the original short story can be found HERE.
The book brings up a lot of issues, not just on child soldiers (taking a child from his family to train him has parallels on child athletes and musicians). And when killing is done by UAV/drones similar to computer games, who is the one who is guilty of killing.
Ender, of course, is a child who never should have been allowed to be born, his parents are both "rebels" in their own way, and he saves the earth, not out of hatred, but to get out of the terrible situation in his school.
And, unlike "starship troopers", he does it not by shootemouts but by a Kobiashi Maru type ploy...
the short story has expanded into a series of books, but one has to note that Ender later rescues a bug pod so that the Bug's civilization is not completely destroyed.
This brings up a question: In a time when human rights folks are trying to eliminate child soldiers, do films like Hunger Games and Ender's Game seem to justify using children in war?
This chilling paragraph from the short story explains why terrorists and "insurgents" are so eager to kidnap and reprogram children to fight:
Maezr smiled. "A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander's life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he's killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he's mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can't do his job. So we trained children, who didn't know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked."
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Another big SciFi film in the make is a new StarTrek, supposedly loosely based on the plot of "where no man has gone before", the second pilot show.
The trailers for both of these are not very original so I didn't post them.
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