Book Name : First
Meetings in the Enderverse
Author
: Card, Orson Scott
No. of Pages
: 172
Summary :
(Taken from Wikipedia)
First Meetings (2002) is a collection of Orson Scott Card's short stories from the Ender's Game series. The 2003 edition published by Tor Books (which has been retitled First Meetings in the Enderverse and First Meetings in Ender's Universe) also includes the story "Teacher's Pest", about the first meeting of Ender's parents.
The stories in this book are:
The Polish Boy
John Paul is a very smart child who is being home schooled because his family refused to comply with the populations control laws. One day, Captain Helena Rudolf from the International Fleet shows up to test three of John Paul’s brothers for possible admission into Battle School. She notices John Paul reading a book and decides to test him early. He passes the test and gets a very high score for leadership. The IF tries to get him to go to Battle School, but John Paul is only interested in trying to get his family out of Poland so that they can have a better life and he can get a good education.Captain Graff realizes this, but agrees to send the Wieczorek family to America because he hopes that one of John Paul’s children will go to Battle School.
This story contains younger versions of important characters in the Enderverse, such as Ender's father John Paul Wieczorek (later Wiggin), Hyrum Graff, and Admiral Chamrajnagar. Other characters associated with the IF appear, including Captain Helena Rudolf and Colonel Sillian.
Teacher’s Pest
While going to college, John Paul is assigned to take a Human Communities class being taught by Theresa. Unfortunately, she has just been told that her research project is being taken away from her in an effort to get her father Admiral Brown to come out of retirement. As a result, she does not want to speak to anyone. Determined, John Paul waits outside her office and orders food for her while she talks to her father on the phone. When she finally comes out, he is still waiting for her. She decides to eat with him, and during the meal John Paul tells her about his secret past. As they continue to talk, they both begin to fall in love.
Ender's Game
This story begins as Ender is made the commander of Dragon Army at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders to fight in the next interstellar war against an unspecified enemy. Armies are groups of students that fight mock battles in the Battle Room, a null gravity environment, and are subdivided into squads known as "toons". Due to Ender's genius in leadership, Dragon Army goes on to dominate the competition, despite the teachers' attempts to put obstacles in their way. After his nineteenth consecutive victory, Ender is told that his Army is being broken up and his toon leaders promoted to be commanders in their turn, while he is being transferred to Command School for the next stage of his education. Here, a veteran named Mazer Rackham tutors him in the use of a space battle simulator. Eventually, many of his former toon leaders are brought along to serve under him once more. Once they are familiar with the simulator, they begin to fight a series of what Mazer tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy. Ender's team wins again and again, finally destroying a planet that the enemy fleet seems to be protecting. Once the battle is over, Mazer tells an exhausted Ender that all of the battles were in fact real, the children's commands having been relayed to the actual fleet, and that he just destroyed the enemy's home world and ended the war.
Investment Counselor
Ever since the events of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin has been voyaging through space at near-lightspeed. When he arrives at the planetSorelledolce, he has just turned twenty in relativistic time, so he has to file his first tax return on the trust fund which had been given to him by theInternational Fleet at the end of the Third Bugger War. He shows his list of investments to Benedetto, a tax collector in the starport, who immediately plans to steal some of it. Meanwhile, Andrew receives an email offering him financial software, which has an interactive personality that calls itselfJane.
While they are on Sorelledolce, Andrew's sister Valentine Wiggin takes him to a "speaking" for a dead man. Andrew talks to the speaker and discovered that the man learned how to be a speaker for the dead from reading Ender's own books The Hive Queen and The Hegemon.
Andrew decides to accept the assistance of the Jane program. She prepares his tax forms, showing him ways to minimize what he owes. The amount is much less than he had expected. When Andrew delivers the forms to Benedetto, the tax collector tries to blackmail him because he has discovered Ender's identity as the hated Xenocide. But Benedetto finds that his files have mysteriously disappeared. In an attempt to get revenge against Ender, he tries to leak what data he still has to the media, but Jane appears on his screen and gives him a choice: "Either say nothing, or tell the whole truth."[1] Benedetto rejects the first option, but when the media receives his story, it has been mysteriously integrated with a full confession of his embezzlements.
Benedetto is arrested, and while he is in prison one of his more powerful victims has him killed. Andrew does a speaking at Benedetto's funeral. He has thus inadvertently given himself a career, that of "speaker for the dead."
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