Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Once in about every ten years, a book comes along that defines its genre for its period. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea did it for its age. Stranger in a Strange Land did it during my high school years. Ender's Game is the book that did it at the end of the 80's and through the '90's.

The plot is discussed in great detail by fogrider  on  this site (here), so I won't go into detail about the story. But this story has brought more readers to science fiction than any other writing I can think of in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Mr. Heinlein's Stranger. It is simply one of the masterpieces of science fiction literature. As such, I wanted to "re-review" it and put it into perspective as a work of literature, rather than just an excellent science fiction story.

Don't get me wrong, Ender's Game is BOTH of those things. But it crossed over genre lines to bring mainstream readers into, and ultimately an acceptance of, science fiction writings. It is a mainstream, literary work of art, as opposed to, say, Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio. Junior high and high school literature classes are reading this book as part of the curriculum. Its still in print and STILL selling twenty years after its publication. Everybody, at some time or another, will read this book or else has read it.

And, at the end of the day, Ender's Game is hard-core science fiction. There is simply no other genre to which this book could or should be assigned. It is as much science fiction as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea or Stranger in a Strange Land. It is The Lord of The Rings to science fiction, the Pied-Piper of readers to bring them to science fiction reading, enjoyment, and acceptance of science fiction as belonging in mainstream literary circles.

It is simply the best science fiction work of its era. It is now, and always will be, a literary classic. If you haven't read it, then - friend - you are not as well read as you ought to be. Go immediately and get this book. Now! You'll thank me after you've finished it.