Speaker for the Dead is a 1986 science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, an indirect sequel to the 1985 novel Ender's Game. The book takes place around the year 5270, some 3,000 years after the events in Ender's Game. However because of relativistic space travel at near-light speed Ender himself is only about 35 years old. This is the first book to describe the Starways Congress, a high standpoint legislation for the human space colonies, and the Hundred Worlds, the planets with human colonies that are tightly intertwined by Ansible technology which enables instantaneous communication across any distance. Like Ender's Game, the book won the Nebula Award in 1986 and the Hugo Award in 1987. Speaker for the Dead was published in a slightly revised edition in 1991. It was followed by Xenocide and Children of the Mind. Setting Some years after the eradication of the Formic species (in Ender's Game), Ender Wiggin writes a book called The Hive Queen, describing the life of the Formics as described to him by the dormant Formic Queen whom he secretly carries. As humanity uses light-speed travel to establish new colonies, Ender and his sister Valentine age slowly through relativistic travel. Ender's older brother, the now-aged Hegemon of Earth, Peter Wiggin, recognizes Ender's writings in The Hive Queen, and requests Ender write for him once he dies. Ender agrees and authors The Hegemon. These two books, written under the pseudonym "Speaker for the Dead", launch a new spiritual movement of Speakers for the Dead, who have authority to investigate and eulogize a person and their work after their death. The Hive Queen also shifts societal opinion about the Formic war, leading humanity to view Ender Wiggin, previously a hero, as responsible for a tragic and cruel xenocide, 'xeno-', meaning alien, and '-cide', referring to the act of killing, together meaning the act of killing populations of aliens; comparable to genocide. Three thousand years after the Formic xenocide, humans have spread across the Hundred Worlds, ruled by Starways Congress. A Brazilian Catholic human colony called Milagre is established on the planet Lusitania (1886 S.C.). The planet is home to a sentient species of symbiotic forest dwellers. The colonists (who primarily speak Portuguese) dub them "Pequeninos" (Little Ones) but they are often referred to as "piggies" due to their porcine snouts. Their society is matriarchal and gender-segregated, and their belief system centers