Children of the Mind

The fourth Ender book, written as the back half of Xenocide and picking up mid-crisis: the fleet is still coming, the faster-than-light travel discovered at the end of the previous volume is barely understood, and the network-dwelling intelligence that has been Ender’s companion since book two faces the shutdown of the system she lives in. It is the most explicitly metaphysical volume of the four — minds without bodies, bodies made to hold minds — and it closes the Lusitania arc.

Context: The last title under the a16z list’s Ender’s Saga entry. It does not work as a standalone; it is the second half of one long book.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — where this is listed, in the top tier.
• Orson Scott Card — the author.
• Ender’s Game — volume one.
• Speaker for the Dead — volume two, already carded.
• Xenocide — volume three, of which this is effectively the continuation.
• Artificial Intelligence — Jane, an intelligence that emerged inside a communications network and can be switched off with it.
• Science Fiction — the genre.