Ender Wiggin - Ender's Game

Ender's Game is the first book in the series. Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was the youngest of three children, contrary to a strict two-child policy. His existence was called for by a program aiming at producing commanders for humanity's war against the Formics, or "Buggers". He learned how to do so at Battle School, an Earth-orbiting space station that trained similar prodigies. He received the same education as other children, but the military had recognized him as their best bet to be supreme commander and often manipulated its own rules to make sure Ender had not only the necessary technical skills, but also the right character for their ends. Specifically, Ender was conditioned to be entirely self-sufficient from a very young age.

As a child, Ender is bullied at school for being a "Third" (the third child in a society where excessive breeding is frowned upon), and tormented at home by his brother Peter, a sadistic bully who resents the attention Ender gets from the military. His only refuge is with his beloved sister Valentine, who acts as his protector and only friend. When he is accepted into Battle School, he is broken-hearted at the thought of leaving her, but she assures him that they will always have a bond.

At Battle School, Ender is exposed to great emotional and mental anguish and even physical danger. The administration is forbidden from protecting him in order to guarantee that he would never look to anybody else for help.

Ender breezes through academics, his main interest being the centerpiece of the school: a team-based three-dimensional laser tag competition in the zero-g Battle Room. He becomes first a masterful player, then a masterful strategist, and is eventually assigned command of Dragon Army. He molds the group of untested and unwanted students into the most successful army in the history of the school (it is revealed in Ender's Shadow that Julian "Bean" Delphiki actually chose them).

After graduating several years ahead of time, he is transferred to Command School on Eros. There he trains in interstellar fleet combat with holographic simulators. After Ender masters the game under ordinary conditions, the game changes from one with direct control of ships to one where he relays commands to others - his friends and associates from Battle School, namely, Julian "Bean" Delphiki, Alai, Shen, Petra Arkanian, Dink Meeker, Crazy Tom, Hot Soup, Fly Molo, Vlad, Dumper, and Carn Carby. Under the tuition of the legendary saviour of humanity from the previous war, Mazer Rackham, Ender and his trusted companions take on a grueling series of battles and emerge victorious each time, although the mounting pressure pushes Ender to the edge.

The final battle takes place above a simulated planet, against an enemy with overwhelming numerical superiority. Ender perceives this as a grossly unfair test, and resolves to win by breaking the rules. This, he thinks, would convince his instructors that he is not the man to lead the Fleet into battle with the Formics. Instead of fighting the enemy ship-to-ship, Ender penetrates their defensive perimeter and destroys the planet itself. Not until after the pandemonium that followed is he told that it was not actually a simulation: Instead of taking on Rackham in what they had thought was a long series of simulations, he and his jeesh had been unknowingly issuing orders to real ships in real combat. The final battle in fact consisted of the destruction of the Bugger home world and the apparent eradication of the Bugger species, resulting in Ender's rise to world adulation. Ender, however, is stricken with guilt for having unknowingly committed xenocide, as well as with anger at himself for allowing the military to use him as a tool.

In the wake of the war, Valentine informs him that he would never be allowed to return to Earth due to her own actions in an effort to protect him from Peter, who was becoming a major political force on Earth (In Shadow of the Hegemon, Peter contradicts this and states that it was himself that insisted Ender be exiled for his own protection, to keep his brother from being kidnapped and used as a tool during the revolt that follows). He instead journeys with her to one of the colonies being established on the now-abandoned Bugger worlds. Once there, he discovers a fertilized pupa of a Queen Bugger, hidden in a place that the Buggers designed for him to discover by modelling it to resemble part of an interactive computer game he played during his years in the Battle School. The buggers find out about it during his tormented dreams of them in Command School. The pupal Queen is capable of continuing the Bugger race. Through rudimentary telepathic communication with the Queen, he learns what he had begun to suspect before the war's end: The entire conflict had been a mistake, the result of the inability of two alien species to communicate. He further learns from the Queen that the Buggers had felt terrible regret for having mistakenly fought humans and that they had forgiven Ender for their own deaths even as he orchestrated their destruction. Empathizing with the Queen, Ender promises to find her a home to grow where the Buggers would not be annihilated by the humans.

To foster this eventual rebirth, Ender writes a book called "The Hive Queen", which tells the story of the war from the Formic perspective. Ender uses the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead" to author it. When Peter, who had advanced to the position of Hegemon of Earth, contacts him, having realized Ender was the writer, the Speaker for the Dead writes a second novel, "The Hegemon", a human parallel to the first book. The two are combined by popular culture, eventually becoming one of the founding texts of a quasi-religious practice on the colonies of Earth. After writing the book, Ender and Valentine depart in a ship in an attempt to find a planet that would allow the Queen to grow, and that they could call their new home.