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    Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
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    Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
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    Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
    Ebook456 pages7 hours

    Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

    By Orson Scott Card

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In one of the most powerful and thought-provoking novels of his remarkable career, Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch 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.

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 30, 2009
    ISBN9781429966191
    Unavailable
    Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
    Author

    Orson Scott Card

    Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University. He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

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    Reviews for Pastwatch

    4/5

    689 ratings38 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Phenomenal writing with great detail to back a story that never happened, but would seem to be true. Great Idea for a book and hope to see more of this in the future.
    • 4/5
      “Pastwatch” is an interesting concept, but it has one of Card’s most boring beginnings. It’s only my appreciation for Card’s general talent that kept me reading to see where he’s going with such a dull story line. After a hundred pages or so I began to see that Card was giving me a reasonably accurate, and entertaining, short history of Christopher Columbus’ life and times. I can’t say that it was worth the time and effort on my part, but I did enjoy the history lesson. And then the story took fire as the protagonists managed to change history…only to discover that they produced the same horrendous results as the “people” who changed their original history before them. That epiphany initiated the real story, wherein the ultimate project became one of undoing the worst of mankind by setting up a mechanical trajectory that would cause humans to act sanely for a thousand years or so. The challenge of pulling this task off gave the story enough tension and action to make the rest of the book worth reading.Giving all that, it still seems more pie-in-the-sky than his other explorations into how to create a reasonably empathic and united world culture.Series: Ender’s Game & Ender’s Shadow—1985-2012Series: Pastwatch (Christopher Columbus)—1996Series: Empire & Hidden Empire—2006-2009It wasn’t until I read Hidden Empire that I realized Card was exploring different possible scenarios that might produce an Earth with a united peoples living reasonably cooperatively with each other. Pastwatch is the least convincing alternative…especially since it’s founded on Christianity, while ignoring the other major religions and China.
    • 1/5
      Rating it one star without reading based on subject and author, fight me.Yeah I owned this (but never got around to reading it) literally decades ago when I was a fucking religious conservative dweeb teenager. I got better.
    • 3/5
      This is an idea book, not a character book. Thoughtful and well-researched reflection on history. There is morality in it as well as clever and compassionate characters that make the book enjoyable. There's a plethora of characters and multiple jumps between the 22nd and 15th century that make it sometimes hard to follow. A ponderable book that's enjoyable. If you could change one moment in history to influence the current world, which would you choose? Would you do it?
    • 4/5
      The most interesting thing about this story is the way in which things that looked like divine intervention from one aspect, looked completely different from the other. As a believer, it gave me some idea of how God might look at us - how He watches and knows us, how He sometimes intervenes and other times must not interfere. This is fiction, not theology, and I'm sure that was not the intention of the author, but nevertheless, some definite food for thought. And the idea that the conquest of the new world could have gone a different way - that was speculation at its best.
    • 5/5
      After reading Ender's Game, and with it two of the three subsequent novels, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide, I didn't expect Orson Scott Card to achieve anywhere near that level of brilliance ever again. Pastwatch comes oh-so close.
    • 5/5
      After Ender's Game, this is my favorite Orson Scott Card book. I'm waiting to read the next book in the Pastwatch series, whenever it comes out.
      The plot twist at the end is certainly farfetched, given what I've learned from other non-fiction books (like "Guns, Germs, and Steel") about what happens when different cultures meet, but if you let yourself get absorbed in the story, it's great.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable. I've spent more hours pondering thoughts related to this book than most books I've read. If you could change one moment in history to influence the current world, which would you choose? OSC's answer, this book, is compelling.
    • 3/5
      It constantly amazes me the gulf there is between Card's obnoxious and forcefully expressed social opinions and the humanitarian voice that speaks through many of his novels, but never more so than in this instance.

