Editing First Meetings

{{Short description|2002 book by Orson Scott Card}}
{{redirect|Teacher's Pest|the 1932 film|Teacher's Pests}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name         = ''First Meetings''
| title_orig   =
| translator   =
| image        = OSCmeetings.jpg
| caption =  First edition
| author       = [[Orson Scott Card]]
| cover_artist = Gail Cross
| country      = United States
| language     = English
| series       = [[Ender's Game (series)|''Ender's Game'' series]]
| genre        = [[Science fiction]]
| publisher    = [[Subterranean Press]]
| media_type   = Print (hardback & paperback)
| pages        = 149 
| isbn         = 1-931081-69-7 
| oclc         = 50596863
| release_date = [[2002 in literature|2002]]
| preceded_by  = 
| followed_by  = 
}}
{{Ender's Game chronology}}
'''''First Meetings''''' (2002) is a collection of science fiction  short stories by American writer [[Orson Scott Card]], belonging to  his [[Ender's Game (series)|''Ender's Game'' series]]. [[Tor Books]] republished the book in 2003 under the titles ''First Meetings in the Enderverse'' and ''First Meetings in Ender's Universe'' and included the more recent "Teacher's Pest", a story about the first meeting of Ender's parents.

== Story list ==
The stories in this book are:

* "The Polish Boy" (2002) – Tells the story of how Jan Paweł Wieczorek (Ender's father) as a small child gets tested by the International Fleet and convinces them to get his family out of [[Poland]].
* "Teacher's Pest" (2003) (Not present in 2002 version of book) – Tells the story of how John Paul Wiggin (Ender's father) meets and falls in love with his future wife.
* "[[Ender's Game (short story)|Ender's Game]]" (1977) – First appeared in the August 1977 issue of ''[[Analog Science Fiction and Fact|Analog]]'' magazine and was later expanded into the novel ''[[Ender's Game]]''.  Although the foundation of the [[Ender's Game series|''Ender's Game'' series]], the short story is not properly part of the ''Ender's Game'' universe, as there are many discrepancies in [[Continuity (fiction)|continuity]].
* "Investment Counselor" (1999) – Tells the story of how Ender Wiggin first met the artificial intelligence Jane and became a speaker for the dead.  It first appeared in the anthology ''[[Far Horizons]]'' edited by [[Robert Silverberg]].

==Plot summaries==

===The Polish Boy===
[[John Paul Wiggin|Polish: Jan Paweł Wieczorek]] (John Paul Wiggin) is a very smart child who is being homeschooled because his family refused to comply with the population's control laws. One day, Captain Helena Rudolf from the International Fleet shows up to test three of John Paul's brothers for possible admission into Battle School. She notices John Paul reading a book and decides to test him early. He passes the test and gets a very high score for leadership. The IF tries to get him to go to Battle School, but John Paul is only interested in trying to get his family out of Poland so that they can have a better life and he can get a good education. [[List of International Fleet personnel#Colonel Hyrum Graff|Captain Graff]] realizes this, but agrees to send the Wieczorek family to [[United States|America]] because he hopes that one of John Paul's children will go to Battle School.

This story contains younger versions of important characters in the Enderverse, such as Ender's father [[John Paul Wiggin|John Paul Wieczorek]] (later Wiggin), [[List of International Fleet personnel#Colonel Hyrum Graff|Hyrum Graff]], and [[List of International Fleet personnel#Chamrajnagar|Admiral Chamrajnagar]]. Other characters associated with the IF appear, including Captain Helena Rudolf and Colonel Sillian.

=== Teacher's Pest ===
While going to college, [[John Paul Wiggin|John Paul]] is assigned to take a Human Communities class being taught by [[List of Ender's Game characters#Theresa|Theresa Brown]]. First being annoyed at having to take a class being taught by a graduate student, John Paul soon changes his mind as Theresa Brown leads the class through a provocative debate about communities, war, and population laws. Unfortunately, she has just been told that her research project is being taken away from her in an effort to get her father [[Admiral]] Brown to come out of retirement.  As a result, she does not want to speak to anyone.  Determined, John Paul waits outside her office and orders food for her while she talks to her father on the phone.  When she finally comes out, he is still waiting for her.  She decides to eat with him, and during the meal John Paul tells her about his secret past.  As they continue to talk, they both begin to fall in love, even as they realize that they were both set up by the government to do so.

