Visitors (Card novel)

Visitors

Industry	Publishing
Founded	November 4, 2014 (2014-11-04)
Founder	Orson Scott Card
Products	Science fiction novel

Visitors is a science fiction work penned by American writer Orson Scott Card, renowned for his acclaimed titles Ender's Game (1985) and Speaker for the Dead (1986). This novel continues the story of Rigg, whose developing power to perceive and traverse past timelines is central to his mission to safeguard the future. Serving as the concluding volume in the Pathfinder trilogy, it follows the events of Ruins and Pathfinder.

The book was released on November 4, 2014.

Summary

In Visitors, Rigg, Umbo, and Param uncover that humans themselves are responsible for initiating their planet’s devastation. Confronted with an ethical quandary involving the potential sacrifice of one world to save another—particularly Earth, humanity’s origin—they delve into Garden’s past and investigate each Wallfold. Their goal is to halt the arrival of Earth's visitors who bring destruction. Throughout this final installment, their unique abilities are pushed to the limit as they endeavor to prevent a catastrophic interplanetary conflict.

Plot Overview

Continuing directly from Ruins, Ram, Rigg, Noxon (a future version of Rigg), and Vadeshex strategize on how to stop Earth's visitors and the ensuing destruction they bring. Noxon is sent to Earth with the mission to obstruct the destroyers’ journey, while Rigg stays behind on Garden to assess the wallfolds and aid the military campaign in Ramfold.

Garden

Rigg undertakes a comprehensive evaluation of all wallfolds alongside Ram, weighing whether to eliminate or maintain their divisions; ultimately, they decide in favor of preserving them.

Umbo accompanies Loaf back to Leaky, seeking acceptance despite Loaf’s facemask. Although Leaky initially struggles with wearing the mask, he responds to a warning from Umbo’s future self. Umbo repeatedly intervenes in events to save his younger brother Kyokay from death without disrupting Pathfinder. Meanwhile, Leaky becomes pregnant. After learning that Sessamid soldiers will kill Loaf and Leaky’s children in a few years, Umbo brings their second child, Square—who was saved by neighbors—into an earlier time frame to change their destiny and prevent Square’s conception. Subsequently, Param, Rigg, Ram, Vadeshfold’s allies, and an expendable companion gather to devise a plan for saving their world and toppling Ramfold’s regime.

Preparing for battle against Queen Hagia Sessamina and General Citizen Haddamander of Ramfold, Umbo and Param receive counsel from Olivenko following an extensive review of starship combat tactics. Loaf leads an army recruited from Ramfold villages; command later passes sequentially to Rigg and Square. They establish a training ground between wallfolds and execute raids on Ramfold settlements at progressively earlier points in time to retain tactical surprise. This approach culminates in a significant victory over Sessamid forces. Queen Hagia proposes surrender negotiations but attempts to trap Rigg and Param; they evade capture by rapidly manipulating time slices and witness the arrival of the destroyers firsthand. After the apocalypse, a small vessel confronts them; Rigg defeats a centipede-like alien adversary by creating multiple duplicates of himself. Discovering that these destroyers do not originate from Earth, Param and Rigg return bearing a jeweled knife as proof.

Earth

Following his collaboration with Param on reversing the flow of time, Noxon attaches himself to the twentieth iteration of the starship dispatched toward Garden—journeying backward en route to Earth—bringing along intelligent mice. After successfully realigning the ship's temporal direction forward, he and Ram Odin arrive on Earth and conceal the starship in an earlier era. They recruit Professor Wheaton, an anthropologist, along with his adopted daughter Deborah, to aid in preserving Garden by studying primitive human ancestors. During this endeavor, Deborah is fatally struck by a hunter, which compels the team to leave a cautionary message and rescue an earlier version of Deborah who had been blinded and orphaned but was under Wheaton’s guardianship. By traveling back in time, they safeguard the present-day versions of both Deborah and Wheaton through duplication. While engaged in temporal observation, they witness a nuclear catastrophe and come to understand that the perpetrators are an extraterrestrial species. Returning to the starship, they leap to the aliens’ home planet in the past with the goal of halting their civilization’s development and preventing them from annihilating humanity on both Earth and Garden. They uncover a binary star system inhabited by two alien species—one bipedal with three legs and another resembling a many-legged cockroach—and proceed to establish wallfolds and settlements across each world, blending humans, sentient mice, and aliens in various arrangements. Another version of Noxon returns to Garden accompanied by Deborah, who experiments with a facemask designed to restore her vision.

The group ultimately prevents the future devastation orchestrated by the destroyers. Each individual and their duplicates decide to spend their lives within wallfolds, employing their abilities to manipulate time only when necessary.

Reception

Visitors received a mixed critical response, ranking lower on Goodreads than earlier installments in the series. Reviewers described it as overly complex and less captivating compared to previous works. Although acknowledged for its inventive treatment of time travel and causality—signature elements of Orson Scott Card—the novel was widely criticized for its hurried conclusion and unresolved narrative threads.