Looking forward to the upcoming film version of Ender’s Game? So are we! We’ve pulled together a list of books to celebrate the November release. These titles cover similar themes and storylines as Orson Scott Card’s science fiction classic, including war, military academies, virtual reality games and child geniuses. If you want to continue to follow Ender’s story, check out the rest of the Ender Saga. The adventure continues with Speaker for the Dead .
When the alien mothership first arrived in our skies, we were excited and curious. But as attack after attack whittled down our population, curiosity turned to fear and fear to paranoia. Now, those of us who managed to survive the EMP bomb, the tsunami, the plague and the snipers hidden among the ruins must face the most frightening attack of all. A thrilling and suspenseful read that will keep you double guessing until the end.
Card re-visits Command School in this story set simultaneously with Ender’s Game. Bean, an orphan with extraordinary intelligence, is rescued from the streets and recruited to join Command School. There he meets the intelligent and talented Ender Wiggen. But he cannot understand why Ender seems chosen to lead and succeed when Bean possesses greater intelligence and tactical abilities. In order to learn what makes Ender so special, Bean must join his crew and work alongside him. This novel deepens the storyline begun in Ender’s Game.
In a society where pain and suffering have been minimized, and every member’s duties are assigned, life seems easy and good. But when twelve-year-old Jonas is appointed to the role of Receiver of Memory, he begins to see the truth behind the Utopia he thought he knew. Now Jonas must decide if he wants to stay in the safe but limiting society he grew up in or escape to a world where the possibility for both joy and pain are endless.
Thomas Raines, young video game player and con artist extraordinaire, finds himself faced with a seemingly easy choice: join the Military’s elite combat ops and fight for his country in the corporation driven World War III or stay with his father, an itinerant gambler whose eccentric ways have threatened to land Tom in foster care. But all is not as it seems in the Pentagon’s facility for young combatants. All recruits are sworn to secrecy, unable to tell anyone outside of the facility about their training and corporate sponsors monitor and mentor high level soldiers. More than anything Tom wants this life; the friends, the training, the sense of stability, but is the truth behind the military and behind the war itself worth keeping to maintain his newfound home?
What teenage hacker Marcus and his friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time, they become the Department of Homeland Security's prime suspects in a San Francisco terrorist attack that kills thousands. After enduring days of questioning and torture, Marcus is released into a city that's become an Orwellian nightmare of surveillance, and realizes that it's time for a techno-revolution against the DHS.
When Thomas wakes up, all he can remember is his name. The other boys tell him that he lives in the Glade now, a space in the middle of an enormous, constantly-changing maze. Every morning the doors to the maze open, every night they close, and in the two years that the other boys have been there, no one has ever found a way out. Then, a girl - the first ever to appear in the Glade - delivers an ominous message: escape or die.
In Oasis, one can escape the wasteland that we have made of the earth. This all immersive virtual reality began as a multi-player role-playing game but has grown to encompass almost all of our interaction with the world. Oasis is where we work, learn, love and live. And it holds the possibility to change one person's life forever. When James Halliday, co-creator of this world, passes away with no family he leaves the entirety of his fortune to anyone who can solve his final game. But in thirty years since passing, no one has even deciphered the first riddle. Until now.
In this classic science fiction novel, the reader follows Juan “Johnnie” Rico through his military career from recruit to officer in the war against the aliens known simply as the “Bugs.” Told in a series of vignettes consisting of Johnnie’s training and battles, this story explores the political and social ramifications of war.