Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead: Part I: Speaking
Posted by: admin in Science Fiction Books, Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Ask anyone that knows my reading preferences, and one author will probably be at the top of the list: Orson Scott Card. The first Card book that I read, like most people, was the thrilling Ender’s Game. That novel places a young boy on a battle school in orbit, to train to fight the most terrifying opponent mankind has ever faced - the dreaded “Buggers”.
Speaker for the Dead is Card’s original sequel to Ender’s Game. I say “original”, because Card has incredibly crafted other tangential storylines to Ender’s Game, which include a companion novel, Ender’s Shadow, which features the story of Ender’s Game told from Bean’s perspective (Bean is one of Ender’s classmates at the Battle School). Well, anyways, getting back on track, I wanted to talk about Speaker, right?
Card does a great job of transforming the story of Ender from a boy in a battle school on not-too-far-in-the-future Earth, all the way to several thousand years in the future of humanity. Ender himself isn’t even specially featured in the first few chapters, as the story of Milagre is told. Milagre is a Portuguese (well, Brazilian) colony world that features a living, sentient species known as the “Piggies”. This homeworld, however, also features a terrible plague and a terrible secret that haunts another of our main characters, the young xenobiologist, Novinha.
Ender is called to Milagre to speak a death, and in doing so unravels the truth about so many things on this small world. The act of speaking a death itself is most of what I want to talk about. In Card’s future universe, Ender has righted many of his past doings by writing the story of the true nature of the ominous “Buggers”, which is titled The Hive Queen. However, over the course of several thousand years, the fact that Ender is The Speaker and The Speaker is Ender has been separated. The Speaker is good - Ender himself is seen (even within his own writing) as the Xenocide - the devestation of the Buggers and the worst of mankind.
The concept of speaking, however, is a great idea for someone like myself. The idea is that the speaker reveals as much as he or she can to the audience - to the world. This truth is revealed from a 3rd persons’ perspective, in this case a Speaker - who can unravel a person’s life and identify more than what they did, but why they did it. I was unfortunately recently at a memorial service for a loved one that passed, and I found traces of a speaking in the memorial given. There were events, there was life, there were actions. There was simple truth about what motivated the life of the deceased, and an order for how each previous action propelled the next one.
I know, at this stage in my life, were I to pass I would eagerly welcome a speaker. For the time being - I’ll be content to read about them.
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June 14th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Celebrated Science Fiction author, Orson Scott Card made this gripping statement of appreciation about readers of Science Fiction.
This is the best audience in the world to write for. They’re open minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It’s a privilige to tell stories to these readers, and an honor when they applaud the tales you tell.