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From Ender's Game:

Ender, look around you. Human beings didn't carve this place. We like taller ceilings, for one thing. This was the buggers' advance post in the First Invasion. They carved this place out before we even knew they were here. We're living in a bugger hive. But we already paid our rent. It cost the marines a thousand lives to clear them out of these honeycombs, room by room. The buggers fought for every meter of it."

From Ender's Shadow:

Bean knew at once that this place was not shaped by human hands. The tunnels were all too low -- and even then, the ceilings had obviously been raised after the initial construction, since the lower walls were smooth and only the top half-meter showed tool marks. The Buggers made this, probably when they were mounting the Second Invasion. What was once their forward base was now the center of the International Fleet.

Also, Eros does not appear anywhere in the First Formic War book series or comics that Card co-created with Aaron Johnson.

So then did the buggers use Eros during the first invasion or during the second invasion?

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  • @DVK the first quote says that it was during the first invasion.
    – ibid
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 2:39
  • yeah im having trouble knowing what you want here, we have 2 cannon answers. >.< What edition of the enders games and enders shadow do you have, because Card has done revisions on alot of his books
    – Himarm
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 3:02
  • also @DVK do you have a link to card talking about later books and canon, i seriously want to take a look at that. he does so few interviews
    – Himarm
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 3:09
  • @DVK figured!!! well if you find and and post the answer i guess ill see it then
    – Himarm
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 3:20
  • @Himarm I don't believe these parts were ever revised.
    – ibid
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 3:56

1 Answer 1

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Preface and reasoning behind my answer

There were several cases where Card fairly openly indicated that any discrepancies between the different Enderverse books are meant to be resolved by taking the later books as "more correct". This involves planned changes to the next revision of Ender's Game to match the sequels.

I have factored out full proof of this (including the "later works supercede earlier works as far as correctness" concept) into a separate answer:

What is Orson Scott Card's position on discrepancies between various Enderverse books?

To quote from that post, Afterword to "Ender in Exile" explicitly says later books' version of events trumps earlier books', especially original version of Ender's Game:

So while the meat of chapter 15 of Ender's Game is exactly right, the details and timeline are not. They aren't what they should have been then, and they certainly aren't what they need to be now. ...

All in all, I realized, it was chapter 15 that was wrong, not the later stories, which took more details into account and developed the story in a superior way.

Why should I be stuck now with decisions carelessly made twenty-four years ago? What I've written since is right; those contradictory but unimportant details in the original novel are wrong.


Further confirmation specific to First Invasion came from someone discussing this with First Invasion books' author Aaron Johnston:

In terms of the first one, I was able to talk with Johnston about it, and he confirmed my suspicion that he and Card are continuing in the "fluid continuity" and "the stories must be good, and continuity will be altered to fit those good stories" approach that marked "Ender in Exile" and "Shadow of the Giant." So they are aware of these issues, but feel that the story they're telling now doesn't contradict the important moral and emotional aspects of Ender's Game, and so they're going with that, with hopes to alter future editions of Ender's Game.


ANSWER:

As such, looks like the original Ender's Game story about Eros being involved in the First Invasion is wrong and presumably will be fixed in the next revision, because it contradicts the later story of First Invasion books which never mention Eros at all.

Eros was used by Buggers in the Second invasion.

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