Earth
Due to overpopulation, planetwide laws stated that each family could only have two children; during the destruction of the Formics and the subsequent colonization of their worlds, this rule was repealed. It is somewhat more advanced than present-day Earth; people are able to travel around in cars that hover over magnetic rails that go at 150 mph, for example. However, due to International Fleet rule, some nations have declined drastically. One shining example is Rotterdam, a city in the Netherlands, in which children roam the streets fighting each other for food.
Later in the series, Earth's first true federation of nations was built by Peter Wiggin (Free People of Earth, FPE) and experienced a golden age while he lived. Unfortunately, after he died, centralized control of humanity was lost until the establishment of Starways Council, and by then, Earth was one of many important worlds.
In the last three books of the Ender Quartet, it is revealed that Earth still holds a place of particular importance, especially because certain organizations have continually held headquarters there, the Vatican and large corporations being notable examples.
Read more about this topic: List Of Ender's Game Series Planets
Famous quotes containing the word earth:
“Now listen, buddy, there are a few corny ideas you got to get out of your head if you’re going to fly an airplane. Most things are just the reverse from what people think. The higher you are the safer you are. The Earth down there, that, that’s your enemy because once you hit that, boy, you splatter.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red
burial blent!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)