Speaker John is a reference to the Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender’s Game.  After the events of Ender’s Game, Ender aka Andrew Wiggin, writes a eulogy for the planet that he nearly wiped out called The Hive Queen.  To maintain his anonymity, and because his fame as “Ender the Xenocide” would detract from his goal of helping humanity to fully understand the Formic race, he listed the author as “Speaker for the Dead.”

Ender then proceeded to live his life as Speaker Andrew, traveling and providing a form of eulogy service to honor the dead, but to honor them by speaking the truth – not to remember them in an idealized way, but to talk about their life with complete honesty.

In more general terms, the concept of a “Speaker” in the Ender series becomes one who travels about and speaks the honest truth, and that is the goal of the Speaker John blog.

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Speaker John is John Lanzafame, living in upstate New York, and entrepreneur, consultant, stoic philosopher and truth seeker.