Speaker For the Dead by Orson Scott Card

I originally read Ender's Game in my late teens. I really liked it. I didn't go gaga over it the way a lot of my friends did, but I've always been a fan of sci fi that explores philosophical ideas. So when the movie came out, I decided to reread the series. Only as it turns out, I never read past the first book.

This was my first reading of Speaker For the Dead. If anything, I think this is a better book than Ender's Game which has a lot of political over tones caught up with the philosophy. There is a political aspect to Speaker For the Dead, but mostly it's about how we would view aliens if we encountered them. It explores what it means to be other. Does it mean another species or simply another tribe. Is there a difference between human and people?

And once we accept the other as people, how do we judge their actions? Do we judge them through the filter of our expectations or theirs? Anthropology gets all snarled up in it.

Ender, of course, features prominently in the plot and Card redeemed some of the awful things he put Ender through in Ender's Game. I don't know why yet, but I just really felt good about this book when I finished it. It wasn't a happy book by any means, but it made me think, and I appreciate that.