"A Young Man with Prospects" is a short story written by Orson Scott Card. It tells the story of how Alessandra and Dorabella Toscano ended up as colonists on one of the former Formic planets. It was first published in Card's webzine, the InterGalactic Medicine Show[1] in February 2007. In November 2008, it was republished as Chapter 5 of the novel Ender in Exile.[3]
In April 2021, "A Young Man with Prospects" was republished in the illustrated anthology Ender's Way.[2]
Story Details[]
Alessandra was a poor thirteen year old girl from Monopoli, Italy. One day, Alessandra's seemingly irresponsible mother came home and announced that they would be colonizing one of the former Formic worlds. When she first found out, Alessandra didn't want to go, so she tracked down her grandmother whom she had never met and asked her for help. However, when her grandmother heard that Alessandra wanted to stay with her, she threw her out.
Upon returning home, Alessandra found out that the reason they were so poor was because her mother had been paying her grandmother to stay out of their lives to protect Alessandra. When she learned this, Alessandra agreed to go. Later Alessandra learned that she would be traveling with Ender Wiggin, who would be made governor of the colony when they arrived. Her mother hoped that they would fall in love and get married. On their last day in Italy, Alessandra's grandmother came to their house and began screaming at them. Alessandra's mother stood up to the woman and told her to go away.
Trivia[]
- According to Card, he came up with the idea for "A Young Man with Prospects" while he was writing "The Gold Bug". While working on that short story, he started to think about how Ender got to the colony and came up with the idea of a power-struggle between Ender and the ship's captain. That story would later become "Ender in Flight", but to flesh out the power struggle Card decided to write a story about two female colonists that became "A Young Man with Prospects".[4]