Concepts in the Ender's Game series

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This is a list of miscellaneous elements in the Ender's Game series of books by Orson Scott Card.

Contents 1 Aiua 2 Ansible 3 Anton's Key 4 Descolada 5 Descoladore 6 Fantasy Game 7 Hierarchy of Alienness 7.1 The hierarchy 7.2 Significance 8 Molecular Disruption Device 8.1 Motivation 8.2 Mechanism 8.3 Deployment 9 Outspace 10 Philote 10.1 The theory of philotics 11 Philotic Web 12 Stark 13 References

[edit] Aiua

Aiùas are explained in Orson Scott Card's series of novels, beginning with Speaker for the Dead and continuing in Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. An aiùa is an intelligent philote. Sentient creatures consist of uncounted numbers of philotes (the true indivisible particle) and one aiùa, which holds the collection together and can be thought of as the physical representation of the soul. According to Grego in Xenocide, the term was inspired by the Sanskrit word for 'life,' probably "āyus" (this is not the first time Card has derived fictional slang from real-world vocabulary). The existence of philotes and aiùas is also acknowledged, though not as large of a theme, in the parallel Shadow series.

[edit] Ansible

See also: Ansible

"The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator," explains Colonel Graff in Ender's Game, "but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere".^[1] His description of ansible functions in Xenocide involve a fictional subatomic particle, the philote, and contradicts not only standard physical theory but the results of empirical particle accelerator experiments. In the "Enderverse", the two quarks inside a pi meson can be separated by an arbitrary distance while remaining connected by "philotic rays". This is similar in concept to quantum teleportation due to entanglement, although even that is not capable of faster-than-light communication. Also, in the real world, quark confinement prevents one from separating quarks by more than microscopic distances.

[edit] Anton's Key

Anton's Key is a fictional genetic modification to human DNA. Though named after its inventor, a scientist named Anton, it primarily afflicts Julian 'Bean' Delphiki; over the course of the novels, he passes it on to four of his nine children.

"Anton's Key" unlocks unlimited brain growth and continual formation of new neurons, allowing the person access to the intellectual miracles of infancy (language acquisition, physical dexterity and all other forms of learning) throughout their entire life. Children with Anton's Key will be born prematurely, but, despite low birth weight and shorter gestation period, will not require the extra attention of normal "premie" babies. All normal human growth milestones are accelerated, including (but not limited to) toilet training, walking, talking and puberty (except for the growth spurt). The disadvantage of Anton's Key is the need of body to grow alongside the brain, resulting in unstoppable giantism. The immense size of the body causes circulation difficulties for the heart, which must pump blood through a network of arteries and veins much larger than that intended by nature, and the subject will eventually experience death via congestive heart failure. The one known bearer of Anton's Key, Bean, was not expected to live past his twentieth birthday; however, the Shadow series ends before his death, with Bean taking his four carrier children on a prolonged relativistic voyage, and no concrete information on his longevity (or fate) is yet available. A sequel, Shadows in Flight, is expected to tie up these loose ends.

Some scientists within the story argue that, because Anton's Key requires two distinct and unrelated mutations and thus could never occur in nature, those who possess Anton's Key are actually a newly-created species. Whether or not this is true, carriers of the modification are still able to breed with normal Homo sapiens, as Bean does with Petra Arkanian.

Because Anton carried out the research for this human genetic modification at a time when such activity was illegal, he was inflicted with a Pavlovian mental ban, preventing him from thinking about the topic without suffering a panic attack. Despite this, Volescu managed to solicit the information from him and, by incorporating the modification into an embryo belonging to his brother and fertility-challenged sister-in-law, created Bean.

[edit] Descolada

The Descolada is a fictional virus in the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card. It is a quasi-conscious self-modifying organism capable of infecting any form of life. The Descolada is first mentioned in Speaker for the Dead, and plays a leading role in the later book Xenocide. Additionally, in Children of the Mind, the Lusitanians, with the aid of Jane, make their way to the home world of the descolada. The plot of the book slowly reveals that the creators of the descolada (known as descoladores) may be intelligent life forms, sending out the virus as a means of communication and possibly slavery or just colonization/terraforming. The intent of the descolada is not discovered, however, as the book ends before any meaningful contact can be made with them.

