Militarizing and Colonizing Outer Space as a Video Game. Ender’s Game and Astroculture

Abstract

The author of the article analyzes Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, focusing her attention on the relationship between the key motif of the novel – gaming – and the tendency to militarize and colonize outer space highlighted by astrocultural scholars. Card’s novel follows the astrocultural pattern of setting future wars in space, but introduces an important novelty: games of various kinds, including video games, become a mediating element between the characters and the real experience of space war. The theoretical framework for the analysis is provided by the insights of astrocultural scholars such as Alexander Geppert, Tilmann Siebeneichner and Alice Gorman. In analyzing Ender’s Game and, to some extent, its 2013 film adaptation, the author examines the protagonists’ relationship to space, which is shaped by the game’s setting. It is here that military and colonial themes are most prevalent. The first part of the paper presents the main contexts of the motif of the militarization of outer space and its close relationship with video games. These contexts provide an important background for the analysis of the motifs of games and outer space in Ender’s Game. Selected reflections from the field of ludology are helpful in interpreting Card’s use of video games not only as a theme, but also as a structural principle of his novel’s settings. In the last part of the paper, the author considers the transformation of the militant motif taking place in the novel’s finale into a narrative focused on the colonization of outer space, as well as the transformation of this narrative that occurred in Gavin Hood’s film adaptation. The goal of such an interpretation is to show the story created by Orson Scott Card as entangled in a dynamic relationship with the video game medium that was developing at the time of its creation and with the changing trends of astroculture.