{"id":3561,"date":"2022-04-25T19:31:27","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T19:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2022-04-25T19:31:27","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T19:31:27","slug":"green-hand-book-speaker-for-the-dead-orson-scott-card-1986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wsf\/green-hand-book-speaker-for-the-dead-orson-scott-card-1986\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Hand Book: Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card, 1986)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Card, O. S. (1986). <i>Speaker for the Dead<\/i>. Tor Books.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-3562\" src=\"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/312\/2022\/04\/image-193x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/312\/2022\/04\/image-193x300.jpeg 193w, https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/312\/2022\/04\/image.jpeg 257w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/><\/p>\n<div>I had very fond memories of reading Card\u2019s Ender\u2019s Game as a pre-teen, so I was very excited to dive into the sequel, which also won the Nebula Award (1986) and the Hugo Award (1987). For those of you who\u2019ve read Ender\u2019s Game, this sequel is set about 3,000 years after a human starfleet under Ender\u2019s direction essentially wiped out an advanced ant-like race of aliens known as the \u201cBuggers\u201d (more on that later). Humans have spread out across the galaxy in colonies, and Ender himself is only middle-aged because of frequent near-light speed travel between these colonies. Among most humans, he is now reviled throughout the galaxy as \u201cEnder the Xenocide,\u201d though few know that he is still alive and is also the founder of a popular religious movement which emphasizes candidly and empathetically speaking about those who have died. He is called to Lusitania, a Portugese Catholic colony planet, to \u201cspeak the deaths\u201d of two Xenologists who have been inexplicably murdered by the \u201cPiggies,\u201d an otherwise amicable pig-like intelligent alien species native to the planet. Unlike Ender\u2019s Game, this book is much more interested in questions of \u00a0xenobiology and religion than those of conquest or war. It ends up reading a bit like a detective story as Ender unravels the secrets of complex social and biological networks which Card has cleverly designed.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I\u2019ve read online that Card, a Mormon, has a long history of homophobic remarks. While I don\u2019t doubt these charges, I must admit that I find them hard to square with the compassion that exudes from this novel. Ender, the clear hero of this story, redeems himself from his near-genocide by restarting a community of the \u201cBuggers\u201d on Lusitania. He is at his best as he adeptly breaks through the skeptical walls of everyone from Catholic priests to Piggies to the ansible-distributed AI whom he considers his best friend. This is sophisticated science fiction written with a loving and wise touch. While its author is certainly flawed, I\u2019d still strongly recommend this book, particularly if you enjoyed Ender\u2019s Game.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Card, O. S. (1986). Speaker for the Dead. Tor Books. I had very fond memories of reading Card\u2019s Ender\u2019s Game as a pre-teen, so I was very excited to dive into the sequel, which also won the Nebula Award (1986) and the Hugo Award (1987). For those of you who\u2019ve read Ender\u2019s Game, this sequel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wsf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}