The Authorized Ender Companion (70 page)

Two days later I had finished
Ender’s Game
and was halfway through rereading it again. Here was a book that spoke to me; it didn’t just offer respite, like the books I had read before. In Ender’s world, children were flexible and brilliant and fallible and adults were firm within their mistakes—what struck me then (as it does today, twenty years later) was the underlying message of empathy. Be unafraid to think, to speak the way you speak, but never stop loving. Love your enemies, so that you may understand them. At an age when my own emotions confused me only slightly less than those of the adults around me, it was a lesson that would carry me through the turbulent reconstruction of self that adolescence thrust on me, safe to the other side.

Ender’s Game
first introduced me to the idea that the big people around me had no more knowledge of how to navigate these waters than I did—and that was alright. I could think for myself, discover my own path, and allow us each our own mistakes. After a spectacularly pitiful high school career, it surprised everyone but myself when I began working as a professional programmer at age seventeen. Why not? My first lessons in empathy were from a little boy who grew up inside a machine. Having spent my elementary childhood learning to speak the language of each person I met, to understand them so that I could communicate with them, it seemed like a natural step to learning the language the computer used, that I may understand it.

My mother died two years ago—I am twenty years older than I was when I first took my stepfather’s copy of
Ender’s Game
from his hands. One of the side effects of the grief of losing her, the most tenacious and limiting, has been my anger at her for leaving. A cold distance from my real memories of her, replaced with questioning blame. Another side effect: this year has been the first since I learned to read in which I did not sit down at some point and lose myself in page after page of enveloping text. I have lost my mother, books have offered me no relief.

So Friday night I dug through boxes and boxes, not looking for anything in particular, just attending to the chore of sifting through another person’s lifetime of artifacts, until I found a tattered copy of
Ender’s Game
in with toys and clothes my mother packed away years ago. I’ve had other copies of
Ender’s Game
since then, loaned to friends, left on airplanes—I didn’t realize the first copy was so near me. I sat down in front of my computer and opened to the first page. Four hours later I was finished and I wept, because something inside me had unclenched and some silvery thread had linked me to the sensitive little girl I once was, linked me to my earliest sensations of my mother who I understood best when my love for her was a child’s: unstinting, unanalyzed, unafraid of all the places in which my mother’s mistakes have become my own mistakes. I love us both for it.

Brianna Privett, programmer
Crestline, California

This portion of any book seems an awful lot like an acceptance speech at an awards show. However, the people listed here are deserving of my most sincere thanks as they each helped bring this book to pass.

First and foremost, thank you to my wife, Michelle, for giving me the space, time, and ability to research and write the encyclopedia of the Ender Universe. During this time, our son, Jonas, was born, cut his first teeth, and even started walking. Without Michelle’s support for me and her care for our son, this book would never have happened.

Kathleen Bellamy deserves as much credit as anyone. She consulted with me on points in the manuscript and has been a patient colleague and aide as I brought the manuscript to its finished form. She must also be thanked for securing the graphics that augment the entries.

Kristine Card was also incredibly sweet and unwaveringly positive as we put the
Companion
together.

Aaron Johnston was a terrific resource when it came to questions about Hyrum Graff, about whom he is cowriting a novel, as well as the
Ender’s Game
movie.

Ami Chopine and Andy Wahr provided invaluable clarifications on items from the Ender Universe I didn’t catch, making the encyclopedia as accurate as possible.

Nick Lowe, Jordan White, and Lauren Sankovitch at Marvel Comics were the first real tests of the
Companion
’s usefulness as they edited the
Ender’s Game
comics. They helped me make sure I knew what I was talking about.

Thank you to Beth Meacham at Tor for believing in this project, and getting it launched at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2007.

Brad Meltzer reinforced my sometimes-shaky confidence in heroic fashion. I will be forever in his debt.

Thanks to Chris Cerasi, a friend always and a championing force in my life and career. And also to Jordan Hamessley for her commitment to all things Ender.

Finally, thank you to Orson Scott Card for inviting me over to play with his toys.

—J.B.