I had valuable responses to this cri de coeur, from C. Porter Bassett, Jaime Benlevy, Chris Wegford, Marc Van Pelt, Rob Taber, Steven R Beers, Shannon Blood, Jason Bradshaw, Lloyd Waldo, Simeon Anfinrud, Jonathan Barbee, Adam Hobart, Beau Pearce, and Robert Prince. Thank you to all of them for plunging back into the books to find the answers to my questions.
In addition, Clinton Parks found an issue I hadn't even thought of, and sent my staff this letter:
I know you guys probably got this already, but I wanted to put it out there just in case. Did you remember that there was a discussion in "Shadow of the Giant" where the first colony's name is revealed as "Shakespeare"? It stuck in my mind cause I wondered why Ender would name his colony that. Anyway, I just wanted to be vigilant and send a reminder. Take care!
This was, in fact, a real contradiction--elsewhere, I definitively stated that the first colony was named Rov. That's because in writing those earlier books I did not have the resource of a community of generous readers, or didn't think to ask for their help as I should have, and so thought up cool new ideas for things that I had already dealt with in earlier books, but forgot about in the years that followed.
This, too, I have resolved.
I was once a professional proofreader. I know from experience that even the brightest, most careful readers, working in teams so we could catch each other's mistakes, still missed errors. A world as complex, with as many stories set in it, as this one is bound to contain other contradictions as yet undetected. Please post any that you find (except the ones from the former chapter 15 of Ender's Game) at Hatrack.com, and maybe I can find a way to fix them later.
Or take it philosophically, and realize that if these were genuine histories or biographies instead of works of fiction, there would be contradictions between them anyway--because even in factual accounts of the real world, errors and contradictions creep in. There are few events in history that were recounted identically by all witnesses. Pretend, then, that any remaining contradictions are the result of errors in historical transmission. Even if it's a "history" of events hundreds of years in the future.
Besides these helpful friends, I showed my chapters as I wrote them to my usual crew of unbelievably patient friends. Getting a novel piecemeal is an old tradition--Charles Dickens's fans always had to read his novels as they came out in installments in the newspaper. But getting a chapter every few days and having to respond quickly because I'm on such a tight writing schedule is making more demands than I should rightly make of friends.
Jake Black was, for the first time, one of those first readers, in order to bring his encyclopedic knowledge of the Ender universe to bear. Kathryn H. Kidd, my longsuffering collaborator on the long-overdue-and-entirely-my-fault sequel to Lovelock, called Rasputin, has been one of my first readers for years. Erin and Phillip Absher have also been longtime prereaders of mine, and Phillip bears the distinction of making me throw out several chapters in order to follow up on a plot thread that I had thought was a throwaway, and he convinced me was at the heart and soul of the story. He was right, I was wrong, and the book was better for it. This time, fortunately, he didn't make me rewrite whole swaths of my book. But his, Erin's, Kathy's, and Jake's encouragement helped me feel as though I was telling a story that was worth the time spent on it.
My very first reader, however, remains my wife, Kristine, who also bears the brunt of the burden of the family when I'm in writing mode. Her suggestions might seem small to her, but they're large to me, and if she has any doubts, I rewrite until they go away.
Kristine and our youngest child, Zina, the last at home, have to deal with a father who haunts the house like a distracted, irritable ghost during the writing of a book. But we do have those nights watching Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, where we actually inhabit the same universe for an hour or two at a time.
I have also had the help of Kathleen Bellamy, the managing editor of The InterGalactic Medicine Show--who does not read my books until they are in page proofs, whereupon she reads them for the first time--as our very last proofreader before the book goes to press. That makes her our final line of defense. And our webwright and IT manager, Scott Allen, keeps Hatrack and oscIGMS going so that I have that community to call upon.
On this book, Beth Meacham, my editor at Tor, played a larger role than I usually ask of my editors. Because this book was so quirky--being a "midquel" that overlapped with my most popular novel--I did not want to proceed without her assurance that the book was actually something Tor wanted to publish! Her suggestions and caveats were wise and helpful at every stage of the development and writing of this book.
And I thank the production team at Tor for the sacrifices they had to make because I was so late with this manuscript. That this book still came out on time is owed to their extra work and sharp concern for quality. Even when rushing, they do their work with pride and so I end up with a book I can be proud of. Where would I be, if other good souls did not make up for my shortcomings?
The character of Ender as depicted in the original novel was in some ways drawn from my son Geoffrey, who was five and then six when I was writing that book. He is now thirty years old and the father of two children (with the good offices of his wife, the former Heather Heavener). To my great relief, Geoffrey was never called upon to serve his country in war.
So in examining what Ender's experience might be like, I have drawn upon much reading, of course, but also from correspondence and conversation with good men and women who have served our country in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other trouble spots where our responsibilities as the only nation with the strength and the will to help beleaguered people against tyranny have been fulfilled. You bear a burden for us all, and I salute you.
I grieve for those who have fallen, or who, surviving with dire injuries or broken hearts, have been deprived of much or most of the future that you once dreamed of. As a citizen of the United States, I bear some of the responsibility for sending you where you have gone, and certainly reap the benefits. Like Ender, I might not have known what was being sacrificed in my name, but I recognize the connection between us.
And for those of you who are visibly whole after your service, but who bear inward changes that no one sees, and carry memories that no one shares, I can only hope that I have done an adequate job of representing, in Ender Wiggin, something of what you feel and think and remember.