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What changed on screen
What changed on screen, title by title: 38 in total. Tap a cover to open it. Titles you haven't marked as read stay locked so nothing gets spoiled.
- Referencenod to comics or other movies
- Cameoa familiar face shows up
- Setupplanted now, pays off later
- Behind the scenesproduction trivia
- ChangeEnder grows up in the book
In the book, Ender is 6 when he goes to Battle School and spends years there. The film compresses everything and keeps Ender around 12 from start to finish.
source ↗ - ChangeNo Locke, no Demosthenes
Peter and Valentine spend the book writing online as Locke and Demosthenes and steering Earth's politics. In the film, the siblings barely appear and that plot is gone.
source ↗ - ChangeSofter violence
In the book, Stilson and Bonzo die from their fights with Ender, and he only finds out later. The film shows neither death and leaves Bonzo's fate open.
source ↗ - ChangeA smaller ending
In the book, Ender and Valentine leave with colonists, and years later he finds the queen's cocoon on an old Formic world. In the film, he finds the queen right after the battle, with no Valentine around.
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- Behind the scenesIt was going to be Urchin
The book's working title was Urchin before it became Ender's Shadow.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesIt nearly became the movie
The script Card wrote for Warner Bros. combined this book with Ender's Game, pairing Ender and Bean. The 2013 film stuck with Ender's Game, but the screen Bean comes from here.
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- Behind the scenesIt began in a webzine
The chapter "Ender's Stocking" first ran in October 2007 as the opening of a story in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Card's own webzine.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA shorter cut in an anthology
A slightly abridged version, titled The War of Gifts, appeared in the 2016 anthology Decision Points.
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- Behind the scenesA reader changed the book
Card split his original draft into two books after a reader, Phillip Absher, found Petra's storyline anticlimactic.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA history lesson
Card credits David K. Wyatt's Thailand: A Short History and Lawrence James's Raj as the backbone of the war between India, Thailand and China.
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- Behind the scenesShadow of Death
The planned title was Shadow of Death. It became Shadow Puppets before the 2002 release.
source ↗ - ReferenceIn the eye, like Poke
Bean kills Achilles with a shot to the eye, the same spot where Achilles struck Poke, his first victim, in Ender's Shadow.
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- Behind the scenesThe Bean Quartet
With this book the Shadow series reaches four volumes and picks up a second name, the Bean Quartet, mirroring the Ender Quartet.
source ↗ - SetupThe game gets a new job
To manage Ender's pension, the Mind Game is reprogrammed to play the markets. Keep that in mind: it pays off much later in the saga.
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- Behind the scenesIt rewrites the last chapter
Ender in Exile expands, and in places replaces, the final chapter of Ender's Game. Card filled in what happens between that chapter and Speaker for the Dead.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesStories turned chapters
Several chapters first ran as stories in InterGalactic Medicine Show. "Ender's Homecoming" became chapter one.
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- Reference421 years in a few
The story is set in 2631, 421 years after the Herodotus left Earth. On board, flying near light speed, far less time has passed.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA Goodreads contender
The novella was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards in science fiction.
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- Behind the scenesTwo years, two Hugos
Speaker for the Dead won the Nebula and the Hugo, just as Ender's Game had the year before.
source ↗ - Behind the scenes"Unfilmable," says Card
In 2013, the year of the film, Card said this book can't be filmed: it would be mostly talking heads. He also said readers had held real "Speakings" at funerals.
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- Behind the scenesA story in Analog
Card folded parts of "Gloriously Bright," a story from the January 1991 issue of Analog, into the novel, which came out the same year.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA finalist, no trophy
After two straight Hugos, Xenocide was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Locus for best novel in 1992, but didn't win.
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- Behind the scenesIt was half of Xenocide
Children of the Mind began as the second half of Xenocide. The material was split into two books, which is why this one picks up right where the last one stops.
source ↗ - ReferenceA name from China
Si Wang-mu, who shares the book with young Peter, is named after the Queen Mother of the West from Chinese mythology.
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- Behind the scenesWritten in lockdown
Card said he wrote the first pages while in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA title swap
Card swapped titles with the fifth Shadow book and moved what he had planned for that book's opening into this novel.
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- Behind the scenesThe comic came first
Co-author Aaron Johnston had already scripted Marvel's Formic Wars: Burning Earth and Silent Strike comics. The novel expands that story.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesRoom to breathe
Card said the novel gives the comics' plot room to develop the characters and relationships behind the action.
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- ReferenceA century before Ender
The trilogy is set about a hundred years before Ender's Game, during the first invasion the Ender books only mention as history.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA Goodreads contender
The book was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards in science fiction.
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- Behind the scenesThird nod in a row
Like the two before it, Earth Awakens was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards in science fiction.
source ↗ - SetupBingwen isn't done
Bingwen, the boy Mazer saves in China, keeps gaining ground. He's back for the Second Formic War.
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- Behind the scenesA new trilogy
The Swarm opens the Second Formic War trilogy, again with Aaron Johnston. The third book, The Queens, has been announced but has no date.
source ↗ - ReferenceThe I.F. is born
The book shows the creation of the Hegemon and the Polemarch, who leads the new International Fleet, posts Ender readers already know.
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- Behind the scenesAnnounced in a tweet
Card revealed the title on November 12, 2015, in a tweet about a bright kid leaving home for an elite school in space.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe sequel that never came
Gavin Hood, who directed the film, said a sequel could be based on this book. No real plans followed.
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- Behind the scenesA middle with no end yet
The Hive is the middle book of the Second Formic War. The finale, The Queens, still has no release date.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesEnemies at home
The official blurb puts the danger on the human side too: nationalism, tribalism, paranoia and jealousy inside Earth's own defense.
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Original text by Sagaspedia. Posters: The Movie Database (TMDB); character photos via Wikipedia. This site uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. All trademarks and titles mentioned belong to their respective owners. Streaming availability may change.
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