Ender's Game
Card's 1985 novel remains the defining military SF story of its era and the sharpest exploration of a child simultaneously weaponized and innocent. Its final revelation is still one of SF's most powerful moral sucker-punches.
The children do not read as children, their reasoning and dialogue sounding like adults, which breaks the premise. Ender is too flawless, hacking systems with no explanation and winning too easily, one reader complaining “everything is handed to him,” while the other kids read as “cardboard cut outs.” Some lines land as casually misogynistic and racially charged in ways the narrative never examines. Readers question the military logic of the climax, one arguing “Morse code works a whole lot better” and would void the whole setup, another finishing with “no real emotion at the end.” And Card’s public anti-gay-marriage advocacy is a live argument in a real share of the reviews.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
