Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American novelist, public speaker and columnist. He is known best for science fiction, his novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the only author to win both science fiction's top U. S. prizes in consecutive years. A feature film adaptation of Ender's Game, which Card co-produced, was released in 2013. Card is a professor of English at Southern Virginia University, has written two books on creative writing, hosts writing bootcamps and workshops, serves as a judge in the Writers of the Future contest. A great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, Card is a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In addition to producing a large body of fiction works, he has offered political and social commentary in his columns and other writing. Card is the son of Willard Richards Card and Peggy Jane, the third of six children and the older brother of composer and arranger Arlen Card. Card was born in Richland and grew up in Santa Clara, California as well as Mesa and Orem, Utah.
He served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Brazil and graduated from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. D. program at the University of Notre Dame. For part of the 1970s Card worked as an associate editor of the Ensign, an official magazine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Influences on his fiction include Heinlein, Mitchell, Asimov and Bradbury. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, a place that has played a significant role in Ender's Game and many of his other works. Card began his writing career as a poet, studying with Clinton F. Larson at BYU. During his studies as a theater major, he began "doctoring" scripts, adapting fiction for readers theater production, writing his own one-act and full-length plays, several of which were produced by faculty directors at BYU, he explored fiction writing, beginning with stories that evolved into The Worthing Saga. After returning to Provo, Utah from his Church of Jesus Christ mission in Brazil, Card started the Utah Valley Repertory Theatre Company, which for two summers produced plays at "the Castle", a Depression-era outdoor amphitheater behind the state psychiatric hospital in Provo.
Meanwhile, he took part-time employment as a proofreader at BYU Press made the jump to full-time employment as a copy editor. In 1976, in the midst of a paid role performing in the church's musical celebrating America's Bicentennial, he secured employment as an assistant editor at the Ensign, moved to Salt Lake City, it was while working at Ensign. His short story "Gert Fram" appeared in the July 1977 fine arts issue of that magazine under the pseudonym Byron Walley, he wrote the short story "Ender's Game" while working at the BYU press, submitted it to several publications. The idea for the novel of the same title came from the short story about a school where boys can fight in space, it was purchased by Ben Bova at Analog Science Fiction and Fact and published in the August 1977 issue. Meanwhile, he started writing half-hour audioplays on LDS Church history, the New Testament, other subjects for Living Scriptures in Ogden, Utah, he completed his master's degree in English at the University of Utah in 1981 and began a doctoral program at the University of Notre Dame, but the recession of the early 1980s caused the flow of new book contracts to temporarily dry up.
He returned to full-time employment as the book editor for Compute! magazine in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1983. In October of that year, a new contract for the Alvin Maker "trilogy" allowed him to return to freelancing. Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author to win both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, "First Meetings in the Enderverse", Shadow of the Giant, A War of Gifts, Ender in Exile, a book that takes place after Ender's Game and before Speaker for the Dead. Card has announced his plan to write Shadows Alive, a book that connects the "Shadow" series and "Speaker" series together. Shadows in Flight serves as a bridge towards this final book, he co-wrote the formic war novels: Earth Unaware, Earth Afire, Earth Awakens and The Swarm as prequels to the Ender novels, with two more novels in the pipeline, which will result in two prequel formic war trilogies.
These trilogies relay, among the history of Mazer Rackham. Children of the Fleet is the first novel in a new sequel series, called Fleet School. In 2008 Card announced that Ender's Game would be made into a movie, but that he did not have a director lined up, it was to be produced by Chartoff Productions, Card was writing the screenplay himself. The film was made several years and released in 2013, with Asa Butterfield in the title role and Gavin Hood directing. Other works include the alternative histories The Tales of Alvin Maker, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, The Homecoming Saga, Hidd
Dewey Decimal Classification
The Dewey Decimal Classification, colloquially the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Described in a four-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011, it is available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers; the Decimal Classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index which allow new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Libraries had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic; the classification's notation makes use of three-digit Arabic numerals for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail.
Using Arabic numerals for symbols, it is flexible to the degree that numbers can be expanded in linear fashion to cover special aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a classification number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library, on the basis of its subject; the number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries. Melvil Dewey was self-declared reformer, he was a founding member of the American Library Association and can be credited with the promotion of card systems in libraries and business. He developed the ideas for his library classification system in 1873 while working at Amherst College library, he applied the classification to the books in that library, until in 1876 he had a first version of the classification. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library.
He used the pamphlet, published in more than one version during the year, to solicit comments from other librarians. It is not known who received copies or how many commented as only one copy with comments has survived, that of Ernest Cushing Richardson, his classification system was mentioned in an article in the first issue of the Library Journal and in an article by Dewey in the Department of Education publication "Public Libraries in America" in 1876. In March 1876, he applied for, received copyright on the first edition of the index; the edition was 44 pages in length, with 2,000 index entries, was printed in 200 copies. The second edition of the Dewey Decimal system, published in 1885 with the title Decimal Classification and Relativ Index for arranging and indexing public and private libraries and for pamflets, notes, scrap books, index rerums, etc. comprised 314 pages, with 10,000 index entries. Five hundred copies were produced. Editions 3–14, published between 1888 and 1942, used a variant of this same title.
