Sci vs Sci

The Vor Game vs Ender’s Game

Two Hugo winners, two undersized boy geniuses handed command years too early, and two completely opposite verdicts on the same question: what do you do when the order is wrong? Orson Scott Card's Ender Wiggin and Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan would recognize each other instantly. Their books answer differently.

Ender's Game (1985) is the story of obedience perfected. A child is isolated, manipulated, and trained by adults until he fights a war he does not know is real, winning it, in the novel's most famous turn, by committing genocide he believes to be a simulation. The horror is that Ender does everything right.…