Ender's Game Cover Art: The Famous

  

The first edition of Ender's Game, published by Tor Books in 1985, featured cover art by British artist John Harris, one of the best known Sci-Fi concept artists. This is the image most strongly associated with the book as Tor kept it alive through decades of hardcovers, paperbacks and reprints. However, this artwork has actually nothing to do with Ender's Game as it was originally created for a 1982 re-release of Frederik Pohl's classic SF novel Drunkard's Walk, which is also the title of Harris's image.

Subsequent editions of Ender's Game feature artwork from other famous science fiction artists. The cover for the original German release was designed by Tim White, whose art is all over the place since the 1970s, not just on hundreds of book covers. Several works have been published with collections of his Sci-Fi and Fantasy images, you might recognize some of them from Robert Heinlein or Terry Pratchett books.

Ender's War, a 1986 book release that features both Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, sports a cover designed by Vincent Di Fate, another well-known artist and Hugo Award winner. Di Fate was commissioned by NASA in 1985 to create the official painting of the International Space Station.

  

Both these covers are from Tor Books' Starscape edition, a series that was created to make Tor's back catalogue more attractive to a younger audience. Personally, I think it's more targeted at parents buying "appropriate" books for their children, so it's not a very good idea and doesn't do the book justice. Especially the first release with cover art by a widely unknown artist named David Gaadt -- interestingly enough a Greensboro, SC resident like Orson Scott Card -- makes Ender's Game look like a story for children. Fun times in zero gravity with a cool and shiny suit and helmet.

Tor Books eventually realized that and commissioned Welsh artist Gordon Crabb to give the Starscape cover a facelift. The result is a big improvement over the previous edition, portraying Ender in a typical scene from the book and showing enough of the dark side without focusing on emotions.

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Ender's Game Cover Art: Introduction

As we have plenty of time to pass until we get to see the first official stills and trailers for the Ender's Game movie, I will devote a series of articles on the imagery in Ender's Game book covers. How did cover artists from more than 20 countries imagine the world of Ender for the past 27 years? We have compiled an extensive cover art gallery for Ender News where you can browse all international book covers we have collected, though it is nowhere near complete; there are just too many old international releases where we couldn't get our hands on a good cover scan. You will notice a huge variety in styles, themes and quality in our gallery, and I will present you some of my favorite covers in this series.

Introduction

Before we look at those covers, we should ask ourselves: what makes a good cover? What is the purpose of a book cover?

Many people will say that the cover sells the book, but that is not entirely true. The cover sells the back cover, it should stand out, grab your attention, so you pick it up and see what it's all about. Should the cover image accurately depict the theme or mood of the book? That's probably a task too big for many of the more complex novels, but I tend to agree that the mood of the book should go well with the cover image, as it would be a big negative for the reader if he finds out while reading that what he imagines the book world to look like is nothing like the cover art suggested.

A good cover is one that the reader likes before and after reading the book. The cover image will always and forever be associated with the novel: it is often the only image the reader has outside of his head, and therefore he has to be and stay comfortable with it.

For Ender's Game we find an almost unprecedentedly wide range of designs over the many international releases. Some covers look like generic Sci-Fi art, others are so far off-topic that it seems unlikely that the illustrator has ever seen a single line of text. But many (or even most) cover images look like serious effort went into the design to either capture the mood of the book or to bring a particular scene from the book to life on the cover.



The image shows an excerpt of the wonderful cover art from Sam Weber for the 2010 U.S. eBook version, published by Tor Books. Beth Meacham, Tor's editor for Orson Scott Card, had the following to say about the challenge of creating an Ender's Game cover image:

Covers for this book have always been a problem. It's not a children's book, but when you ask for a painting of a ten year old boy, it's hard not to get something that looks like a children's book. This can lead to problems, like the email I recently got from a school librarian who was sure that there was some mistake; this children's book had "bad words" in it.

Sam Weber's Ender still looks like a 10-year-old boy, but - while very likeable - he's not cute, and his eyes look much older than his age. The full cover shows him in a flash suit, hovering weightlessly above a planet. This could be Earth or the Formic home world, but whatever it is, Ender is alone out there, as Weber puts it: "an image that conveys the loneliness Ender is forced to endure because of his almost alien brilliance."

Orson Scott Card calls it "the best cover art ever to appear on Ender's Game," and after browsing through all those 70+ cover images from all around the world I think he might be just right.

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Vote for "Ender's Game" in NPR's Summer Books Poll!

Each year, National Public Radio (NPR) holds a summer books poll, asking its readers to help create a recommended list of the top 100 titles of a certain genre. In last year's list, the Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy novels, Ender's Game made it to #3 -- but not on its own! As soon as they heard about the poll, the staff over at Ender's Ansible started a campaign amongst Ender's fans, encouraging them to vote for the Orson Scott Card novel.