Dewey modified and expanded his system for the second edition. In an introduction to that edition Dewey states that "nearly 100 persons hav contributed criticisms and suggestions". One of the innovations of the Dewey Decimal system was that of positioning books on the shelves in relation to other books on similar topics; when the system was first introduced, most libraries in the US used fixed positioning: each book was assigned a permanent shelf position based on the book's height and date of acquisition. Library stacks were closed to all but the most privileged patrons, so shelf browsing was not considered of importance; the use of the Dewey Decimal system increased during the early 20th century as librarians were convinced of the advantages of relative positioning and of open shelf access for patrons. New editions were readied as supplies of published editions were exhausted though some editions provided little change from the previous, as they were needed to fulfill demand. In the next decade, three editions followed on: the 3rd, 4th, 5th.
Editions 6 through 11 were published from 1899 to 1922. The 6th edition was published in a record 7,600 copies, although subsequent editions were much lower. During this time, the size of the volume grew, edition 12 swelled to 1243 pages, an increase of 25% over the previous edition. In response to the needs of smaller libraries which were finding the expanded classification schedules difficult to use, in 1894, the first abridged edition of the Dewey Decimal system was produced; the abridged edition parallels the full edition, has been developed for most full editions since that date. By popular request, in 1930, the Library of Congress began to print Dewey Classification numbers on nearly all of its cards, thus making the system available to all libraries making use of the Library of Congress card sets. Dewey's was not the only library classification available. Charles Ammi Cutter published the Expansive Classification in 1882, with initial encouragement from Melvil Dewey. Cutter's system was not adopted by many libraries, with one major exception: it was used as the basis for the Library of Congress Classification system.
In 1895, the International Institute of Bibliography, located in Belgium and led by Paul Otlet, contacted Dewey about the possibility of translating the classification into French, using the classification system for bibliographies. This would have
Ender's Game
Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set at an unspecified date in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled mankind after two conflicts with the Formics, an insectoid alien species which they dub the "buggers". In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, including the novel's protagonist, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, are trained from a young age through difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed; the book originated as the short story "Ender's Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card wrote additional books to form the Ender's Game series. Card released an updated version of Ender's Game in 1991, changing some political facts to reflect the times more accurately. Reception of the book has always been positive, it has become suggested reading for many military organizations, including the United States Marine Corps.
Ender's Game won the 1986 Hugo Award for best novel. Its sequels, Speaker for the Dead, Children of the Mind and Ender in Exile, follow Ender's subsequent travels to many different worlds in the galaxy. In addition, the novella A War of Gifts and novel Ender's Shadow take place during the same time period as the original. A film adaptation of the same name written for the screen and directed by Gavin Hood and starring Asa Butterfield as Ender was released in October 2013. Card co-produced the film, it has been adapted into two comic series. In the future, having begun to explore the Universe and master interplanetary spaceflight, encounters an alien race called the Formics referred to in the series as the "buggers"; the discovery of a bugger forward base in the asteroid Eros leads to war between the species that the humans narrowly win, resulting in the discovery of advanced alien technology, including gravity manipulation. Ostensibly in preparation for another bugger invasion, an International Fleet is established on Earth, who create a Battle School in Earth's orbit to develop gifted children into commanders capable of defeating the buggers in the next war.
Protagonist Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is born a "Third": a rare exception to Earth's two-child policy, allowed by the government due to the promise shown by his two older siblings. The eldest, Peter, is a intelligent sociopath who sadistically bullies Ender, while his sister, Valentine, is more sympathetic towards him; the I. F. remove Ender's monitoring device at six years old ending his chances of Battle School, he gets teased by a fellow student, Stilson. Ender beats up Stilson; when explaining his actions to I. F. Colonel Hyrum Graff, Ender states his belief that, by showing superiority now, he has prevented future struggle. Graff, on hearing of this, offers Ender a place in the Battle School. Graff and the other leaders of the school covertly work to isolate Ender from his fellow recruits and prevent him from growing too comfortable in his environment; the cadets participate in competitive war simulations in zero gravity, where Ender masters the game and dominates his opponents. The school continually tries to break Ender down, first promoting him to command a new army composed of raw recruits pitting him against multiple armies at once, but Ender's success continues.
