ABSTRACT
In his science fiction novel Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card presents an allegory for a generation of video kids, a story of a game that begins in play and ends in something deadly serious. The book follows the child protagonist, Ender, through his star career at the elite Battle School, where he passes every trial concocted by the military commanders at the academy, each one framed as a confrontation in a complex computerized battle game. Ender triumphs unflaggingly, emerging, finally, as the leader of a prepubescent militia of the highest promise, running through simulation after simulation of battles of an alien invasion. While a story of a child coupling so tightly with simulations of destruction might be enough food for cautionary thought, Card also provides us with a final obliteration of the simulacrum of childhood innocence. Ender’s last game turns out, unbeknownst to him, to be a real military attack that results in the genocide of an entire alien species.
