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A Never Ending Enders Fame 1 Alicia Lozano Los Angeles Times Twenty-three Twenty years have passed since Orson Scott Card first dazzled readers with Enders Game a aI I seminal work that blurred the lines between young adult and adult fiction Now hes he's back with Ender in Exile which picks up where the 1985 winner of the Hugo and Nebula I awards science fictions fiction's I highest honors left off o The revival of Ender the boy hero who saves Earth from like bug-like aliens goes I beyond the novels novel's pages w with th a new comic-book comic adaptation of the original saga and spurring interest I in Hollywood as a potential film franchise i All of this quite surprises the year old North I Carolina resident although he suspects the story still resonates partly because of its sad martial tale Card ard introduces the protagonist as a year old prodigy who is bred to be Earths Earth's future hero but to achieve this Ender must train to become the perfect soldier I cunning strong ruthless He is symptomatic of a warI war- war I obsessed society a reclusive i character grappling with the very up grown-up issues of ofis is isolation lation and loneliness With such powerful themes Card is at times amused by Enders Ender's popularity among young readers He never intended to be a young adult author He is proud however that the books speak to adolescents who are reading them and engaging in serious philosophical conversations during their most malleable years In our society children are kept from adulthood until they graduate college he said A lot of kids find in Ender an imaginary outlet for an impulse to do something real Its It's like they're sneaking into an adult conversation When we revisit Ender in Exile he is 17 and exalted as a hero for fending off the third wave of alien marauders that threatened to obliterate Earth But his brutal military techniques render him a monster to the very people who trained him to be a killer He is mercilessly exiled from his home planet and forced into a colony that is light years away Exile is not the first time Card has dipped back into Enders Ender's universe there were three sequels and a novel But Exile fills in the lost years That's because in inthe inthe inthe the original up follow-up Speaker for the Dead published in 1986 the protagonist is 35 and healed from the trauma of being Earths Earth's savior It took getting married raising a family and the death of two children to put life into perspective and give Card the necessary material to imagine Ender during his transition to adulthood Most adolescents are trying to disconnect but Ender wants to root in society and he really cant can't he said I see someone who is ready for adulthood but declines when he finds it Enders Ender's biggest challenge is not those threatening to destroy Earth but rather himself He is ready for adulthood and could find happiness with an intended mate yet he rejects living a conventional life and instead opts for the role of solitary leader a protector who reaches into mans man's most basic fighting instinct Ender hates what he has hasto hasto hasto to become he said He is isborn isborn born bom to be a protector but buthe buthe buthe he also happens to have the natural talent for war Card insists that war is part of a universal human history and that Ender is merely a product of that legacy But with combat raging in Iraq Afghanistan and elsewhere its it's hard not to compare Ender with modern modem soldiers and Card does not shy away from this point A student of all things military Card is a proud I conservative who writes a regular column fo for the Ornery American a right- right leaning online magazine But Cards Card's beliefs do not fit neatly inside a box and this annoys annoys' some of his followers He is a registered Democrat but also an avid supporter of George W. W Bushs Bush's war on terrorism and a bitter public foe of sex same-sex marriage He is isa isa isa a leading figure not only in science fiction but also in Mormon literature he heis heis heis is a descendant of Brigham Young and has written theological plays short stories and novels His fans and critics disagree on where the theauthor's theauthor's theauthor's authors author's sympathies lie Some say 0 the stories are pro-military pro because they glamorize the duty-at-all- duty costs mind Others say the books are decidedly military anti-military because of the thede deception de eption and cruelty used to train the boy soldier Card says this is the wrong debate he maintains that his books are simply soldier pro-soldier an attempt to sympathize with them and understand the importance of what they doThe do doThe doThe The real question he said is how do you make good people into killing machines and bring them back into full citizenship Card draws a parallel between his character and the soldiers of today who volunteer for the military despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war Their commitment to defend does not come without consequence he said Card whose brother served in Korea in the has spent a a lot of time speaking with soldiers who loved his book Like Ender many of these men and women struggle with the dichotomy of being protectors and aggressors he said Soldiers in a sense never come home he said Those who have seen radical violence are never able to share that We regard it as pathology if they do This complex weave of emotions has made Ender especially difficult to film and has resulted in two decades of fizzled studio meetings end dead-end scripts and a marathon director search The author said he was not interested in a tough hero action film and refuses to condescend to screen green-screen Hollywood Card imagines a film where the human relationships are absolutely essential an honest presentation of the story Enders Game was recently in development with director Wolfgang Petersen In the Line of Fire The Perfect Storm Troy on board but Card did not feel comfortable with the movies movie's direction That project was scrapped early in November The novels did step into the visual medium in October with the first issue of Enders Game Battle School a Marvel Comics issue five-issue adaptation of Enders Game The third issue of the 1 series by writer Chris Yost and artist Pasqual Ferry hits j stores Jan 28 I A second Marvel miniseries starring Cards Card's boy soldiers Enders Shadow Battle School by the team of Mike Carey and Sebastian Fiumara debuted in early December This is an adaptation of Cards Card's 1999 novel Enders Shadow which retells the original story from the perspective of Bean a young orphan who becomes Enders Ender's ally during training Considering the Hollywood attitude that comic books are now the trendy for pitch meetings perhaps the well-received well Marvel series actually will give the saga of Ender Wiggin some traction in Hollywood If so Card will be pleased to see his space opera reach a whole new audience of young people 0 i rt H I |