Ender's jealous ex-commander, Bonzo Madrid, draws him into a fight outside the simulation, Ender, once again seeking to preemptively stop all future conflicts with Bonzo, unintentionally kills him. On Earth, Peter Wiggin uses a global communication system to post political essays under the pseudonym "Locke", hoping to establish himself as a respected orator and thence as a powerful politician. Valentine, despite not trusting Peter, agrees to publish alongside him as "Demosthenes", their essays are soon taken by the government. Though Graff is told their true identities, he recommends that it be kept a secret, because their writings are politically useful. Ender, now ten years old, is promoted to Command School on Eros after a brief respite on Earth. After some preliminary battles in the simulator, he is introduced to a former war hero, Mazer Rackham. From now on, Ender participates in simulations controlled by Mazer; as the skirmishes become harder, he is joined by some of his friends from the Battle School as sub-commanders.
Despite this, Ender becomes depressed by the battles, his isolation, by the way Mazer treats him. When told that he is facing his final test, Ender finds his fleet far outnumbered by the buggers surrounding their queens' home world. Hoping to earn himself expulsion from the school for his ruthlessness, he sacrifices his entire fleet to fire a Molecular Detachment Device at the buggers' home world; the Device destroys the surrounding bugger fleet. Mazer informs Ender that the "simulations" he has been fighting were real battles, directing human spacecraft against bugger fleets via an ansible, that Ender has won the war. Ender becomes more depressed on learning this; when he recovers, he learns that, at the end of the bugger war, Earth's powers fought among themselves. He stays on Eros as his friends return home and colonists venture to other worlds, using Eros as a way station. Among the first colonists is Valentine, who apologizes that Ender can never return to Earth, where he would be exploited by Peter and other politicians to fulfill their own purposes.
Instead, Ender joins the colony program to populate one of t
First Meetings
First Meetings is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Orson Scott Card, belonging to his Ender's Game series. Tor Books republished the book in 2003 under the titles First Meetings in the Enderverse and First Meetings in Ender's Universe and included the more recent "Teacher's Pest", a story about the first meeting of Ender's parents; the stories in this book are: "The Polish Boy" – Tells the story of how Jan Paweł Wieczorek as a small child gets tested by the International Fleet and convinces them to get his family out of Poland. "Teacher's Pest" – Tells the story of how John Paul Wiggin meets and falls in love with his future wife. "Ender's Game" – First appeared in the August 1977 issue of Analog magazine and was expanded into the novel Ender's Game. Although the foundation of the Ender's Game series, the short story is not properly part of the Ender's Game universe, as there are many discrepancies in continuity. "Investment Counselor" – Tells the story of how Ender Wiggin first met the artificial intelligence Jane and became a speaker for the dead.
It first appeared in the anthology Far Horizons edited by Robert Silverberg. Polish: Jan Paweł Wieczorek is a smart child, being homeschooled because his family refused to comply with the population's control laws. One day, Captain Helena Rudolf from the International Fleet shows up to test three of John Paul's brothers for possible admission into Battle School, she decides to test him early. He passes the test and gets a high score for leadership; the IF tries to get him to go to Battle School, but John Paul is only interested in trying to get his family out of Poland so that they can have a better life and he can get a good education. Captain Graff realizes this, but agrees to send the Wieczorek family to America because he hopes that one of John Paul's children will go to Battle School; this story contains younger versions of important characters in the Enderverse, such as Ender's father John Paul Wieczorek, Hyrum Graff, Admiral Chamrajnagar. Other characters associated with the IF appear, including Colonel Sillian.
While going to college, John Paul is assigned to take a Human Communities class being taught by Theresa Brown. First being annoyed at having to take a class being taught by a graduate student, John Paul soon changes his mind as Theresa Brown leads the class through a provocative debate about communities and population laws, she has just been told that her research project is being taken away from her in an effort to get her father Admiral Brown to come out of retirement. As a result, she does not want to speak to anyone. Determined, John Paul waits outside her office and orders food for her while she talks to her father on the phone; when she comes out, he is still waiting for her. She decides to eat with him, during the meal John Paul tells her about his secret past; as they continue to talk, they both begin to fall in love as they realize that they were both set up by the government to do so. This story begins as Ender is made the commander of Dragon Army at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy.
Armies are groups of students that fight mock battles in the Battle Room, a null gravity environment, are subdivided into "toons". Due to Ender's genius in leadership, Dragon Army dominates the competition. After his nineteenth consecutive victory, Ender is told that his Army is being broken up and his toon leaders made commanders in their turn, while he is transferred to Command School for the next stage of his education. Here, veteran Mazer Rackham tutors him in the use of a space battle simulator. Many of his former toon leaders serve under him once more. Once familiar with the simulator, they fight a series of what Mazer tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy. Ender's team wins again and again destroying a planet that the enemy fleet seems to be protecting. Once the battle is over, Mazer tells Ender that all of the battles were real, the children's commands having been relayed to the extant fleet, that he has destroyed the enemy's home world and ended the war. Since the events of Ender's Game, Ender Wiggin has been voyaging through space at near-lightspeed.
