Children of the Mind

Front Cover
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.

From inside the book

Contents

You Dont Believe in God
21
There Are Too Many of Us
34
Nobody Is Rational
103
Copyright

12 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1997)

Orson Scott Byron Walley Card, was born in 1951 and studied theater at Brigham Young University. He received his B.A. in 1975 and his M.A. in English in 1981. He wrote plays during that time, including Stone Tables (1973) and the musical, Father, Mother, Mother and Mom (1974). A Mormon, Scott served a two-year mission in Brazil before starting work as a journalist in Utah. He also designed games at Lucas Film Games, 1989-92. He is best known for his science fiction novels, including the popular Ender series. Well known titles include A Planet Called Treason (1979), Treasure Box (1996), and Heartfire (1998). He has also written the guide called How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990). His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead, both won Hugo and Nebula awards, making Card the only author to win both prizes in consecutive years. His titles Shadows in Flight, Ruins and Ender's Game made The New York Times Best Seller List. He is also the author of The First Formic War Series, which includes the titles Earth Unaware, Earth Afire, and Earth Awakens.

Bibliographic information