Xenocide

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Xenocide

Author	Orson Scott Card
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Ender's Game
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Tor Books
Released	July 1991
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	608 (Paperback Reprint)
ISBN	ISBN 0-8125-0925-0 (Paperback Reprint)
Preceded by	Speaker for the Dead
Followed by	Children of the Mind

For the computer game related to X-COM: UFO Defense, see Project Xenocide.

For the Apple IIGS game, see Xenocide (computer game).

Xenocide is the third novel in the Ender's Game series of books by Orson Scott Card. Its name has come to be used as a science fiction neologism to mean an act of genocide towards an alien species.

[edit] Plot summary

Following the events of Speaker for the Dead, we find Ender living as a member of a Brazilian human colony on the planet Lusitania, a planet which is unique in human space in that it is inhabited by two other sentient species: the Pequeninos and the Hive Queen (transplanted to this world by Ender partly in penance for his near-total destruction of their species in Ender's Game).

Unfortunately, the Lusitanian ecosystem is pervaded by a virus, named 'descolada' by the humans. The virus is incredibly adaptable, and potentially fatal to all living things. However, the native pequeninos and other life that survived on Lusitania are adapted to it. There are very few species on the planet because the descolada wiped most of them out as they couldn't adapt. The Hive species have immune systems sufficiently advanced to allow them to keep pace with the virus' mutations. However, the only way humans can survive in its presence is through continued medical intervention via dietary supplements, the design of which becomes more and more difficult as the virus changes. Despite the Hive's immune abilities and the humans dietary efforts, the descolada is slowly adapting to both non-Lusitanian races and will drive them to extinction if not countered. Furthermore, were any carrier of the virus to set foot upon an uninfected world, it is believed an ecological catastrophe would ensue, wiping out all but a handful of that world's species. The threat presented by this pathogen is great enough to frighten the central human government, the Starways Congress, into dispatching a fleet of ships armed with the Molecular Disrupter Device (M.D. Device) to destroy Lusitania. Knowing this, the pequeninos have commissioned the Hive Queen to construct a starship for them, so that their species may escape the planet and survive. Of course, the result would be that the descolada would survive as well.

The Lusitanians have a great ally: a cybernetic sentience that lives in and controls the ansible network, which allows instantaneous communication across galactic distances. The sentience, named Jane, aids them by allowing them to communicate with the rest of the galaxy and access its data networks; she also shuts down ansible connections with the fleet, even though this may lead to her discovery and termination.

On Lusitania itself, Ender marshals his forces, which consist almost entirely of the Ribeira family, including his wife Novinha and her children, whom he has since adopted. Novinha and Elanora, the mother-daughter team responsible for most of the biological advances countering the descolada, are undecided on whether they can manufacture a replacement virus and unsure whether they should use it if they could, since the descolada itself may be intrinsically related to pequenino sentience. Grego, Lusitania's leading physicist, scoffs at the idea of faster-than-light travel, but is persuaded by Ender to investigate it anyway. Quara, the third biologista of the colony, is convinced that the descolada itself is sentient and deserves to be treated as a sentient race. And Quim, father Estevão, is determined to head off pequenino-inspired xenocide (via their starship) with faith and theology. Whether any of this can be accomplished remains to be seen.

Starways Congress, the interstellar governing body, wants its fleet back. It places the dilemma before superhumanly-intelligent citizens of the world Path, a cultural planetary enclave modeled on early China. Path's culture centers on the godspoken, those who hear the voices of the gods in the form of irresistible compulsions. It later becomes clear that the godspoken of Path are victims of a cruel government project: granted great intelligence by genetic modification, they were also shackled with a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder out of fear. It is possible that the people of Path have a form of Anton's Key, substituting giantism and a nearly unlimited brain capacity for the OCD symptoms. The siting of this experiment in a culture bound by four dictates - obey the gods, honor the ancestors, love the people, and serve the rulers - is a further safeguard against rebellion, especially since the godspoken are considered the most devout and holy of all citizens. The most respected godspoken on Path is Han Fei-Tzu, and great things are expected of his daughter and potential successor, Han Qing-jao. The two of them are tasked with deciphering the disappearance of the Lusitania Fleet. Han Qing-jao's secret maid, Si Wang-Mu, aids her in this task, her incredible intelligence (partially) unfettered by the rigid caste system.

