Speaker for the Dead

Sequel to Ender's Game, set three thousand years after its end. Ender is now a Speaker for the Dead, recounting the lives, motives, thoughts and actions of those he is called to speak.

Orson Scott Card wrote Ender's Game almost as an introduction to this book. Although it did not recieve as much recognition, it deals with many more complex issues - especially the treatment of strangers through Demosthenes' groupings of utlanning, framling, ramen and varelse. Much of the story focuses on recognising that the species known as piggies are ramen, the stranger that is human but not homo sapiens, rather than varelse, like the animals. Brings up ideas of how we judge others that we don't know. Neither the Xenocide nor minimal intervention is the right way.

Other characters include Novinha, a xenobiologist, and her children in the colony. They tell us something of fear and guilt, and the way that different people deal with different issues (Ender's speaking is masterful in its comprehension of the events, as well as the audience reaction.)

Enjoyable also due to the concepts of scifi technology introduced. The ansibles enable instantaneous communication, but the ideas behind starflight, protection, genetic engineering, and the unique biology of Lusitania are ideas worth revisiting.

Definitely looking forward to Xenocide, the next book.

I really enjoyed this book. It is a very different kind of book from [b:Ender's Game 375802 Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) Orson Scott Card https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1408303130s/375802.jpg 2422333]. In many ways, I think that it is better, even if it lacks the action and suspense that made Ender's Game a page-turner. The character development is richer, and the story full of more mystery. The incorporation of Brazilian Portuguese and Catholicism gave the story an anchoring to the present and made the characters feel more tactile.

Starts off interesting but doesn't hold up.

The Piggy plotline feels poorly thought out and characters actions don't seem logical under scrutiny.

Ender is more obnoxious than the first book, bordering on insufferable as he Mary Sue's his way through every situation with every other character fawning over him.

The main focus ends up becoming all the relationships between the characters, which is unfortunate considering Orson doesn't seem to be very good at writing believable characters or dialogue.

If you really enjoyed the first book I'd say it's worth a try.

Ender is a tool. And all the female characters (even the AI) are insanely neurotic, the sort who go off to weep whenever anything starts happening or who freaking plan some convoluted horrible fake marriage instead of actually doing research to solve the initial problem. And no one can get set right without the help of magic Ender, who is more or less Dr. House without the charm or intelligence. Also, it's weird reading a book that goes on endless, preachy rants about pro-tolerance and anti-Catholicism when it's written by a homophobic Mormon who seems to be kinda ok with spousal abuse.

On some days I think this book is the best of the series and on other days I think it's Ender's Game. This book explores some philosophical ideas in ways that Ender's Game never does. The speech Ender gives as Speaker for Marcao still brings me to tears every time. However, Ender is a bit too perfect. He just walks into a room and instantly analyzes every person perfectly and immediately says the exact right words to changes the hearts and minds of those around him. I still love this book, but just like its predecessor, Ender's Game, I no longer hold with quite the same level of reverence.

When I started reading this book, I was prepared to simply tolerate it - as one piece of the series that so many people have enjoyed. I've read many of the books in the series, and haven't appreciated them very much, but this book contains the type of speculation that I consider fundamental to good science fiction. What If we encounter other types of life that are not only alien in psychology, and biology, but basic understandings of life? What If the very existence of one biosphere has the possibility for contaminating and destroying every biosphere it comes in contact with? What If . . . well, I may have already said too much. Enjoy the book. I hope it makes you think.

Speaker for the Dead is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. It's very relevant to today's world in its consideration of who gets to qualify as a human, and it stands out for thoughtful inclusion of both scientific and religious ideas.

I just want to clarify up front: while this is technically a sequel to Ender's Game, it's pretty different. Ender's Game was fun and clever, but only “profound” in a few places. It fit the mold for YA fiction pretty well, even if it was a terrific book. But even the author himself says that the book was mostly an expansion of a single concept in a short story he wrote (what would military tactics look like in zero gravity?), and was intended as a prelude to a second book with a heftier story. That absolutely rings true for me.

Speaker for the Dead is not young adult sci fi. It's a thoroughly adult book that grapples with, just to name a few: genocide and its legacy, murder, challenges of cross-cultural communication, adultery, celibacy, religious devotion, evolution, and special relativity. There's a lot happening here, and does occasionally come across as overwhelming or at least a bit weird. There's a sympathetic portrayal of AI like the 2013 movie Her. There's a complex morality, where few of the characters fit into a clear good or evil role, like Princess Mononoke. There's the confusion of coming face-to-face with an entirely alien culture, like The Sparrow by Mary Russell. And there's the realistic trouble of having time-shifting affect your relationships, like The Forever War. There's the inclusion of genuinely religious people without caricaturing them as either fools or saints. And there's a pretty compelling mystery at the heart of the plot. But all of those references are high praise from me, and it all comes together really well.

