"A Young Man with Prospects" is a story by Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...

 set in his Ender's Game universe

Ender's Game series

The Ender's Game series is a series of science fiction books by Orson Scott Card. The series started with the novelette "Ender's Game", which was later expanded into the novel Ender's Game. It currently consists of eleven novels and ten short stories...

. It tells the story of how Alessandra and Dorabella Toscano end up colonizing one of the former formic worlds. It appears in Card's Webzine InterGalactic Medicine Show

Intergalactic Medicine Show

InterGalactic Medicine Show is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It was founded by multiple award-winning author Orson Scott Card. An anthology also called Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show was published by Tor in August, 2008, featuring selected stories from...

.

Plot summary

"A Young Man with Prospects" is the story of Alessandra Toscano. Alessandra is a poor thirteen year old girl from Monopoli, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. One day Alessandra's seemingly irresponsible mother comes home and announces that they will be colonizing

Colonisation

Colonization occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect", originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the...

 one of the former Formics

Formics

The Formics, also known as Buggers, are a fictional insectoid alien species from the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels by Orson Scott Card.The term "Formic" is derived from formica, the Latin word for ant...

 worlds. When she first finds out, Alessandra doesn't want to go, Alessandra then tracks down her grandmother whom she had never met and asks her for help. However, when her grandmother hears that Alessandra wants to stay with her she throws her out. Upon returning home Alessandra finds out that the reason they are so poor is because her mother has been paying her grandmother to stay out of their lives to protect Alessandra. When she learns this Alessandra agrees to go. Later Alessandra learns that she will be traveling with Ender Wiggin

Ender Wiggin

Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is a fictional character from Orson Scott Card's science fiction story Ender's Game and its sequels , as well as in the first part of the spin-off series, Ender's Shadow...

, who will be made governor of the colony when they arrive. Her mother hopes that they will fall in love and get married. On their last day in Italy Alessandra's grandmother comes to their house and begins screaming at them. Alessandra's mother stands up to the woman and tells her to go away.
Alessandra later makes friends with Ender and under her mothers influence, tries to seduce him. This fails and she decides to go to the colony instead of staying aboard with her mom and Admiral Morgan. She later marries Po, Ix's older son.

Characters

• Alessandra Toscano
• Dorabella Toscano - Alessandra's mother
• Isabella Santangelo – Dorabella's mother
• Alessandra’s neighbors – unnamed

Relationship to "The Gold Bug"

According to Card while he was writing "The Gold Bug

The Gold Bug (short story)

"The Gold Bug" is a story by Orson Scott Card set in his Ender's Game universe. It tells the story of how Sel Menach steps aside as leader of a colony world to let Ender Wiggin take over as governor...

" he started to think about how Ender got to the colony. As a result he came up with a story idea which involved a power-struggle between Ender and the ship's captain. However, since Card didn't want the story to be only about Ender and the captain he decided to put a mother and daughter on the ship. When he first began writing about Alessandra and Dorabella Toscano it was supposed to have been the opening for that story, but as he sat down to plan the scenes they developed into a story of their own.

Publication

"A Young Man with Prospects" was published in the February 2007 issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show. It also appears in the anthology Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show is an anthology edited by Edmund R. Schubert and Orson Scott Card.Originally published in paperback by Tor Books in August 2008 , It contains eighteen stories from Card's online magazine InterGalactic Medicine Show including four from Card set in his...

. This story also appears as Chapter 5 of Card's novel Ender in Exile.