"Descolada" is a real Portuguese word meaning "unglued"; within the context of the Enderverse, the virus was named this because it breaks the link of the DNA double helix (ungluing it) and induces mutations.

[edit] Descoladore

These are a sentient species that are first presented in Children of the Mind. Little is known about them other than the fact that they communicate using chemicals.

They created the Descolada and other viruses to attempt to terraform planets such as Lusitania. Upon arriving at their home planet, a group of scientists led by Miro, Jane, Quara, and Ela broadcasted the remains of the Descolada found on Lusitania. This molecule contained the genetic makeup of humans and Pequeninos. The Descoladores responded by transmitting a genetic molecule back that affects the same place in the brain as heroin. Differing hypotheses for this transmission included a pacification attempt by the Descoladores to sedate and capture the intruders, as well as a welcoming "hug" to a new species. This led to the belief that the Descoladores communicate by transmitting a molecule meant to be manufactured and ingested by the receiving party. Another hypothesis is that this is the way the Descoladores communicate with animals, and use philotic twining to communicate amongst themselves.

[edit] Fantasy Game

The Mind Fantasy Game is a game that is played by the students in Ender's Game to monitor their psychological development and stability while they are in Battle School.

Ender plays the game intensely, and one of the teachers becomes concerned when he becomes preoccupied with the Giant's Drink. In the Giant's Drink, a giant gives the player a choice of two drinks. That area is a lose-lose situation that is believed by one of the teachers to reveal the suicidal tendency of the child. Ender constantly keeps dying in that area. Finally, Ender breaks the rules by kicking the two drinks over and tearing out the giant's eyeball, killing him. Because most children give up and never progress beyond the Drink, the game was not programmed to reveal what happened after getting past the Giant. However, the computer was so complex that it created areas afterwards, tailored to Ender's mind.

In Ender's Shadow, the main protagonist Bean is said to be the only student who never plays the game, because he knows that the teachers are using it to map out their minds. His refusal to play the game vexes the teachers and forces them to monitor him in different ways. Bean, however, does play the game once, at the Giant's Drink, and the computer shows Achilles' face, similar to the scene in Game when Ender sees Peter's face.

In Shadow of the Giant, Bean issues a request for Graff to reprogram the Mind Game to become a neutral trust holder of Ender's trust fund. He does so because he suspects that Peter Wiggin has been embezzling the trust fund money. The reprogrammed Mind Game quickly becomes very useful, and is predicting the stock market better than the experts by the end of the novel.

It is revealed in Xenocide that the Hive Queen used the Fantasy Mind Game to form a connection or "bridge" to Ender during the events of "Game" in order to subdue him. In order to do so, the Hive Queen summoned an aiua from Outside. Eventually, sometime after Bean requests for the Mind Game to be reprogrammed, the aiua inside the Mind Game evolved into Jane, the cybernetic entity who lives among the philotic twines between planets introduced in "Speaker for the Dead."

[edit] Hierarchy of Alienness

The Hierarchy of Alienness is a concept from the Ender's Game series of novels written by Orson Scott Card. It classifies the relationships between humanity and all other creatures. The hierarchy is a four-tiered structure using various classifications to group all "strangers". It is first presented in the book History of Wutan in Trondheim by Valentine Wiggin, published under the pseudonym of Demosthenes. Within the story, the terms are said to have originated from the Norwegian language of the fictional planet Trondheim; however, they are Swedish in origin.

[edit] The hierarchy

Utlannings (translated: "outlander" or "foreigner") are strangers of one's own species and one's own world (i.e. community or culture). An utlanning is a person who shares the observer's cultural identity. For example, if one were to meet a stranger who lived in another city, state, or province, this person would be considered utlanning.

Främlings (translated: "stranger") are members of one's own species but from another world or culture. This is a person who is both substantially similar to and significantly different from ourselves. For example, if one met another human who lived on Mars, this person would be a framling (a classic example is Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land). At the time the Hierarchy is proposed, each planet in the Ender's Game Universe (other than Earth) has been colonized by a single terrestrial culture or nation, making humans from other planets "framlings." In passing from Nordic to Stark, the word dropped its umlaut.

