Earth Afire (2013)
Earth Afire is a 2013 space warfare book written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.
The alien ship has reached Earth, and almost no one believes it. Victor Delgado, a young spaceborn mechanic, has raced sunward carrying a warning that governments and militaries dismiss as fantasy. When Formic landers touch down in China and begin remaking the land for their own kind, the human response stalls under politics, pride, and plain disbelief. Mazer Rackham and a small mobile strike unit improvise against a foe whose technology dwarfs their own. Card and Aaron Johnston continue the First Formic War, the century-old conflict whose survivors will shape the world Ender Wiggin is later born into.
Quick answers
What is Earth Afire about?
The alien ship has reached Earth, and almost no one believes it. Victor Delgado, a young spaceborn mechanic, has raced sunward carrying a warning that governments and militaries dismiss as fantasy. When Formic landers touch down in China and begin remaking the land for their own kind, the human response stalls under politics, pride, and plain disbelief. Mazer Rackham and a small mobile strike unit improvise against a foe whose technology dwarfs their own. Card and Aaron Johnston continue the First Formic War, the century-old conflict whose survivors will shape the world Ender Wiggin is later born into.
When was Earth Afire published?
Earth Afire was published in 2013.
Who made Earth Afire?
Earth Afire was written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.
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A few thoughts on Earth Afire
Independence Day and Spielberg's War of the Worlds share the shock of a first ground invasion by an unknowable enemy, though Earth Afire trades spectacle for logistics and stubborn bureaucracy. Readers drawn to Mazer Rackham's underdog tactics should watch the film Ender's Game, where an older Rackham trains the generation raised on his war.
Alien first contact that governments refuse to believe
Earth Afire spends its opening chapters on the gap between what Victor Delgado has seen and what anyone in power will act on, the same disbelief that stalls the response in War of the Worlds and Independence Day once alien landers touch down. Ender's Game shows the war that delay eventually produces, and Half-Life 2 imagines permanent alien occupation once humanity has already lost that argument.