Amazon.com
Anyone who's read Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong knows about the devastating consequences that Columbus's voyage and ensuing colonization had on the native people of the Americas and Africa. In a thought-provoking work that is part science fiction, part historical drama, Orson Scott Card writes about scientists in a fearful future who study that tragic past, then attempt to actually intervene and change it into something better.
Tagiri and Hassan are members of Pastwatch, an academic organization that uses machines to see into the past and record it. Their project focuses on slavery and its dreadful effects, and gradually evolves into a study of Christopher Columbus. They eventually marry and their daughter Diko joins them in their quest to discover what drove Columbus west.
Columbus, with whom readers become acquainted through both images in the Pastwatch machines and personal narrative, is portrayed as a religious man with both strengths and weaknesses, a charismatic leader who sometimes rose above but often fell beneath the mores of his times. As usual, Orson Scott Card uses his formidable writing skills to create likable, complex characters who face gripping problems; he also provides an entertaining and thoughtful history lesson in Pastwatch. --Bonnie Bouman
From Publishers Weekly
Playing with the time stream isn't new to science fiction, but Card (Ender's Game), who's won both a Hugo and a Nebula, gives the concept a new twist here-with mixed results. His angle is to make the temporal interference not accidental but intentional, as a group of scientists go back in time to alter Columbus's journey. Sponsored by the organization Pastwatch, which uses a machine called TruSite II to view the past in remarkable detail, the "Columbus Project" is headed by Tagiri, whose TruSite viewing of the horrors of slavery has prompted her to revise the famed explorer's agenda. Tagiri sends into the past her daughter, Diko, a Mayan descendent named Hunahpu and a man named Kemal, a prickly sort whose initial skepticism is transformed into a fierce commitment to change the past. Armed with devices from the future, the three return to 1492, determined to transform Columbus from a gold-seeking pirate into a proponent of world peace and global unity. Uniformly well-meaning, the trio is just too sanctified to believe, and in their hands, the complexities of temporal mechanics are boiled down to simplistic cause and effect. Some sparks are generated when the Pastwatchers finally meet Columbus, but even that encounter produces fewer surprises than you'd expect from a master like Card. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Under the auspices of Pastwatch, a 23rd-century organization dedicated to viewing the past, three individuals journey to 15th-century Meso-America. They intend to prevent the European conquest of the Americas by altering the circumstances surrounding Columbus's historic voyage. Card's latest stand-alone novel posits a bold and compassionate alternative history filled with believable historical and fictional characters. The author of Ender's Game (Tor Bks., 1985) and the "Alvin Maker" series clearly demonstrates his brilliance as a weaver of possibilities. A priority purchase for sf collections.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Given the political squabbles over America's traditional "discoverer," the subtitle of this novel might be enough to scare off many readers. Except, of course, that it is written by Orson Scott Card, one of the finest current writers of science fiction who possesses a rare feeling for both history and religion, as he has displayed in his saga of Alvin Maker, recently resumed in Alvin Journeyman. The plot of his new book is fairly straightforward: three time travelers from a ruined and doomed future Earth journey to the time of Columbus' landing, hoping to alter events so that the contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres will be less disastrous for the American Indians, indeed, for the whole world. At the heart of the book, however, is a marvelous, enormously powerful portrait of Columbus himself. Another superior addition to a superior body of work. Roland Green
Review
"Card makes a strong case for being the best writer science fiction has to offer." --The Houston Post
"A bold and compassionate alternative history filled with believable historical and fictional characters. The author of Ender's Game and the Alvin Maker series clearly demonstrates his brilliance as a weaver of possibilities." --Library Journal
"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is the best book Orson Scott Card has written since 1985, when his Ender's Game won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards." --Philadelphia Inquirer
"Readable and engaging, full of likable heroes and unmistakable villains....Pastwatch raises many significant and vital questions about humanity's social development, that mixture of flaws and promise." --Locus
Review
"Card makes a strong case for being the best writer science fiction has to offer." --The Houston Post
"A bold and compassionate alternative history filled with believable historical and fictional characters. The author of Ender's Game and the Alvin Maker series clearly demonstrates his brilliance as a weaver of possibilities." --Library Journal
"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is the best book Orson Scott Card has written since 1985, when his Ender's Game won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards." --Philadelphia Inquirer
"Readable and engaging, full of likable heroes and unmistakable villains....Pastwatch raises many significant and vital questions about humanity's social development, that mixture of flaws and promise." --Locus
Book Description
In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card interweaves a compelling portrait of Christopher Columbus with the story of a future scientist who believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world filled with hope and healing.
About the Author
Born in Richland, Washington in 1951, Orson Scott Card grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He lived in Brazil for two years as an unpaid missionary for the Mormon Church and received degrees from Brigham Young University (1975) and the University of Utah (1981). The author of numerous books, Card was the first writer to receive both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel two years in a row, first for Ender's Game and then for the sequel Speaker for the Dead. He lives with his wife and children in North Carolina.
Home
