The Polish Boy, First Meetings: Three Stories from the Enderverse, July 2002

  The Porcelain Salamander, Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories, January 1981

  Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow, Sunstone, August 1989

  Pretty Boy: The Story of Bonzo Madrid, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, March 2006

  The Princess and the Bear, The Berkley Showcase: New Writings in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 1, April 1980

  Prior Restraint, Aboriginal Science Fiction, October 1986

  Public Father, Doorways, 2002

  Q

  Quietus, Omni, August 1979

  R

  Renegat, Infinite Stars: The Definitive Anthology of Space Opera and Military SF, October 2017

  Robota, Robota, September 2003

  Runaway, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1987

  S

  Salvage, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1986

  Salvage, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, July 2009

  Sandmagic, Swords Against Darknes, 1979

  Saving Grace, Night Cry, Fall 1987

  Second Chance, Destinies, January/February, January 1979

  Shadows in Flight (Part 1), Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, August 2011

  Shadows in Flight (Part 2), Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, November 2011

  Short-lived Creatures, Doorways, 2002

  Skipping Stones, Capitol: The Worthing Chronicle, January 1979

  The Song of the Man Who Killed Beauty, Star*Line, July/August, July 1980

  Songhouse, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 1979

  Space Boy, Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space, August 2006

  St. Amy’s Tale, Omni, December 1980

  The Stars that Blink, Capitol: The Worthing Chronicle, January 1979

  Stonefather, Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy, May 2007

  T

  Teacher’s Pest, First Meetings: In the Enderverse, August 2003

  Tectonic Apocalypse, The Anthology of Speculative Poetry #4, 1980

  This is the Poem I Made Then, Doorways, 2002

  Tin Men, The Anthology of Speculative Poetry #4, 1980

  Tinker, Eternity Science Fiction #2, 1980

  To Alice, Recently of Wonderland, Star*Line, July/August, July 1980

  U

  Unaccompanied Sonata, Omni, March 1979

  V

  Vessel, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1999

  Visitors, Chapter 1, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, November 2015

  W

  Walking on Water, Doorways, 2002

  The War of Gifts (An Ender Story), Decision Points, April 2016

  Waterbaby, Galaxy Online, 2000

  West, Free Lancers, September 1987

  WEST, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, May 2009

  When No One Remembers His Name, Does God Retire?, Capitol: The Worthing Chronicle, January 1979

  Windows, The Anthology of Speculative Poetry #4, 1980

  Wise Men, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, December 2010

  Worthy to Be One of Us, Keeper of Dreams, April 2008

  Y

  The Yazoo Queen, Legends II, September 2003

  The Yazoo Queen, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, March 2006

  FICTION SERIES

  [C] = Collection

  [N] = Novel

  [NF] = Nonfiction

  [PM] = Poem

  [SF] = Short Story/Novelette

  Empire

  Empire [N]

  Hidden Empire [N]

  Empire/Hidden Empire [O]

  Ender’s Universe

  Gloriously Bright [SF]

  The Polish Boy [SF]

  Teacher’s Pest [SF]

  Mazer in Prison [SF]

  Pretty Boy [SF]

  Cheater [SF]

  A Young Man with Prospects [SF]

  A War of Gifts [SF]

  Ender’s Game/Ender’s Shadow [O]

  Renegat [SF]

  Messenger [SF]

  Ender’s Way: Tales from the World of Andrew Wiggin [C]

  Ender Wiggin

  Ender’s Game [N]

  Speaker for the Dead [N]

  Xenocide [N]

  Children of the Mind [N]

  Ender in Exile [N]

  The Last Shadow [N]

  Ender’s Game [SF]

  Ender’s War [O]

  Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead [O]

  Investment Counselor [SF]

  Beyond Ender’s Game [O]

  First Meetings: Three Stories from the Enderverse [C]

  Ender’s Saga [O]

  Ender’s Game/Ender’s Shadow/Shadow of the Hegemon [O]

