Ender's Game is one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels ever. I think it's funny that he basically wrote it (or rather expanded a short story) to do nothing more but set up Ender's character for SFTD. In fact, origionally he was just going to do it as a foward to SFTD but he just couldn't jam the character development into so short a space.

Sometimes the by-product is better than the product itself!

Jeff