=== Ender's Game (short story) ===
{{main|Ender's Game (short story)}}
This story begins as [[Ender Wiggin|Ender]] is made the commander of Dragon Army at Battle School, an institution designed to make young children into military commanders against an unspecified enemy. Armies are groups of students that fight mock battles in the Battle Room, a [[Weightlessness#Zero gravity|null gravity]] environment, and are subdivided into [[platoon|"toons"]].  Due to Ender's genius in leadership, Dragon Army dominates the competition.  After his nineteenth consecutive victory, Ender is told that his Army is being broken up and his toon leaders made commanders in their turn, while he is transferred to Command School for the next stage of his education.  Here, veteran [[Mazer Rackham]] tutors him in the use of a space battle simulator.  Eventually, many of his former toon leaders serve under him once more.  Once familiar with the simulator, they fight a series of what Mazer tells them are mock battles against a computer-controlled enemy.  Ender's team wins again and again, finally destroying a planet that the enemy fleet seems to be protecting.  Once the battle is over, Mazer tells Ender that all of the battles were real, the children's commands having been relayed to the extant fleet, and that he has destroyed the enemy's home world and ended the war.

=== Investment Counselor===

Source:<ref>* [http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/firstmeetings/firstmeetings.shtml About the story "Investment Counselor"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318114545/http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/firstmeetings/firstmeetings.shtml |date=2012-03-18 }} – from Card's website</ref>

Ever since the events of ''Ender's Game'', Ender Wiggin has been voyaging through space at near-lightspeed. When he arrives at the planet Sorelledolce, he has just turned twenty in relativistic time, so he has to file his first tax return on the trust fund which had been given to him by the International Fleet at the end of the Third [[formics|Bugger]] War. He shows his list of investments to Benedetto, a tax collector in the starport, who immediately plans to steal some of it. Meanwhile, Andrew receives an email offering him financial software, which has an interactive personality that calls itself [[Jane (Ender's Game)|Jane]].

While they are on Sorelledolce, Andrew's sister [[Valentine Wiggin]] takes him to a "speaking" for a dead man. Andrew talks to the [[Speaker for the Dead#meaning|speaker]] and discovered that the man learned how to be a speaker for the dead from reading Ender's own books ''The Hive Queen'' and ''The Hegemon''.

Andrew decides to accept the assistance of the Jane program. She prepares his tax forms, showing him ways to minimize what he owes. The amount is much less than he had expected. When Andrew delivers the forms to Benedetto, the tax collector tries to blackmail him because he has discovered Ender's identity as the hated [[Xenocide]]. But Benedetto finds that his files have mysteriously disappeared, and the evidence trail is now behind Fleet security. In an attempt to get revenge against Ender, he tries to leak what data he still has to the media, but Jane appears on his screen and gives him a choice: "Either say nothing, or tell the whole truth."<ref name="jane">{{cite book |title=First Meetings in Ender's Universe |last=Card |first=Orson Scott |chapter=Investment Counselor |year=2003 |publisher=Tor |location=New York |isbn=978-0-7653-4798-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/firstmeetingsine00orso/page/196 196] |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/firstmeetingsine00orso/page/196 }}</ref>  Benedetto rejects the first option, but when the media receives his story, it has been mysteriously integrated with a full confession of his embezzlements.

Benedetto is arrested, his claims against Andrew are assumed to be falsehoods, and while he is in prison one of his more powerful victims has him killed. Andrew does a speaking at Benedetto's funeral. He has thus inadvertently given himself a career, that of "speaker for the dead."

==See also==
{{portal|Novels}}
*[[List of Ender's Game characters|List of ''Ender's Game'' characters]]
*[[List of Ender's Game series short stories|List of Short Stories in Ender's Universe]]
*[[Orson Scott Card bibliography]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120318114545/http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/firstmeetings/firstmeetings.shtml About the book ''First Meetings'' from Card's website]
* {{ISFDB title|1318486|First Meetings: Three Stories from the Enderverse}} (does not include the short story ''Teacher's Pest'')
* {{ISFDB title|24396|First Meetings: In the Enderverse}} (All editions included the short story ''Teacher's Pest'')

{{Orson Scott Card}}

[[Category:2002 short story collections]]
[[Category:2003 short stories]]
[[Category:Ender's Game series books]]
[[Category:Ender's Game series short stories]]
[[Category:Short stories by Orson Scott Card]]
[[Category:Short story collections by Orson Scott Card]]
[[Category:Subterranean Press books]]