When he arrives at the planet Sorelledolce, he has just turned twenty in relativistic time, so he has to file his first tax return on the trust fund, given to him by the International Fleet at the end of the Third Bugger War. He shows his list of investments to Benedetto, a tax collector in the starport, who plans to steal some of it. Meanwhile, Andrew receives an email offering him financial software, which has an interactive personality that calls itself Jane. While they are on Sorelledolce, Andrew's sister Valentine Wiggin takes him to a "speaking" for a dead man. Andrew talks to the speaker and discovered that the man learned how to be a speaker for the dead from reading Ender's own books The Hive Queen and The Hegemon. Andrew decides to accept the assistance of the Jane program, she prepares his tax forms. The amount is much less; when Andrew delivers the forms to Benedetto, the tax collector tries to blackmail him because he has discovered Ender's identity as the hated Xenocide. But Benedetto finds that his files have mysteriously disappeared, the evidence trail is now behind Fleet security.
In an attempt to get revenge against Ender, he tries to leak what data he still has to the media, but Jane appears on his screen and gives him a
Shadow of the Hegemon
Shadow of the Hegemon is a science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, the second novel in the Ender's Shadow series. It is the sixth novel in the Ender's Game series, it is told from the point of view of Bean, a peripheral character in the original novel Ender's Game but the central protagonist of the parallel narrative Ender's Shadow. Shadow of the Hegemon was nominated for a Locus Award in 2002. In Shadow of the Hegemon, all of the Battle School graduates, except Ender, return to Earth in 2197 A. D. where Ender's brother Peter, using his online pseudonym Locke, arranges for Ender to be returned to Earth. Shortly after their return, the members of the unit Ender commanded, with the exception of Bean, are seized as strategists in an upcoming struggle for world dominance, by Achilles de Flandres, who subjects them to solitary confinement. Bean having imprisoned Achilles in the previous novel, Achilles attempts to kill Bean; the Delphikis go into hiding. After he discovers an encoded message sent by Petra confirming that the Russians are Achilles' backers, he works to free her and the others, while helping Peter come to power.
When Peter publishes under the'Locke' pseudonym that Achilles is a murderer, the Battle School graduates are released, excepting Petra, whom Achilles brings to India. From there, he requests plans for an invasion of Burma and Thailand, for which Indian Battle School graduates, including Sayagi and Virlomi, develop plans for brute-force attacks involving long supply lines. Petra arranges a different plan of stripping India's garrisons along the Indo-Pakistani border, which she expects will never happen, until a meeting with Pakistan's prime minister, in which Achilles encourages the two nations to make peace among themselves and declare war on other neighbors. Petra finds an ally in Virlomi, who reveals to Bean that Petra is a prisoner, escapes the military compound to bring rescue. Courtesy of Bean's and Sister Carlotta's assets, "Locke" is nominated publicly for the position of Hegemon, allowing Peter to unmask himself. Meanwhile, Bean enters the Thai military under the patronage of Suriyawong, a fellow Battle School graduate and head of Thailand's planning division, trains 200 Thai soldiers against India.
When the Thai Commander-in-Chief betrays Suriyawong and Bean, Bean hides himself and Suri in the barracks of his troops, sends word for rescue, while Thailand prepares for war. Sister Carlotta's airplane, en route to Bean's location, is destroyed by a Chinese SAM, Bean receives an earlier-recorded message, in which she describes the relationship between Anton's Key and Bean's brilliance, but informs him that his life expectancy will be drastically reduced as a result. Bean and Suriyawong use the troops. While striking a bridge, they meet Virlomi. With the aid of Bean's soldiers and Locke's distinguished connections, they move on Hyderabad, where Bean rescues Petra. Furthermore, "Locke" publishes an essay detailing the Chinese betrayal just as it is happening, on the basis of this prescience Peter Wiggin is elected Hegemon over the world. Julian "Bean" Delphiki Petra Arkanian Achilles de Flandres Sister Carlotta Peter Wiggin Hyrum Graff Suriyawong Virlomi John Paul Wiggin Theresa Wiggin Card accredits two books in particular as being profoundly influential in the writing of this novel: Thailand: A Short History by David K. Wyatt and Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India by Lawrence James.
In addition to these two books he was inspired by Phillip Absher, one of the readers of the first draft. Phillip suggested. Upon hearing this criticism, Card decided to split it into two books. At the time of publication, Card thought the Bean series of the Enderverse would only be four books long; the book has a rating of 3.9 out of 5, with 60,000 votes on Goodreads. List of Ender's Game characters List of works by Orson Scott Card Insignia Trilogy - science-fiction series featuring both young recruits training in space and similar geopolitics About the novel Shadow of the Hegemon from Card's website Shadow of the Hegemon at Worlds Without End