  First Meetings: In the Enderverse [C]

  First Meetings in Ender’s Universe [C]

  Ender’s Stocking [SF]

  Ender’s Homecoming [SF]

  Ender in Flight [SF]

  The Ender Quartet (Box Set) [O]

  Ender’s World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender’s Game [NF]

  Ender’s Game/ Ender in Exile/Speak for the Dead [O]

  The War of Gifts (An Ender Story) [SF]

  Ender Quintet #1 [O]

  Ender’s Shadow

  Ender’s Shadow [N]

  Shadow of the Hegemon [N]

  Shadow Puppets [N]

  Shadow of the Giant [N]

  Shadows in Flight [N]

  Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow: Three-Book Set [O]

  The Ender’s Shadow Series Box Set [O]

  The Shadow Saga [O]

  First Formic War

  Earth Unaware [N]

  Earth Afire [N]

  Earth Awakens [N]

  The First Formic War [O]

  Second Formic War

  The Swarm [N]

  The Hive (2019) [N]

  Fleet School

  Children of the Fleet [N]

  Homecoming

  The Memory of Earth [N]

  The Call of Earth [N]

  The Ships of Earth [N]

  Earthfall [N]

  Earthborn [N]

  Homecoming: Harmony [O]

  Homecoming: Earth [O]

  The Memory of Earth and The Call of Earth [O]

  The Complete Homecoming Saga [O]

  Micropowers

  Lost and Found [N]

  Duplex [N]

  Mither Mages

  The Lost Gate [N]

  The Gate Thief [N]

  Gatefather [N]

  Sandmagic [SF]

  Stonefather [SF]

  Pathfinder Trilogy

  Pathfinder [N]

  Ruins [N]

  Visitors [N]

  Pathfinder Trilogy [O]

  The Alvin Maker Saga

  Seventh Son [N]

  Red Prophet [N]

  Prentice Alvin [N]

  Alvin Journeyman [N]

  Heartfire [N]

  The Crystal City [N]

  Hatrack River [SF]

  Runaway [SF]

  Dowser [SF]

  Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow [PM]

  Gooses [SF]

  Grinning Man [SF]

  The Yazoo Queen [SF]

  Alvin and the Apple Tree: A Tale of Alvin Maker [SF]

  Naysayers [SF]

  Alvin Maker Omnibuses

  Hatrack River [O]

  Tales of Alvin Maker (box set) [O]

  Alvin Wandering [O]

  Seventh Son and Red Prophet [O]

  Prentice Alvin and Alvin Journeyman [O]

  The Tales of Alvin Maker [O]

  The Mormon Sea

  The Fringe [SF]

  Salvage [SF]

  America [SF]

  West [SF]

  Pageant Wagon [SF]

  The Folk of the Fringe [C]

  WEST (2009 version) [SF]

  Pageant Wagon (2009 version) [SF]

  The Worthing Chronicle

  Capitol (1979) [C]

  Hot Sleep: The Worthing Chronicle [N]

  The Worthing Chronicle [N]

  The Worthing Saga [O]

  Tales from the Forest of Waters

  Tinker [SF]

  Tales of Capitol

  Lifeloop [SF]

  Killing Children [SF]

  A Thousand Deaths [SF]

  A Sleep and a Forgetting [SF]

  Skipping Stones [SF]

  Burning [SF]

  And What Will We Do Tomorrow? [SF]

  When No One Remembers His Name, Does God Retire? [SF]

  The Stars That Blink [SF]

  Breaking the Game [SF]

  Second Chance [SF]

  The Apocalypse Poems

  Atomic Apocalypse [PM]

  Humanic Apocalypse [PM]

  Tectonic Apocalypse [PM]

  Tin Men [PM]

  Windows [PM]

  1977

  Ender’s Game

  No simulator can reproduce all the elements of battle.

  “Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember—the enemy’s gate is down. If you step through your own door like you’re out for a stroll, you’re a big target and you deserve to get hit. With more than a flasher.” Ender Wiggins paused and looked over the group. Most were just watching him nervously. A few understanding. A few sullen and resisting.