      In the not-so-far future, the earth seems to be recovering from the onslaught of the 20th and 21st centuries. The human population has stabilized at a smallish fraction of the current level. Employees of the organization called Pastwatch spend their time scanning history using a device that can passively observe the past . . . and, they begin to suspect, perhaps not entirely passively, because it seems the occasional sensitive can detect the "presence" of the observers. One research project is to pinpoint those moments in history whose consequences led to the devastation of the planet and the human species's current sorry shape. The crucial moment appears to be Christopher Columbus's decision, in the wake of his near-miraculous survival after a shipwreck, to sail westward across the Atlantic in search of new lands to exploit and new souls to save for Christ. The Pastwatchers are appalled when they witness the instant of his making that decision: he received a visitation from two human figures and a dove -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the iconography of the time -- who told him the westward voyage should be his holy duty. The Pastwatchers recognize these figures must be time travellers from an alternate future, a future so bad that its denizens have resorted to altering the past in order to erase it and of course, in the process, themselves.

      [Why should that be an inevitable consequence? In the physics of time expressed in this book, there are no alternative realities: always only the one. This is because the quanta of time -- "moments" -- are quite discrete from each other. "When the machine was introduced into our history, from that point forward a new infinite set of moments completely replaced the old infinite set of moments. There were no spare leftover moment-locations for the old moments to hang around in." (p194) And the fact that the time device was created in a future that, the instant it used the device, ceased ever to have existed is no paradox because, while it seems to us that causality is timelike, in fact causality is independent of time and its functionings unamenable to rational analysis (rather like the Jungian concept of synchronicity): in particular, "Causality can be recursive but time cannot." (p193).]

      So some event in the other history happened that would have been forestalled by Columbus sailing the ocean blue, as he did in our own past. What could it have been? A young Pastwatcher builds a near-watertight case that it was the discovery, not of the New World by the Old, but of the Old World by the New -- the conquest of Europe by the Tlaxcalans, who brought with them the hideous practice of mass human torture-sacrifice that was rife among all the South American cultures of the era.

      Around this time in our future, time travel is developed, and the Pastwatchers are obviously highly interested by this field of technology so close to the one they're using. Also, it occurs to them that, just like their counterparts, they could perhaps alter history to lead to a happier outcome. This notion is spurred by the discovery that the earth is not in fact recovering, as people had thought: any recovery will be centuries or millennia in the future, by which time the human species will be long gone. Again they focus on Columbus. If they could, by scuttling his ships, make it impossible for him immediately to return to Europe after his New World landfall, and if they could play upon the Christian sensibilities of the man such as to deflect his mind off gold and slavery toward converting the local civilizations to good liberal values . . . So they send back three volunteers to the 15th century, thereby erasing everyone else after Columbus's time (us included) from reality. Can those three pull off the task?