Ramen (singular raman) are strangers from another species who are capable of communication and peaceful coexistence with humanity, though that does not guarantee they will pursue the latter. While ramen can share ideas with each other, they may not have common ground, at least not initially. Some examples of ramen are some characters of the Star Wars and Star Trek series, including Ewoks, Wookiees, Vulcans and Klingons, or fantasy-genre elves, dwarves, gnomes, and so on. "Raman" is the only word of the three to not come from a Scandinavian language; where Orson Scott Card got it from is unknown.

Varelse (pronounced var-ELSS-uh^[2]) are strangers from another species who are not able to communicate with us. They are true aliens, completely incapable of common ground with humanity. The quasi-intelligent Descolada virus may or may not have been sentient enough to qualify in this category; their creators, the Descoladores, were easily identified as sentient (due to their high-level mastery of mathematics and electromagnetism), but it was determined at the end of the Ender quartet that it would take years of study to formulate any communication with them. One character describes all animals as being varelse, since with them "no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes makes them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it." The Xenomorph creatures found in the Alien series or the ocean of Solaris could be considered varelse as well. Translated from Swedish, varelse means "creature."

[edit] Significance

The reason that this hierarchy is given is that with a species designated as ramen, communication and compromise are viable alternatives to war, while if a species is designated as varelse, then we have a right to wage war on this species in self-defense. However, these definitions are open to interpretation. The Pequeninos and Formics (the "Buggers") are both considered ramen at various points in the series and varelse at other points, and the change in designation did not come from a change in the species being described, but rather from a change in humans' understanding of them. Quara, one of the characters in the series, even goes so far as to state, "As far as I can tell, intelligence is intelligence. Varelse is just the term Valentine invented to mean Intelligence-that-we've-decided-to-kill, and raman means Intelligence-that-we-haven't-decided-to-kill-yet." Having said that, Card acknowledges this aspect of the Hierarchy with a challenge in the epistolary opening to the very first chapter of Speaker for the Dead, before the Hierarchy itself has even been introduced:

“

The difference between ramen and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.     —Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings

”

[edit] Molecular Disruption Device

The Molecular Disruption Device is a fictional weapon of mass destruction featured in the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels by Orson Scott Card. Given the awkwardness of saying "molecular disruption device" or "molecular detachment device", the name was abbreviated to "M. D. Device", which gave rise to the nicknames "Dr. Device" and "The Little Doctor".

[edit] Motivation

After the devastation caused by two invasions by a hive minded extraterrestrial race known formally as the "Formics" and informally as the "Buggers", Earth's military and scientific minds sought a way to permanently neutralize the Formic threat. All attempts at diplomacy and communication had failed. Humanity picked up several important pieces of technology from the Formic equipment, including gravity control and the possibility of faster-than-light communication, the ansible.

[edit] Mechanism

A basic explanation of the function of the Little Doctor appears in Ender's Game. The device produces two beams whose focal point has the ability to disrupt the bonds between atoms in molecules. The device also creates a field in which nearby molecules are also destroyed, and each dissolved molecule widens the reach of the field. In the absence of nearby mass, such as in the vacuum of space, the field dissipates rapidly, but a tightly-clustered formation of ships could be easily destroyed.

The device is capable of destroying essentially any single object, or cluster of objects that are close enough together. It can destroy something as small as an enemy spacecraft, or something as incredibly large as an entire planet. In theory, it may even be able to destroy larger objects such as stars, if they are dense enough.

In Ender's Game, the only thing said about the weapon's physical characteristics is that it employs a directed energy beam; "it can't shoot around corners," Ender deduces. Three thousand years later, in Children of the Mind, the device has been scaled into the warhead of a missile, small enough to fit inside a small room. Upon "detonation", the field effect is started within the missile itself and uses the weapon's mass to jump-start a chain reaction. A removable section of casing allows it to be shut off, and instructions on how to do so are printed all over its surface (turning it on, a military officer explains, is the difficult part).