  First day with this army, all fresh from the teacher squads, and Ender had forgotten how young new kids could be. He’d been in it for three years, they’d had six months —nobody over nine years old in the whole bunch. But they were his. At eleven, he was half a year early to be a commander. He’d had a toon of his own and knew a few tricks, but there were forty in his new army. Green. All marksmen with a flasher, all in top shape, or they wouldn’t be here—but they were all just as likely as not to get wiped out first time into battle.

  “Remember,” he went on, “they can’t see you till you get through that door. But the second you’re out, they’ll be on you. So hit that door the way you want to be when they shoot at you. Legs up under you, going straight down.” He pointed at a sullen kid who looked like he was only seven, the smallest of them all. “Which way is down, greenoh!”

  “Toward the enemy door.” The answer was quick. It was also surly, as if to say, Yeah, yeah, now get on with the important stuff.

  “Name, kid?”

  “Bean.”

  “Get that for size or for brains?”

  Bean didn’t answer. The rest laughed a little. Ender had chosen right. This kid was younger than the rest, must have been advanced because he was sharp. The others didn’t like him much, they were happy to see him taken down a little. Like Ender’s first commander had taken him down.

  “Well, Bean, you’re right onto things. Now I tell you this, nobody’s gonna get through that door without a good chance of getting hit. A lot of you are going to be turned into cement somewhere. Make sure it’s your legs. Right? If only your legs get hit, then only your legs get frozen, and in nullo that’s no sweat.” Ender turned to one of the dazed ones. “What’re legs for? Hmmm?”

  Blank stare. Confusion. Stammer.

  “Forget it. Guess I’ll have to ask Bean here.”

  “Legs are for pushing off walls.” Still bored.

  “Thanks, Bean. Get that, everybody?” They all got it, and didn’t like getting it from Bean. “Right. You can’t see with legs, you can’t shoot with legs, and most of the time they just get in the way. If they get frozen sticking straight out you’ve turned yourself into a blimp. No way to hide. So how do legs go?”

  A few answered this time, to prove that Bean wasn’t the only one who knew anything. “Under you. Tucked up under.”

  “Right. A shield. You’re kneeling on a shield, and the shield is your own legs. And there’s a trick to the suits. Even when your legs are flashed you can still kick off. I’ve never seen anybody do it but me—but you’re all gonna learn it.”

  Ender Wiggins turned on his flasher. It glowed faintly green in his hand. Then he let himself rise in the weightless workout room, pulled his legs under him as though he were kneeling, and flashed both of them. Immediately his suit stiffened at the knees and ankles, so that he couldn’t bend at all.

  “Okay, I’m frozen, see?”

  He was floating a meter above them. They all looked up at him, puzzled. He leaned back and caught one of the handholds on the wall behind him, and pulled himself flush against the wall.

  “I’m stuck at a wall. If I had legs, I’d use legs, and string myself out like a string bean, right?”

  They laughed.

  “But I don’t have legs, and that’s better, got it? Because of this.” Ender jackknifed at the waist, then straightened out violently. He was across the workout room in only a moment. From the other side he called to them. “Got that? I didn’t use hands, so I still had use of my flasher. And I didn’t have my legs floating five feet behind me. Now watch it again.”

  He repeated the jackknife, and caught a handhold on the wall near them. “Now, I don’t just want you to do that when they’ve flashed your legs. I want you to do that when you’ve still got legs, because it’s better. And because they’ll never be expecting it. All right now, everybody up in the air and kneeling.”

  Most were up in a few seconds. Ender flashed the stragglers, and they dangled, helplessly frozen, while the others laughed. “When I give an order, you move. Got it? When we’re at a door and they clear it, I’ll be giving you orders in two seconds, as soon as I see the setup. And when I give the order you better be out there, because whoever’s out there first is going to win, unless he’s a fool. I’m not. And you better not be, or I’ll have you back in the teacher squads.” He saw more than a few of them gulp, and the frozen ones looked at him with fear. “You guys who are hanging there. You watch. You’ll thaw out in about fifteen minutes, and let’s see if you can catch up to the others.”