      This book is extraordinarily slow to get itself off the ground -- about two-thirds of the text is occupied by the setting-up (alternating between the 15th century and the Pastwatchers' present) preparatory to the actual time travel -- and the characterization of some of the major movers and shakers manages to achieve the feat of seeming both laboured and perfunctory at the same time. Much of that setting-up is in itself fascinating (there's a really neat Atlantis/Noah hypothesis!), and it was only a few times that a sense of "oh, for gawd's sake get on with it" swept over me. The writing is up to Card's usual high and elegant standard (although near the end there are some signs of apparent haste). Overall, I'd recommend this to friends as worth their time.
    • 3/5
      Pastwatch looks at an alternate history of Columbus from the perspective a society that is first able to view the past as it happens and, eventually, to send people back in time to alter history as we know it. I personally feel that Card, a "card-carrying" member of the Mormons enjoys this kind of reconstruction of history because of his faith and how Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism did exactly that, invented a history, to provide a justification for his new religion. (See his Alvin series for another look at an alternate American History.)Quite an enjoyable read, obviously requiring willing suspension of disbelief, but none the worse for that. Card may have other axes to grind than what I have assumed above, but his goal as a story-teller is to tell a good story...and he succeeds admirably with that.For all that, it is not really a book that I would read again. Card may have (probably did!) considerable research into the Columbus history as we have it. But this then means that one would need to do similar research to find out what is historical and what is not. Obviously, any dialogue and almost all motivations would be excluded, but the overall events both personal and political too would need to be reverified, and that is just too much work for too little gain. Enjoy the story; Card creates enjoyable plots, characters and tensions within the same. Just don't expect to get (necessarily!) any real history here.Additionally, his reinvention of the Flood, just does not come close to the Biblical story at all. Major failing for me.
    • 2/5
      Interesting book I read years ago. I love the uncovering of certain historical information in the novel -- the real story of the biblical flood and other moments are fun. but ultimately it's Orson Scott Card so the ideas are only so good and the execution is labored. I've never finished another one of his books.
    • 5/5
      Actually one of my favorite Card books ever; only one of 2 that I’ve read twice (Ender being the other of course); takes u on a wonderful trip thru time with awesome What if? scenarios; a must for any time jumping junkie!!
    • 4/5
      Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card (first published in 1996) is a complex story about scientists/researchers, Christopher Columbus, and alternate history. The researchers were part of the Pastwatch project, which enabled them to witness and study any time and place in the history of the world. At first the images provided only fleeting glimpses that lacked detail and sound. However, the continued development of the Pastwatch technology, enabled the researchers to clearly view, hear, and record events and/or individual conversations that interested them. For many years the researchers were limited to voyeurism, i.e., they could not communicate with their subjects. However, new technology eventually provided the ability to communicate with historical subjects. Of course that ability also provided opportunities to affect the events of the past, which provided the possibility of changing history, and therefore changing the present as well. Tagiri and Hassan lead the Columbus project within the Pastwatch organization. They were concerned about the way European explorers/invaders (mostly from Spain) raped, murdered and took native peoples from the new world back to Spain where they were forced to live as slaves. The Columbus project was established to try to use the Pastwatch technology to eliminate that exploitation and torture by the Spaniards. The researchers believed that the best way to accomplish this was to either stop Columbus from sailing west to the new world or change his attitudes about native peoples and slavery. After many years, Tagiri and Hassan’s daughter, Diko, became the leader of this effort and the evolved technology enabled the Pastwatch researchers to physically travel back in time to impact history. In addition to their concerns about physical violence toward the people in the past and the slavery of those people, the researchers were also concerned about a crumbling ecosystem and society in the present. Changing the actions of Columbus was seen as the key to preventing the slavery and possibly avoiding ecological and societal catastrophe in the present. This book takes the reader back and forth from the Pastwatch researchers in the present to Columbus and his contemporaries. It also enlightens the reader about the development of societies in Haiti and surrounds. It provides a very interesting account of the life of Columbus and the society in which he lived. Diko and her team journey back in time and endure much loss and hardship to create an alternate history. The pivotal role of Columbus regarding the alternate world history is very well developed and fascinating. I found this book to be a first-rate and very enjoyable time travel and alternate history tale.
    • 4/5
