Children of the Mind: 4 (Ender Quintet)

Children of the Mind: 4 (Ender Quintet)

by OrsonScottCard (Author)

Synopsis

Orson Scott Card returns at last to the story of Ender Wiggin, the child hero of the Hugo and Nebula award winner Ender's Game, who as a man found a way to redeem the Xenocide of his youth and restore the Hive Queen to life. Now his adopted world, Lusitania, is threatened by the same planet-destroying weapon that he himself used so many thousands of years before. Lusitania is home to three sentient species: the Pequeninos, a strange race native to Lusitania; a large colony of humans; and the Hive Queen, brought there by Ender. But the Starways Congress fears Lusitania and a strange virus that it harbors, and they have gathered a fleet to destroy the planet. Ender's oldest friend, Jane, the computer intelligence that has evolved with him over three thousand years, allowed the Starways Congress to discover her existence when she tried to stop the fleet. Now they are trying to kill her as well, by shutting down the network of computers and ansibles in which she lives. They are afraid of her, and of her control over all human communications. Jane can save the three sentient races of Lusitania. She has learned how to move ships outside the universe, and then instantly back to a different world, abolishing the light-speed limit. But it takes all the processing power available to her, and the Starways Congress is shutting down the Net world by world. Soon she will not be able to move the ships. But there is hope: during the first trip outside, Ender's mind briefly took control and created two new beings - replicas of his brother Peter, who was the Hegemon, and his sister Valentine. These two children of Ender's mind, together with his adopted children from Lusitania, are racing against time todiscover new worlds, to influence the Starways Congress to recall the fleet, and to save Jane by finding a home for her disembodied intelligence once the Human Network is closed off to her.

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More Information

Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 370
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 01 Jun 1997

ISBN 10: 0812522397
ISBN 13: 9780812522396

Media Reviews

Card's prose is powerful. --Publishers Weekly

This is a worthy ending to what might be styled a saga of the ethical evolution of humanity, a concept seldom attempted before and never realized with the success Card achieved here. --Booklist

Author Bio

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and it's many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Quintet, the five books that chronicle the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, that follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and are set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, that tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien Buggers.

Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977 -- the short story Gert Fram in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelet version of Ender's Game in the August issue of Analog.

The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin.

Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.

He is the author many sf and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), There are also stand-alone science fiction and fantasy novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's recent work includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old.

Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.