Kill the Bugger: Ender's Game and the Question of Heteronormativity

This essay offers a reading of Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game in terms of its treatment of homosexuality. After reviewing Card's handling of the topic in his earlier works of sf, where it was presented more explicitly, the essay shows how Ender's Game continues to engage the issue in disguised ways: through its naming of the alien enemy "buggers" to its anti-sentimental construction of childhood eroticism to the subtly sexualized violence to which protagonist Ender Wiggin is subjected. Finally, it compares the higher tolerance for sexual difference in Card's sf with his more condemnatory statements as a commentator on contemporary cultural/sexual politics.