Both the book and the film adaptation of "Ender's Game" end the same way. Having successfully completed his final "test," the titular character is horrified to learn that he was not participating in a mere simulation, but an actual battle. His decisive and devastatingly effective military action results in the xenocide of the Formic species and the destruction of their home planet. In both versions, he is ultimately entrusted with the last Formic Queen egg, thus taking on the responsibility of ensuring their future. Only in the book, however, does Ender's career take a surprising but fateful detour.
In the original story, a guilt-ridden Ender chronicles the death of the Formic species in a book titled "The Hive Queen," which he writes and publishes anonymously under the alias "Speaker for the Dead." After his dying brother discovers Ender as the true author and commissions his own unflinchingly candid biography, a new tradition is born in which a "Speaker" eulogizes the deceased in a nearly identical manner.
This sets up the central conceit for the sequel novel "Speaker for the Dead," which sees Ender unravel a complex mystery as he prepares for this new sort of traditional funeral. As author Orson Scott Card noted in an introduction to "Ender's Game," "Speaker for the Dead" was originally the story he wanted to write about, and only began developing "Ender's Game" as a means to establish the characters and concepts necessary to write it.
