Speaker for the Dead
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
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| Author | Orson Scott Card |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ender's Game series |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
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Publication date
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March 1986 |
| Pages | 415 |
| Award | Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1987) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 13201341 |
| Preceded by | Ender's Game |
| Followed by | Xenocide |
Speaker for the Dead is a 1986 science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card and an indirect sequel to the novel Ender's Game. The book takes place around the year 5270, some 3,000 years after the events in Ender's Game. However, because of relativistic space travel, Ender himself is only about 35 years old.
This is the first book to discuss the Starways Congress, a high standpoint Legislation for the human colonies. It is also the first to describe the Hundred Worlds, the planets with human colonies that are tightly intertwined by Ansible technology.
Like Ender's Game, the book won the Nebula Award in 1986 and the Hugo Award in 1987.Speaker for the Dead was published in a slightly revised edition in 1991. It was followed by Xenocide and Children of the Mind.
Following the xenocide of the Formic species by his own hand (in Ender's Game), Ender Wiggin writes a book under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead" called The Hive Queen, describing the life of the Formics as described to him by the dormant Formic queen which he secretly carries. As humanity uses faster-than-light travel to establish new colonies, Ender quietly travels with them along with his sister Valentine to find a home for the Formic Queen to restart her species. Ender's older brother, the aged Hegemon Peter Wiggin, recognizes Ender's writings in The Hive Queen, and requests Ender write for him once he dies. Ender agrees, and authors The Hegemon. These two books create a new religious movement for Speakers of the Dead who have full authority to investigate a person and their work after their death, and speak with judgement about the essence of them in eulogy.
Some three thousand years after the xenocide, a human colony is established on the planet Lusitania. The planet is home to a sentient species of mammalian forest dwellers called "Piggies" which proves to be of great interest to xenobiologists. However, shortly after the colony's founding, many of the colonists die from the Descolada virus before a cure is found. The colony is strictly regulated to allow only limited contact with the piggies to those xenobiologists, and to not share human technology with them.
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