Qing-jao eventually traces the identity of Demosthenes, the pen name of an essayist who has revealed and been arguing against the planned destruction of Lusitania. Discovering that Demosthenes is Valentine Wiggin, Ender's sister, but that Valentine has been on a starship, en route to Lusitania, for the last thirty years, Qing-Jao infers that a sentient computer program closely tied to the ansible network must be responsible for hiding Demosthenes and publishing her work while she is in transit. All but discovered, Jane reveals herself to Han Fei-tzu, Han Qing-jao and Si Wang-mu, telling them about their genetic slavery and begging forbearance on their report to the Starways Congress. Han Fei-tzu, already harboring suspicions about their condition, accepts the news, as does Si Wang-mu, but Han Qing-jao clings to her traditionalism. Betrayed by her father, she reports the presence of Jane to Congress and tells them that, if all ansibles are shut down simultaneously, Jane will be destroyed. Luckily for Jane, this will take some thirty or forty weeks to accomplish, but her fate is sealed.

Remorseful about his daughter's act, Han Fei-tzu assists Jane and Elanora Ribeira, a biologist on Lusitania, in designing a counter-virus to the descolada. Unfortunately, this construct, derived from the descolada and nicknamed the recolada, proves impossible to synthesize. All seems lost until Grego, with the help of his brother Olhado, combine their own metaphysical speculations with information provided by the Hive Queen on philotes. Ender goes to talk to her about Jane's origin, which turns out to be the philotic connections Ender formed with a piece of software in his youth. The Hive Queens, seeking a way to contact him during his crusade, attempted to construct a philotic 'bridge' based upon those connections. Jane was the bridge they constructed, and in order to make it live, they imbued it with that quality which all living things have: a philote. Jane, in other words, is an actual lifeform, not just a collection of software. The Hive Queen further explains that Jane's philote was called from a space outside of the universe, just as all philotes are. Grego and Olhado, hearing this, hypothesize that, if someone can somehow contain all the information on how a spaceship's philotes are organized (i.e., its structure down to a subatomic level), that person could essentially will the spaceship Outside and Inside again. This will be entirely dependent on Jane, since no one else has any chance at holding or even learning all that information.

Jane's test flight consists of a box with a door (technically a spaceship), Ender (to whom Jane is inextricably philotically linked), Miro (for the same reason), and Ela (so that she can create the recolada virus once they are Outside). It is a success: Ela manages to envision and thus create the new virus, and also a new virus to give to the people of Path, to undo their genetic tampering and spread the increased intelligence across the world. But others are busy creating as well. Miro, by going Outside, creates a new body to replace his crippled one. And Ender manages to create copies, almost caricatures, of his siblings Peter and Valentine.

With a cure to the descolada to hand and growing public pressure against a second Xenocide on Lusitania, the future of the three sentient races on the planet seems more secure. The new Miro and the new Val set out to find new planets to colonize (since transportation is now cheap and instantanous), and the new Peter takes the counter-OCD virus to Path, where Si Wang-mu joins him in a quest to stop the Lusitania fleet. Han Qing-Jao, relieved of the biological origins of her compulsions, continues to act them out as the last remnant of the old ways of her world, ultimately becoming known as one of the holiest women in the known universe, and upon her death is unanimously elected the patron goddess of the planet of Path.

[edit] The Term

The term "xenocide", used several times throughout the Ender's Game series, refers to the elimination of a sentient raman species. For example, Ender was believed to have committed xenocide against the Formics (Buggers/Hive Queen), while in reality he did not since one Hive Queen remains alive. A sentient species is described as raman if it is believed possible to communicate and reason with the species, thereby making it a terrible sin to destroy it. However, the elimination of varelse, a sentient, but unreasonable species, is not considered to be xenocide.

The title is pronounced 'Zee-no-side', as has been clarified by author Orson Scott Card.

In addition to the Ender's Game series, Xenocide also appears in the computer game Civilization II: Test of Time.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series
Ender Quartet	Ender's Game | Speaker for the Dead | Xenocide | Children of the Mind
Bean Quartet	Ender's Shadow | Shadow of the Hegemon | Shadow Puppets | Shadow of the Giant
Additional books	Shadows in Flight | Ender in Exile: Ganges (working title)
Short stories	First Meetings: "The Polish Boy" | "Teacher's Pest" | "Investment Counselor" Intergalactic Medicine Show: "Mazer in Prison" | "Pretty Boy" | "Cheater"
Books | Characters | Concepts