Earth Unaware (First Formic War) (52 page)

Consider how the novel begins. Here you have this six-year-old kid with a medical device on the back of his neck—likely connected to his brain stem—that monitors his every action, thought, and conversation, all to determine if he has what it takes to be the next great military commander. It begs the question: What happened to the human race that led us to allow such an invasion of personal privacy or, for that matter, the use of innocent children for war? The answer, of course, is the Formics. Scott Card created a history for the world filled with alien invasions and do-or-die heroics in which the human race was nearly wiped out. In other words, he created a history on which the circumstances of Ender’s story could exist. And yet he only gave us as much of that history as we needed to know. We knew that the two conflicts were called the First and Second Formic Wars, and we heard whispers of pivotal events, such as the Battle of the Belt or “the scouring of China,” but the specifics of those wars and events were largely unexplained. Instead, Scott kept our eyes and hearts laser-focused on the story he was telling, the story of Ender Wiggin.

Flash ahead to 2009. Marvel Comics has just published a ten-issue adaptation of
Ender’s Game
and a ten-issue adaptation of
Ender’s Shadow.
The response from critics and fans was overwhelmingly positive, and the praise was well deserved. The comics were beautifully drawn and extremely well written. Credit goes to Marvel, who showed their respect for and love of the original material by staying faithful to Scott’s original stories and by hiring some of the most talented creators in comics today to bring the stories to life. (Christopher Yost, Pasqual Ferry, Mike Carey, Sebastian Fiumara, Frank D’Armata, Giulia Brusco, Jim Cheung, Jake Black, and others.)

Marvel wanted to do more and assembled a team to adapt
Speaker for the Dead
and
Ender in Exile
—both as limited-issue series. In addition, Marvel produced a few one-shot comics in the Ender universe as well. (One shots are stand-alone issues not part of an ongoing or limited series.) One such comic adapted Scott’s short story
Mazer in Prison.
Another told how Peter and Valentine initiated and then stopped the League War. Another told a completely original Valentine story. In short, the world of Ender Wiggin was thriving in comics.

But Marvel wasn’t finished. They wanted to do more. And it was here that Scott Card made the proposition that would eventually result in the book you’re holding now. Scott essentially asked, “What if, instead of another adaptation, Marvel does an original series in the Ender universe? What if we told the story of the first two Formic wars? Why not bring all the backstory from
Ender’s Game
to life, with a completely new cast of characters?”

Marvel said yes, and Scott and I agreed to write the series. I had been working with Marvel adapting
Speaker for the Dead
and
Ender in Exile
and writing a few one-shots. Scott had comic experience as well, having written
Ultimate Iron Man
for Marvel some years before. It wasn’t the first time Scott and I had worked as a team, either. We had collaborated on the novel
Invasive Procedures
and on a limited-issue comic series for EA Comics based on the award-winning video game
Dragon Age.

While Marvel began assembling an art team, Scott and I began to develop the story.
Ender’s Game
had been on Scott’s mind for over thirty years, so many of those early story sessions consisted of Scott sharing what had been stewing in his brain all those years and me furiously taking notes. The early conversations were primarily focused on world-building. Scott had given a lot of thought to the concept of asteroid mining and how the whole industry would work. What was the science of it all? How do the miners get the metals back to Earth? What economic infrastructure must exist to make survival in the Deep possible? Would miners work exclusively in the Asteroid Belt, or would some miners venture farther out? Were there only corporations doing the work or was there room in the economy for independent mining families and clans? And if so, what is the relationship between free miners and corporate? And how do miner families marry and prosper? How do they mix up their gene pool and exist in such an empty and isolated environment?

And what about the military? Scott and I knew that Mazer Rackham had to play a pivotal role in this story. Where was he trained? And more importantly, who trained him? Who showed Mazer how to command?

Once Scott and I had a basic framework of the world, we began populating it with characters. We knew from the get-go that we weren’t writing
Ender’s Game.
This wouldn’t be the story of a single hero; it would be the story of many.

