who enjoys Ender’s Game for its metaphors to life, its literary mastery, its militaristic realness, or its game playing strategy. It mostly focuses on Ender’s Game, though the essay authors also make reference to Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Ender in Exile, and Ender’s Shadow, as well as “Mazor in Prison.”

The questions that Orson Scott Card answers include:

• What do the IF tests measure?
• Why is Ender ashamed of being a Third?
• Is the Wiggin predisposition to military genius a natural genetic one, or was it altered in some artificial way?
• When Authorizing Ender to be born, did the IF use genetic manipulation or genetic screening, assuming they were choosing from a pool of zygotes? How could the IF be sure Ender would be the perfect mix of Peter and Valentine?
• How was Peter to cruel or crazy to not be allowed into Battle School? Isn’t that what the military wanted, a person that would utterly destroy the formics?
• How come you shut out any kind of relationship with Ender and his parents?
• If you could go back and re-write Ender’s Game, what would you change? Is there something that has always bothered you, something you wrote that you now think is silly, or something you with you would have included?
• How long was the Battle School open before Ender started? And was it always for children that young?
• Did the military always recruit children into Battle School, or did they recruit any genius?
• How did you feel when Apple completely ripped off your Desk design for the iPad?
• When you wrote Ender’s Game, was the character Bean as developed in your mind as we saw him in Ender’s Shadow?
• Why did you not develop Bean’s character more, especially his brilliance, in Ender’s Game? Did you know that you were going to develop him in the Shadow series?
• How hard was it to recreate the story from a new perspective when the character you were writing [Bean] was more than he seemed in the first book?
• Why did you feel a need to continue on with Bean’s story rather than the other characters in Ender’s Game?
• Did the pilots and soldiers who were a part of the Third Invasion know beforehand that they were led by kids? How did they react initially?
• What experience did you draw from to create Ender and Bean?
• From the short story to the novel, why did you change Ender’s surname from Wiggins to Wiggin?
• Knowing that Mazer Rackham stopped the second formic invasion by, basically, luck, why would IF want him to teach the more genius Ender?
• Why did the IF choose the same asteroid for IF Command that the formics chose for their base?
• Was there any particular reason you assigned Dragon Army the colors grey, orange, grey?
• What is the story behind the pilots and officers of the invasion force in Ender’s Game? Was the faith of the other pilots shaken when Petra’s group was temporarily paralyzed by her meltdown? What was going through the pilots’ minds when face-to-face and hopelessly outnumbered in their last encounter?
• Some would argue that Ender’s Game encourages critical thinking within the military, others argue that it glorifies war. Response to both?
• Why did you have Bonzo Madrid and Ender fight to the death?
• What is Alai’s surname?
• Why did you not have Ender lose at least one battle in the Battle Room?

‘Ender’s World’ is scheduled for release on April 2, 2013. Pre-Order ‘Ender’s World’ here.