[edit] Deployment

The M.D. Device was dispatched with several interstellar fleets heading towards the Formic homeworld. The ships were also equipped with ansibles, allowing Earth to develop the strategies and leaders needed for battle while the fighting force was still in transit. From Command School, Ender Wiggin remotely ordered the use of the Device on the enemy planet, resulting in the planet's complete destruction. It had not been previously tested on an object of such scale. Ironically, Ender used the Device on the planet in order to flunk himself out of Command School: deceived into thinking he was attempting to pass his final exam, he decided to prove himself too dangerous, too uncivilized to actually command against the Formics and hoping to be sent home. Ender carried this guilt with him for many years.

In Speaker for the Dead, Starways Congress deployed the Evacuation Fleet to the planet of Lusitania. Lusitania was not only host to a sentient species known as the pequeninos, but also an extremely infectious and destructive virus, the "descolada," which, if allowed contact with life on any other planet, would cause planetwide extinctions and ecological disaster. Despite this, the pequeninos had demanded their right, as sentient beings, to spread out amongst the stars. Despite violating Congressional law forbidding the donation of technology to less advanced life forms, the human scientists on Lusitania (and, later, the revived Formics) agreed to help them spread out. With the colony now in rebellion and harboring an extremely potent bioweapon, Congress (in Xenocide) authorized the Fleet to use the Little Doctor. By the end of Children of the Mind, however, Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu, with the help of their allies, convinced Congress to change its mind, and xenocide via the use of the Little Doctor was averted.

[edit] Outspace

Outspace is a fictional "universe" used in the Ender Quartet. It is a space with no reference points and thus no distance, composed of an infinite amount of disorganized philotes, each willing to follow any pattern it can.

The primary function of "Outside," as it often referred to in the books, is faster-than-light travel. This type of travel works on the principle that from the Outside, the lack of defined space makes the "In" universe a point no larger or smaller than any philote nearby. Thus, anyone Outside could reenter the universe at any point and any speed. However, to do so, the person would have to be able to hold the pattern of themselves and anything else taken along on the journey Outside in their mind. This is something only the computer entity Jane has ever been capable of, therefore she is the only one capable of taking "anything more complex than a rubber ball" Outside and back In, as stated in Children of the Mind.

Another use of Outspace as shown in Xenocide is to create objects. As stated above, all the philotes Outside are perfectly willing (and, in fact, trying) to get into some organized pattern. Both conscious and unconscious thoughts create patterns that the philotes bend to. Through this process, Ender's stepdaughter Ela consciously created the "Recolada," a replacement for the Descolada virus that would both allow the Pequeninos to transform into adults and no longer harm the Formics or Humans. Ender himself created copies of Peter Wiggin and Valentine Wiggin as he best remembered them in his subconscious and his disabled stepson Miro created a new body that showed his opinion of himself or others

[edit] Philote

A philote is the basic building block of matter, the true indivisible particle that is not made up of smaller ones. Philotes take up no space whatsoever, and are essential to the theory of philotic energy. Each atom has a philote of its own, each molecule likewise, and ultimately each human has an aiùa, an intelligent philote. It is suggested that perhaps a single philote, which could be referred to as God, contains the essence of humanity, and/or all sentient species in the known universe.

Early in the series, philotic energy is used as a form of faster-than-light communication, in which messages are transmitted instantaneously via ansible. Later on, it is also used as a form of near-instantaneous travel, with items to be transported being sent Outside and then back in, arriving at the specified destination (which may be any distance from the origin).

Philotes combine or 'twine' to make up all matter in the universe. This twining also makes possible the ansibles, which allow instantaneous communication over any distance via quantum entanglement. Philotes have no mass or inertia, only location (similar to a geometric point), and extend infinitely in two directions. All philotes are qualitatively different from each other, in that some are 'smarter' than others. As one moves up the levels, from philotes to quarks to atoms to molecules and so on, the patterns in which the philotes twine become increasingly complex. Not all philotes are 'smart' enough to be able to control and maintain these patterns. It takes very 'smart' ones, which are called aiúas, to inhabit actual life forms, and an organism's 'master' philote, or its aiùa (Sanskrit for life), is considered to be the physical site of its soul.