And hey, it worked!

This year's category is Young Adult Fiction. If you'd like to see Ender's Game hold a top spot again this year (and if you're reading this, of course you do!), here's how you can help:

Visit NPR.org and create an account (or log-in if you have one already). In the comments section of that same post, write the titles and authors of the books you wish to nominate, Ender's Game obviously being one of them. It's that easy!

Here are some guidelines for nominations:

1. Limit yourself to five titles per post. Don't hesitate to nominate a book that someone else has already listed; your entry will count as a vote that will help that title progress to the next round.

2. Nominate "multivolume novels" as one work. The Harry Potter series or the Hunger Games trilogy, for example, will be judged as single, collective works — so don't bother listing the separate titles in the series.

3. That said, not all series are "multivolume novels." To be judged as a collective work, the books in a series must be written by the same originating author or authors and must tell a more or less continuous story — usually about a consistent group of characters. So, you can't nominate the whole Goosebumps series as such, but you can nominate The Horror at Camp Jellyjam as an individual work.

As soon as NPR has closed the post for nominations, they'll create a list and then we'll be able to vote for our favorites. Once that happens, we'll make another post to let you know.

Until then, spread the word to everyone you know who is an Ender's Game fan. I've no doubt that we can all come together as a fandom and help get Ender's story on the list of the Top 100 Young Adult Novels -- we all know it deserves to be there!

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Khylin Rhambo on "First Family," "Ender's Game"

Khylin Rhambo and family

Earlier this week, Khylin Rhambo attended the launch event of Entertainment Studios' fall program, a line-up which includes his new show First Family. The sitcom, which follows the hectic lives of the President and his family in the White House, was recently picked up by NBC for a huge initial 104-episode order.

JJ Snyder from Red Carpet Report covered the launch party and had a chance to speak to Khylin about his role in the new show and, of course, Ender's Game. 

The pilot episode of First Family was filmed earlier this year, and Rhambo seemed excited about the experience, his fellow cast members, and his character. "I play Charles, the president's son and, you know, he's a funny... he's always happy. I love playing that type of character. He's always happy, he's mischievous, he's into the ladies. [...] It's a really fun character to play."

The conversation soon turned to Ender's Game:

You have a lot coming up in the next year, right?

Yeah, definitely. I just got done filming Ender's Game, a film that was with Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Sir Ben Kingsley. So that was a really good learning experience for me as an actor and I'm really excited.

So you felt like you really took a jump forward in that, huh?

Oh yeah. I mean, that was my first movie so it was really cool that I got to experience that as my first movie.

Later in the interview, Synder asked him to elaborate a bit more on the film and the creative process of getting the alien Buggers on the big screen:

We want to know a little bit more about Ender's Game.

Yeah, so I play Dink Meeker in Ender's Game and he's like a boy genius and he's close to the main character. And you know, we have this big journey of like, fighting these aliens and it's a really cool story that I'm excited to be a part of. And I read the books, the books are amazing so... it's really cool. I'm stoked. I can't even believe this has really happened so...

You know when they have a lot of aliens in a movie, you know, some of them I know are kind of puppets, some are CGI. What were these aliens?

These were CGI. I mean, we never really see the aliens but I saw, you know, the whole layout of them.

Check out the video for the full interview:



First Family is set to begin production this summer and will premiere this fall on NBC.

Thanks to EnderNet for the heads-up! :)

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Production Blog #12 - Human vs. Formic Design

Since filming wrapped on Ender's Game earlier this month, we all knew it was only a matter of time before the production blog came to an end as well. So, this is it! The final post -- and it looks like they saved the best for last:

While in the previous entry we got an inside look at what it's like to costume a futuristic world, the final blog post was all about designing the world itself.

This week, the producers sat down with production designers Ben Procter and Sean Haworth, the two men responsible for creating the world of Ender's Game:

We recently got them [Procter and Haworth] to reflect on the process of creating this world.

As Ben described it, the most fun was creating the two contrasting cultures of Human and Formic technology and architecture.

"We tried to imbue the spaces and vehicles with a gritty, engineered realism that would help sell the seriousness of the training our hero kids are going through. The visual style of the Formics, on the other hand, needed to be both exotic and beautiful to represent a society not deserving of extinction."

Ask them to describe the Formic world and you’ll get excited tales, imagining a Formic method of manufacture that was distinctly inhuman — a kind of biological 3D printer, with the drones building living spaces and spacecraft layer by layer.

I really like the use of the word "drones" here because, as it is a word usually associated with insects, it suggests that the design team has indeed embraced the canonical idea that the Formics are bug-like.

Fun fact: Did you know that the word Formic comes from formica, which is the Latin word for ant? This is why an ant infestation in your house is usually treated with formicide. 

