ENDER IN EXILE

Why should I be stuck now with decisions carelessly made twenty-four years ago? What I've written since is right; those contradictory but unimportant details in the original novel are wrong.

Therefore I have rewritten chapter 15 of Ender's Game, and at some future date there will be an edition of the novel that includes the revised chapter. Meanwhile, the entire text is online for anyone who has ever bought or ever buys any issue of my magazine Orson Scott Card's Inter-Galactic Medicine Show (oscIGMS.com). I have linked it to that magazine because every issue of it contains a story from the Ender's Game universe. My hope is that if you buy an issue in order to read that revised chapter, you'll also sample all the stories in that issue and find out what an excellent group of writers we've been publishing there.

But rest assured that nothing significant is changed in that chapter. You have not missed anything if you don't read it.

In fact, the most important purpose for that revised chapter is to keep people from writing to me about contradictions between the original version of chapter 15 and this novel. So if you're content to take my word for it that all the contradictions are now resolved, you won't need to look it up online.

In preparing this novel, I had to venture back into old territory. It's not just that I had to fit in with Ender's Game (where that was even possible). This story also had to fit in with every casual decision I made in Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, not to mention all the short stories.

There was no way I had the time or the inclination to reread all those books. It would just depress me to notice all the things in all those books that now, being a better or at least more experienced writer, I would like to change.

Fortunately, I had the aid of people who have read my fiction more carefully and more recently than I have.

First and foremost, Jake Black recently wrote The Ender's Game Companion, in which he deals with every event, character, location, and situation in all the Ender novels and stories. He was a consultant on this book (as he is on the Marvel Comics adaptation of Ender's Game) and vetted everything.

And in preparing his book, he also had the help of Ami Chopine, a writer in her own right, who also has been the mother superior and/or nanny of PhiloticWeb.Net, and Andy Wahr (alias "Hobbes" on my website at Hatrack.com), who also helped me directly by answering many questions I had in preparing to write this book. I hope I never have to write an Ender novel without their help; and in the meantime, I count them all as good friends.

I also have the benefit of a community of kind people and friends at http://www.hatrack.com, whom I exploit mercilessly as a resource. As I set out to write this novel, I had several questions I needed to have answered. If I had never addressed the issue in any of the books, I needed to know that; if I had, I needed to know what I had said so I could try not to contradict it.

Here is the original request I posted at Hatrack.com:

I can't trust my memory about details in Ender's Game and the Shadow books, and I'm afraid that in writing Ender in Exile I might be contradicting some points in the EG universe. Perhaps someone can help on the following questions:

Who decided Ender should not come back to Earth, and why? Peter was involved, but I think he gives different motives from what Valentine and/or the narrator of EG specifies.

I think there's already a contradiction between EG and the Shadow books (Giant?) about the circumstances surrounding Ender's governorship and who commanded the colony ship. But was it already fully resolved? That is, Mazer was announced as commander of the ship, but then didn't go? I remember that in conversation with Han Tzu, this was solved (after Hatrack citizens helped by pointing out the contradiction in the first place!).

I'm referring to that last chapter in EG, but what I can't do is ferret out details from the four Shadow books or any stray references elsewhere in EG or the Speaker series. I'll be grateful for any reminders people can give me of details from this time period—from the end of Ender's last battle to the arrival on his new colony world, not just what happens to Ender, but what happens to Peter and Valentine, Mazer and Graff, and the world at large.

I had valuable responses to this cri de coeur, from C. Porter Bassett, Jaime Benlevy, Chris Wegford, Marc Van Pelt, Rob Taber, Steven R Beers, Shannon Blood, Jason Bradshaw, Lloyd Waldo, Simeon Anfinrud, Jonathan Barbee, Adam Hobart, Beau Pearce, and Robert Prince. Thank you to all of them for plunging back into the books to find the answers to my questions.

In addition, Clinton Parks found an issue I hadn't even thought of, and sent my staff this letter: