Yes, it was, thats why they novelized it.

It's apparently not the reason Card gives for why he novelized it.

If you want to continue to believe that, feel free. Who knows, maybe what you are saying is correct and everything Card said was an elaborate lie.

I'm pretty sure you didn't listen to the postscript on the 20th anniversary edition of the audiobook. There's really no way to misinterpret what he said. He goes into a very long history of when Ender's Game was just an idea and the years that passed before it was written and published as a short story in Analog magazine, to how it become a novel. And he also talked about things that he was doing and his motivations.

It's actually kind of interesting and I would recommend anyone who is a fan or Card or his books should give it a listen if you get a chance.

For anyone interested in his behind-the-scenes description of how these books came into being, this is what he basically said:
- He needed money to run his little theater company, so he decided to try to write and sell a short story.
- He dug up the concept for Ender's Game (which he had thought of when he was a teenager) and wrote the short story
- It was rejected a couple of times, but eventually was accepted and published in Analog magazine
- This launched his career because it came in 2nd for the Hugo award, and he got an award for best new writer
- At this point, he considered Ender's Game finished and had no desire to expand it into a novel
- He said the adaptation to a novel began almost as an accident
- He received a contract to write Speaker for the Dead
- As he was trying to flesh out the story, he came to a realization that the story would really work if he made the protagonist Ender after the fact, from Ender's Game. However, instead of being viewed as a hero, Ender would need to be vilified for causing the xenocide of an entire race.
- But to set up this turnabout, he found that he was 50 pages in before getting to the actual story of Speaker for the Dead
- He talked to his publisher and explained to him that he needed to adapt Ender's Game solely for the fact that he can introduce this turnabout to set up Speaker for the Dead. His publisher agreed to let him do it and he got a new contract to write Ender's Game-the novel, first.

He goes into a lot more about when/how they were published, timing the release so that it could be considered for an award, etc.

Elaborate Lie, and I'm sticking to it.

But the main point I would like to reiterate was that I didn't like Speaker but Ender's Game was awesome and I wish it could have gotten a real sequel.

The "real" sequels to Ender's game as you put it are the Ender's Shadow series.

I read Ender's Game in high school and loved it. Didn't read Speaker of the Dead and the following sequels till after college, but I remember digging all of them. The Ender's Shadow series was also good, but not as deep as the main Ender series, imo.

I've read Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. I went by the library and picked up Ender's Shadow and Ender in Exile. Looking at wikipedia, Exile is "a parallel novel to the last three books in the Shadow Saga, since the entirety of these books takes place in the span of Ender in Exile." I've already started reading Ender's shadow. Should I read the rest of the shadow series first or can I read Ender in Exile next?

I haven't read Exile, but having read the Shadow series, I suspect your best off reading them first.

I think that's the route I'm going to take. I liked Ender's Shadow much more than the Speaker For the Dead sequels so I'll stick with this series since I've already started it.

Big fan of the Ender series. I read EG the first time during the late 80s, and was struck not only by the main plot, but also by the Peter/Valentine subplot. Thinking about influencing public opinion by message boards was quite inventive back in the 80s.

I read the first four books when I was a teenager. While I loved Ender's Game, the remaining three went downhill pretty quickly. I continued to read Ender's Game every few years on it's own, up until the beginning of this year. I then reread all four, and really enjoyed all of them this time. While subsequent books weren't quite as good as the previous, I found them to be much better than when I was a teen.

As far as the Shadow series, I've only read Ender's Shadow, and can't really recall much about it at all.

Actually, I thought Speaker for the Dead was a more complex and compelling book than EG. The next two weren't quite as amazing, but were still quality reads.

Funny, I just read Ender's Game for the first time last month. I really liked it, so I picked up Speaker for the Dead. Didn't care for that one very much. It was ok. I don't want to read any more of the speaker series, but I might check out Ender's Shadow now. Thanks!

Back long before Card was a famous homophobe and Mormon conspiracy theorist a la Glenn Beck, I read Ender's Game, the Speaker series and the first one or two Alvin Maker books.

I think that was close to his whole output at the time. Oddly, I thought Ender's Game to the weakest of the bunch: a story so simple it seemed better for a short story, padded with philosophical smugness that reminded me of Any Rand's messianic delusions, and with a overwrought reveal (it wasn't a game! it was real!) that was better done on Last Starfighter.

I enjoyed the others quite a bit. I'd probably have enjoyed some of his later output and series-offshoots too, but once he became a pointman for anti-gay politics that ruined our relationship, so to speak.

You know why that is, right?

Funny this post is near the top. I read Ender's Game when I was 12. At the time I loved it, but Speaker for the dead bored me. I just went back and read the 4 original books and loved them. Speaker is my favorite.

I am now working on the Shadow series. After reading the original series I was hoping to read how Peter came to power. Then I checked Wikipedia and there is a prequel and some other short stories, and I guess there will be another Shadow book.

Holy Crap talk about milking a universe. But I will read every bit.

2 weeks volunteering in Port-au-Prince last month: Ender's Game was the only easy reading on hand. Oughta make an exciting movie on-screen to watch, but overall I've had it with these Chosen One tales. It's all lazy storytelling or flat lack of it when we're presented with a hero endowed with incredible abilities from page 1. Unless you're making a comic book superhero, it only cheapens the struggle and makes it increasingly difficult to relate to the character. Several times I thought Ender was going to challenge the teachers' identified as his true enemies, but he never strays outside the program they've created for him, never bucks authority. It would've been something else if he put his personal army to use and staged an insurrection from within the school!

Really the only interesting decision Ender ever makes for himself anytime in the story is at the end to safeguard the alien cocoon. I haven't read any of the follow-on books so I can't say whether this develops into a solid storyline.

Only two lines jumped out me in the end, both having to do with telling lies:

"Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth."

Quite applicable in our present information age where optimistic soft-selling and irrational fear are such rampant tactics in the public sphere.

"...Ender knew that lies could not last long in America."

It would be an interesting tale indeed to see how America matures beyond the fairytales it tells itself in order to make that statement come true.

I finally made it through the Shadow series, and enjoyed them for the most part. I think Ender's sequels were more interesting, but that could be because I've read them a few times more than Bean's.

I liked the sequels, although in the case of the Ender ones not as much as Game. The ones that follow Bean are pretty good