Let's look at some ant stuff:

The first image is an example of a rather large ant colony taken from Discovery.com. Blown up, it would sort of look like a fortress, right? Or at least something one can imagine humans living in.

The second, however, is from concept artist Kaitlyn Colhouer. This image has nothing in particular to do with Ender's Game; rather, it's the concept design for a video game aptly named God Save the Queen, which seems to feature ants as the main characters and takes place at least in part inside an ant colony. I really like the look of it: doesn't it remind you of how Ender describes Eros, with its low, carved-out ceilings?

You should check out the rest of her artwork here. The design for one of her characters, Faro, is very similar to how I've always pictured the Buggers in my head, though perhaps slightly less intimidating. What do you guys think?

It will be really interesting to see how the production designers incorporate insect-like design into Eros and the Formic dwellings. What would Eros have looked like, nearly a century after the humans captured it from the insectoid alien species and repurposed it for their own use?

We'll have to wait and see!

And hey, this week we also got a peek at the Battle Room gate:



I don't know about you guys, but I really feel like grabbing a handhold and flinging myself through those doors.

How many gates do you think the Battle Room will have in the movie? If there's a "B" Gate, then we can most likely assume there's an "A." Are these the gates through which the two armies would send their soldiers? Will there be a "teachergate" for I.F. staff such as Graff and Anderson as well?

This week's post also made clear that both Haworth and Procter were huge fans of the novel before they even joined the team.

"Even in a short conversation," the author writes, "their excitement for the project is tangible."

So, it seems, is their excitement for their co-workers:

But the most amazing thing about talking to them, without question, is their eagerness to share the credit and sing the praises of the whole crew that brought ENDER’S GAME to life.  Whether it be admiration for the beauty of Gavin’s adaptation, the "coolest art department ever assembled", the ingenuity of construction coordinator Anthony Syracuse and Supervising Art Director Todd Holland, or even the fact that Orson Scott Card himself came to give their design and vision his seal of approval, this was a great crew in every sense.

 Read the full blog post here. 

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That's a wrap on the production blog, guys! But that doesn't mean there isn't still fun stuff to come: Keep checking back here for all your Ender-related news, or give us a follow on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr!

Did you know that we've officially passed the 500 day mark? Only 498 days to go 'til Ender's Game hits U.S. theaters.

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Smart Pop Books at SDCC 2012 -- "Ender's World" Giveaways!

Attending Comic-Con next month? This is for you!

Smart Pop Books, publisher of Ender's World, the Enderverse anthology slated to be released in February 2013, reached out to us yesterday to let us know that they will be making an appearance at the San Diego Comic Con this year and will be giving away some Ender's World freebies!

And no, that doesn't just mean retractable pens and bumper stickers. Check out what they're giving away:

For everyone: a free copy of Smart Pop's preview volume which will include one of the essays from Ender's World (Hilari Bell's, on "Winning and Losing in Ender's Game")

For the lucky: an advanced galley (reading copy) of Ender's World! Here's a description of the contest:

Win an Advance Galley of Ender’s World

Ender's World: Fresh Perspectives on the SF Classic Ender's Game, edited by Orson Scott Card, comes out in February 2013. But we're giving 25 Comic-Con attendees the chance to read it first.

Come by booth #4300 in the exhibit hall and ask us to scan your badge to be entered to win an advance copy of Ender's World. We'll pick the winners after the end of the convention and notify you via email. Then we'll ship you your copy, hot off the presses, as soon as they're printed!

Some more information about Smart Pop Books' presence at SDCC can be found here.

Smart Pop is a "line of smart, fresh, engaging nonfiction titles on the best of pop culture TV, books, and film, with a particular focus on science fiction and fantasy television and literature."

Make sure you stop by their booth and say hello!

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Asa Butterfield: Breakthrough Award Winner 2012

(Zimbio)

Often called the "Oscars of Young Hollywood," the 14th Annual Young Hollywood Awards were held last night in Los Angeles and Asa Butterfield was presented with the Breakthrough Award of 2012.

The ceremony, hosted this year by Twilight actress Ashley Greene, is an annual event "honoring and celebrating the accomplishments of emerging young talent throughout the entertainment industry." (yhawards.com)

Ender's Game co-star Hailee Steinfeld, who was similarly honored last year, presented the award to Asa and appeared genuinely thrilled for him, hugging him tightly on stage and grinning happily in the background while he gave his acceptance speech.

Bonzo actor Moises Arias also attended the event, posing with Asa and Hailee for some fun pictures beforehand and hanging out at the party afterward.



Here's a fun video of the three arriving and meeting up for pictures before the ceremony:



Check out Zimbio.com for more photos of the event.

Congratulations, Asa!

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