Speaker for the Dead Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Speaker for the Dead (1986) is a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card and a sequel to the highly-acclaimed novel Ender's Game. This book takes place 3,000 years after the events in Ender's Game, although due to relativistic space travel Ender himself (who now goes by his real name Andrew Wiggin) is only about 20 years older.
Whereas the previous novel was hard science fiction with armies and space warfare, Speaker for the Dead is more philosophical in nature, although it still advances a xenology for the planetary setting unique in SF. Its story finds Andrew in a human colony on the colony planet Lusitania, believed to be the only remaining planet in Card's universe with an intelligent alien race after the xenocide of the Formics ("buggers") in the Ender's Game. The novel deals with the difficult relationship between the humans and the "piggies" (or "pequeninos", since the action is set in a Catholic/Portuguese research installation) and with Andrew's attempts to bring peace to a brilliant but troubled family whose history intertwines with that of the pequeninos.
The title refers to the profession Andrew assumes in the novel. Speakers for the Dead are the wandering representatives of a Humanist movement, researching and giving a speech following the death of an individual that attempts to speak for them, describing the ultimate truths of their life as they might have seen it. The Speaker's role often extends to trying to heal any harm that the public exposure of the secrets of a life might cause to their community. Speakers for the Dead seem to have arisen as a movement in response to Ender's 'Speaking' the life of the Hive Queen in a widely-read book that slowly subverts human hatred of the 'buggers' into sorrow over a xenocide. In the novel, a Speaker is considered to be roughly the social equal of a cleric of a traditional religion, and any citizen has the legal right to summon a Speaker to mark the death of a family member.
This novel, like Ender's Game, won the Hugo award (1987) and Nebula award (1986) for outstanding science fiction novel, making Card the first author in history to win both these awards in two consecutive years.
Speaker for the Dead was published in a slightly revised edition in 1991. It was followed by Xenocide and Children of the Mind.
See also: science fiction: authors - novels - short stories - television shows
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