  For the next half hour Ender had them jackknifing off walls. He called a stop when he saw that they all had the basic idea. They were a good group, maybe. They’d get better.

  “Now you’re warmed up,” he said to them, “we’ll start working.”

  Ender was the last one out after practice, since he stayed to help some of the slower ones improve on technique. They’d had good teachers, but like all armies they were uneven, and some of them could be a real drawback in battle. Their first battle might be weeks away. It might be tomorrow. A schedule was never printed. The commander just woke up and found a note by his bunk, giving him the time of his battle and the name of his opponent. So for the first while he was going to drive his boys until they were in top shape—all of them. Ready for anything, at any time. Strategy was nice, but it was worth nothing if the soldiers couldn’t hold up under the strain.

  He turned the corner into the residence wing and found himself face to face with Bean, the seven-year-old he had picked on all through practice that day. Problems. Ender didn’t want problems right now.

  “Ho, Bean.”

  “Ho, Ender.”

  Pause.

  “Sir,” Ender said softly.

  “We’re not on duty.”

  “In my army, Bean, we’re always on duty.” Ender brushed past him.

  Bean’s high voice piped up behind him. “I know what you’re doing, Ender, sir, and I’m warning you.”

  Ender turned slowly and looked at him. “Warning me?”

  “I’m the best man you’ve got. But I’d better be treated like it.”

  “Or what?” Ender smiled menacingly.

  “Or I’ll be the worst man you’ve got. One or the other.”

  “And what do you want? Love and kisses?” Ender was getting angry now.

  Bean was unworried. “I want a toon.”

  Ender walked back to him and stood looking down into his eyes. “I’ll give a toon,” he said, “to the boys who prove they’re worth something. They’ve got to be good soldiers, they’ve got to know how to take orders, they’ve got to be able to think for themselves in a pinch, and they’ve got to be able to keep respect. That’s how I got to be a commander. That’s how you’ll get to be a toon leader. Got it?”

  Bean smiled. “That’s fair. If you actually work that way, I’ll be a toon leader in a month.”

  Ender reached down and grabbed the front of his uniform and shoved him into the wall. “When I say I work a certain way, Bean, then that’s the way I work.”

  Bean just smiled. Ender let go of him and walked away, and didn’t look back. He was sure, without looking, that Bean was still watching, still smiling, still just a little contemptuous. He might make a good toon leader at that. Ender would keep an eye on him.

  Captain Graff, six foot two and a little chubby, stroked his belly as he leaned back in his chair. Across his desk sat Lieutenant Anderson, who was earnestly pointing out high points on a chart.

  “Here it is, Captain,” Anderson said. “Ender’s already got them doing a tactic that’s going to throw off everyone who meets it. Doubled their speed.”

  Graff nodded.

  “And you know his test scores. He thinks well, too.”

  Graff smiled. “All true, all true, Anderson, he’s a fine student, shows real promise.”

  They waited.

  Graff sighed. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Ender’s the one. He’s got to be.”

  “He’ll never be ready in time, Lieutenant. He’s eleven, for heaven’s sake, man, what do you want, a miracle?”

  “I want him into battles, every day starting tomorrow. I want him to have a year’s worth of battles in a month.”

  Graff shook his head. “That would have his army in the hospital.”

  “No, sir. He’s getting them into form. And we need Ender.”

  “Correction, Lieutenant. We need somebody. You think it’s Ender.”

  “All right, I think it’s Ender. Which of the commanders if it isn’t him?”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant.” Graff ran his hands over his slightly fuzzy bald head. “These are children, Anderson. Do you realize that? Ender’s army is nine years old. Are we going to put them against the older kids? Are we going to put them through hell for a month like that?”