The Hive Queens of the Formic race are born like the rest of the Formics: unintelligent. The mother of the new queen calls a philote from another place, a non-place, and it comes. The Hive Queen also mentions that humans do the same thing when born. It's the act of becoming sentient. It is discovered that these philotes come from Outside, where there is no sense of location and all matter resides in one geometrical point (see above section for more detail).

In the study of philotics, philotes are essential threads of energy, which have no mass, and the measurable dimension of a mathematical point, which entwine or "twine" and create holons, which are then interpreted as solid sensory phenomena by sentient beings.

[edit] The theory of philotics

Philotes are the fundamental building blocks of all matter and energy. Philotes have neither mass, dimension, nor inertia. Philotes have only location, duration and connection. When philotes combine to make durable structures, protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, organisms, planets, etc., they "twine up". Each philote connects itself to the rest of the universe along a single ray, a one-dimensional line that connects it to all other philotes in its nearest immediate structure.

All of those strands from philotes in that structure are twined into a single philotic thread that connects to the next largest structure. The threads twine into a yarn to the next largest structure, and then into a greater rope of larger structures. This has nothing to do with nuclear forces or gravity, nothing to do with chemical bonds. Philotes are beneath all observable manifestations of matter and energy.

The individual philotic rays are always there, present in the twines, going on apparently forever. The rays twine together to the planet, and each planet's philotic twine reaches to its star, and each star to the center of the galaxy — and who knows where after that.

The philotic twines from substances like rock or sand all connect directly from each molecule to the center of the planet. But when a molecule is incorporated into a living organism, its ray shifts. Instead of reaching to the planet, it gets twined up into the individual cells, the rays from all the cells are all twined together so that each organism sends a single fiber of philotic connections to twine up with the central philotic rope of the planet.

When a twined structure is broken — as when a molecule breaks apart — the old philotic twining remains for a time. Fragments that are no longer physically connected remain philotically connected for a while. The smaller the particle the longer the connection lasts after the break up. The more complex the structure the faster it responds to change. After nuclear fission, theoretically, it takes hours for the philotic rays to sort themselves out again, perhaps not in an identical manner. The energy released in fission may result from the breaking of philotic twines.

[edit] Philotic Web

The Philotic Web is a philosophical and metaphysical construct of the Ender's Game series of books by Orson Scott Card. The philosophy of philotes and the philotic web they create first appeared in Xenocide, the third book of the series. It describes the interconnection of not only all the aiuas in the universe, but also the lesser-intelligent philotes. The "web" itself is used by Jane to access not only the combined knowledge of humanity, but also as a pseudo-storage device to house her memory and higher reasoning functions.

The web is the direct result of every philotic connection in the universe. These connections never touch each other in the truer sense of the word "web," but every being can be linked to every other being by their interconnected philotes. These philotic connections are not static, and can be strengthened or weakened over time. For example, Si Wang-Mu and Peter Wiggin begin their journey together having only a small philotic connection. As they spend more time together and grow increasingly more affectionate and emotionally attached to each other, their connection grows stronger and stronger.

The philotic connections spoken of in the Enderverse can grow to monumental proportions based solely on emotional and "spiritual" connectedness. Grego is spoken of as having formed a very intense philotic web with the angry mob in Xenocide in a matter of minutes. Additionally, philotic connections can cause physical disturbance or emotional distress when severed.

It is also important to note that philotic connections exist between living and non-living things alike.

[edit] Stark

Stark (short for Starways Common and also called Common and Starcommon) is the common interstellar language. In the 3000-year gap between the novels Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead it evolved from "IF Common," which in turn evolved from American English. It is the official language of the Starways Congress and the primary language of most of the Hundred Worlds.

Although the characters of Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind speak Stark, their speech has been translated into English in the books, so the reader has no way of ascertaining the difference between the languages. Ender Wiggin, who grew up on Earth thousands of years earlier and speaks English natively, notes, bizarrely, that Stark is very similar to English, despite the fact that, according to what is currently known about diachronic linguistics, such a similarity would be nearly impossible.

[edit] References

• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
• Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
• Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
• First Meetings by Orson Scott Card

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