The challenge was, we were writing a comic book. And comic books, in case you’ve never counted, are generally twenty-two pages long. You can only squeeze so many panels of art onto a page, and the more dialogue you write, the more art you cover up. So it’s best to be extremely economical with words. Some of the ideas and characters that Scott and I were developing simply wouldn’t fit in the comics.

Around this time Marvel introduced Scott and me to the art of Giancarlo Caracuzzo, who blew us away with his environments and characters and style. The immensely talented Jim Charalampidis joined as colorist, and in no time, beautifully vibrant pages of the comic began popping up in our inboxes.

Creating comics is much like filmmaking in that’s it a highly collaborative process. Ideas can come from anywhere, and the contributions of each individual shape the outcome for everyone. The character of Victor Delgado, for example, will always exist in my head exactly as Giancarlo drew him. And the muted earth tones that Jim gave El Cavador are the colors I see whenever I think of the ship.

There were other people involved in the comics, of course, but the person who deserves the most credit and a lifelong standing ovation is Jordan D. White, our editor at Marvel, who had a hand in every aspect of the comics and who may be the nicest person working in the industry today. (You should follow him on Twitter at @cracksh0t. That’s a zero, not the letter O.)

Additional thanks go to Jake Black, Billy Tan, Guru-eFX, Cory Petit, Jenny Frison, Salvador Larroca, Aron Lusen, Bryan Hitch, Paul Mounts, Arune Singh, John Paretti, Joe Quesada, and everyone else at Marvel.

As Scott and I continued to develop the stories for each issue, we continued to create story elements that simply wouldn’t fit in the comics. To give you a sense of what I mean, this novel only includes the story contained in the first three issues of the comics. And not even the complete story of those issues; there are bits of issues two and three that won’t exist in novel form until a subsequent book.

So Scott and I had to make some concessions and exclude people and events from the comics that we knew would only exist in the novels. If you’ve read the comics as well as this book, you’ve likely noticed some of the changes. Scott and I think of it this way: The comics are an adaptation of the novels even though the comics existed before the novels. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say: The comics are an expansion of the backstory of
Ender’s Game
and an adaptation of the novels that followed them. Hmm. Think about that too much and you might get dizzy. Of course, this practice of evolving a story is nothing new to the Ender universe. Remember,
Ender’s Game
began as a novelette.

As for this novel, thanks goes to everyone at Tor, especially our editor, Beth Meacham, whose wise counsel was critical in bringing the novel to life. Additional thanks go to Kathleen Bellamy, Kristine Card, and my wife, Lauren Johnston, for their careful reading of the manuscript and constant encouragement. Thanks also to the children still living in the Card and Johnston homes, for their patience as Scott and I closed ourselves in our respective offices to make this novel happen. Thank you, Zina, Luke, Jake, Layne, and little Meg. We couldn’t have done it without you.

By Orson Scott Card from Tom Doherty Associates

Empire

The Folk of the Fringe

Future on Fire
(editor)

Future on Ice
(editor)

Invasive Procedures
(with Aaron Johnston)

Keeper of Dreams

Lovelock
(with Kathryn Kidd)

Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Saints

Songmaster

Treason

A War of Gifts

The Worthing Saga

Wyrms

THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER

Seventh Son

Red Prophet

Prentice Alvin

Alvin Journeyman

Heartfire

The Crystal City

ENDER

Ender’s Game

Ender’s Shadow

Shadows in Flight

Shadow of the Hegemon

Shadow Puppets

Shadow of the Giant

Speaker for the Dead

Xenocide

Children of the Mind

First Meetings

Ender in Exile

HOMECOMING

The Memory of Earth

The Call of Earth

The Ships of Earth

Earthfall

Earthborn

WOMEN OF GENESIS

Sarah

Rebekah

Rachel & Leah

From Other Publishers

Enchantment

Homebody

Lost Boys

Magic Street

Stone Father

Stone Tables

Treasure Box

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

Characters and Viewpoint

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

EARTH UNAWARE

Copyright © 2012 by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2904-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 9781429946568 (e-book)

First Edition: July 2012