I once heard a great definition of fascism as a “hierarchy of personhood.” I thought that was spot-on, in how certain people/political movements try to say that certain individuals don't deserve to be treated in the same way since they aren't “fully human.” I'm not certain how authentic this is, but Card pulls some Norse terminology for the four different levels of how we view outsiders: humans from our place, humans from another place, non-humans that are still people, or non-humans that aren't people. When humanity comes across an alien species, the arguments center on whether they ought to be treated as equals or not. It would do all of us some good to ponder how we as individuals and societies treat people of different races/religions/nationalities/immigrant statuses/etc.

On science, he's really done some good research. One of the most far-fetched items in the whole book is how relativity messes with time, but unfortunately that's the one that's actual modern physics. He employs just a few tropes of the genre (instantaneous communication across planets), but it's smartly framed as something that people don't even understand since we pulled it from alien technology. When biologists and anthropologists interact with the foreign species, all of their approaches and disagreements felt very realistic to me. There's a lot happening here, and Card has clearly read a lot about how science functions.

As a rite, the office of “Speaker for the Dead” is very compelling to me. Instead of traditional funerals, the Speaker will learn all about a person's life and lay it out in public for all to see. It's pretty harsh in some ways, but also shows how honesty is crucial to proper grief and healing.


In that vein, I'd like to say that the handling of religion in this is some of the best I've come across in any kind of fiction. Card is a Mormon, and it shows that he's a religious person. Along with Dune, it's been a great summer for me of religion in sci fi. There's a scene at the end of chapter 17 that's one of the best fictional descriptions of a religious service I've ever read. And there's a parable discussed that was wildly impactful on me. It's attested to a saint in the book's world, and I have great respect for Card that he was able to write something that felt plausibly saint-like. It's a play on the woman caught in adultery in John 8. I've copied the entire thing here:

–“A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. ‘Is there any man here,' he says to them, ‘who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?' They murmur and say, ‘We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.' The Rabbi says, ‘Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, ‘Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.' So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

–Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, ‘Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.' The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,' they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I'll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.' As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman's head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,' he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.' So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

–The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So of course, we killed him.

–San Angelo, Letters to an Incipient Heretic”




SPOILERs for Ender's Game in this paragraph:
One thing I really appreciated is how Ender has aged. After unwittingly killing an entire species, the weight of that moment has transformed him in a thoughtful way. In the first book he was wicked smart and clever, but Speaker for the Dead portrays him as wise, which is a much more difficult trait to write. It seems really hard to age up a protagonist in a way that feels authentic to their earlier self but also realistic to possible growth (I think of the Harry Potter prequels/sequels, as well as the Golden Compass sequel, among others), especially coming from such a traumatic childhood. This is terrific. You can feel his sadness, and the growth and determination it brought him. The transition from Xenocide to Speaker for the Dead felt excellent to me.

This book was so fun to read! It's still crazy to me that the author was a Mormon missionary in Brasil, and he showed it a lot more in this book. All of the characters spoke Portuguese, and the whole book was about how humanity should interact with a new alien species when we're colonizing the universe. Super interesting, great characters, 5 stars!

Age range: 16+
May be confusing to younger readers. It gets a little philosophical at times.

This book is easily my favorite of the Ender quintet, though for a time I wondered why this book specifically was the one I would consistently go back to. Part of it is my love for observant characters (including extraordinarily observant characters that seem almost psychic, like Andrew/Ender or Sherlock Holmes), but the other part is how much of a reward this story is for the pain of Ender's Game. It truly is the second half that shows the first book is a story half-told.

[Spoilers for Ender's Game here] While EG is brilliant, it follows the systematic breaking down of a boy's mind and body (to the point where he actually, physically collapses). SftD is the opposite - the systematic, hard-won but surprisingly gentle rebuilding of a man who is uncertain if he deserves the new chance at a second life he's offered. The most impressive part to me is the extreme yet believable nature of Andrew's compassion. I feel the connection between him and the Piggy named Human, and the brotherhood forged between them in a single meeting comes through.

My love for this book actually makes the later books harder to love, because where Andrew ends up is where I want him to be able to stay... but while I'm in this story, it's a beautiful life to see.

Great book overall even if there's some niggling issues with it. I think I like the book the more I think about it.

As a sequel to Ender's Game, it thoroughly escalated the entire universe while going in a direction which thematically makes perfect sense even if it's all set so wildly different to the first book. That's always a refreshing thing to see in a sequel.

Still not sure about Ender's negotiating style with alien races, he treats xeno-negotiations like it's an 80's boardroom in New York City.

Other thoughts:
Speakers for the Dead are a cool idea
The mystery felt a little contrived
Love some Portuguese influence in my books
How goods Jane?