      I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card. His books show that he has one of the most imaginative minds out there. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is no different.It starts out with a small prologue, that explains how the world has ended up in the not so distant future. We learn that many species and many humans have been wiped out but despite this, humanity has taken a turn. It has become, while not Utopian, a more understanding society, interested in learning from mistakes.We then are shot into the past at a look at Christopher Columbus' life. It is just a little snippet and gives us an idea of the story to come. We also learn that someone has been watching this interatction of Colubus, someone from the future.Tagiri is part of the project Pastwatch. Essentially, there are two different machines that researchers use for Pastwatch, Tempoview and the newer TruSite. Both machines allow researchers to look back in time. Tagiri is especially interested in the life of slaves, and becomes convinced that Christopher Columbus' voyage is what causes the more brutal slavery and killings in the America's.She eventually marries and has a daughter, Diko, who joins her mother in her research of Columbus. Her father is also part of the team. In the course of their research they also are joined by Hunahpu and Kemal.The researchers come to the conclusion that Columbus must be stopped, but also learn that the future has changed the past before. It is learned that originally Columbus went on a crusade to the East, not his journey to the West. A future pastwatcher plays the holy trinity to change his mind.When time travel is finally invented in their time, it is decided that Kemal, Hunahpu and Diko will travel back in time to save history. They are shuttled to three different times in the Caribbean to set about their work.Throughout the entire novel, chapters on Columbus's life and his original journey are written. It explains some of his past and his love of navigation. It also details to how he rose from being a Weaver's son, to being able to meet with Kings and Queens.Overall I was very intrigued by this novel. Card writes believably and makes sure that even a non-scientific reader can understand his concepts. His writing style is very clear and detailed and you can picture in your head the scenes and people that he describes.Pastwatch is also a very interesting concept because it is a believable invention. It is conceivable that in the future we may develop a machine like this. And if we did, would we use it to the same purposes. Tied into this are Card's views of the morals of the future. They give up their own future to improve the world before them, and that, in this time, is not very believable due to human greed and nature. But it is a wish that we could evolve so highly.My only complaint on the novel is the ending. It doesn't really describe how much is changed, other than the ending of slavery, in this newly created future. I would have liked to know what the countries of the world were all doing, if the great World Wars had happened, etc. It seems like Card did his job of rewriting the past and didn't want to go further.PastwatchPublished in 1996398 pages plus 4 pages of sources
    • 5/5
      An absolutely excellent story, very well written, a great twist on history.
    • 4/5
      If you knew there was a bomb in a building, would you feel obliged to yell as loudly as possible to warn other people? The bomb explodes and the injuries are high and the death toll unimaginable. But then you have an opportunity to go back in time and prevent the bomb from ever being planted in the first place. Take things one step further...let's say that you stop the bomber before he even places his bomb...what else might change? Now you're dealing with what's known as 'the butterfly effect' - if a butterfly flaps it's wings in China, can it change the weather on the other side of the world?"Pastwatch" takes that concept one step further by asking if you can change the course of one man's life, can you change the course of the entire world? That one man happens to be Christopher Columbus."Pastwatch" is about discovery, exploration and redemption. Columbus is believably passionate as we gain glimpses of his upbringing in Genoa, his early years in Portugal, and his ultimate journey to Spain where, for years, he lobbied King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela to support his adventures westward.Pastwatch is a fictional organization tasked with utilizing cutting edge technology that allows people to view events in the past. Card's Pastwatch technology evolved over time, initially only allowing viewers to see events at a very macro level (historical world weather patterns initially), but developed eventually to see into actual human interactions. The most modern versions of Pastwatch technology allow viewers to watch humans interacting in full 3D.Card moves the story swiftly by jumping through 15th century Europe and the future. With each jump, Card effectively evokes emotion and understanding from each characterization. Columbus is but one axis upon which the story revolves. The other characters are instrumental in the analysis and discovery of the ability to change the past. Tagiri focuses her Pastwatch career around the study of slavery. Kemal made one of Pastwatch's early and most fundamental discoveries when he found an individual who very plausibly was the basis upon which Noah, Gilgamesh and other world flood myths stand. Diko and Hunahpu are at the center of a new generation of pastwatchers.Card has an uncanny ability to explore deep and influential topics while unraveling his narrative in an interesting and attainable way. Once the idea of time travel emerges, the characters debate its risks and rewards, but not for a moment did it feel bogged down in pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo. Likewise, there's much debate over slavery, European-based religion, and new world religion, and the speculation of alternative futures for Earth, but they blend seamlessly with the plot and merge well with the jumps into Columbus' inevitable journey across the Atlantic.Card approaches his plot-lines very intelligently, but I found a few gaps in the characters' rationale that ultimately leads to the time travel adventures into the 15th Century.The saga of "Pastwatch" is a remarkable book. I'm such a fan of exploration-era historical novels AND science fiction, that I'm ashamed to have never come across it until recently. It's truly a terrific read and I highly recommend it.One note: the pastwatch concept originates from Card's short story called "Atlantis" which delves deeply into Kemal's identification and discovery of the "original" Noah. It's a very good standalone and rewarding work, and while it's not a necessity to read before "Pastwatch", it adds to the aura and myth that surrounds Kemal.
    • 5/5
      Truly a favorite of mine, this is one of Orson Scott Card's best novels. Combining sci-fi and historical fiction, he posits a "what if" about one of the pivotal moments in American history. Very clever, very interesting, very well written. Note: quite violent, not for young readers.
    • 5/5
      Very cool. Makes a strong case for adding more scifi to my shelves.
    • 4/5
      An interesting book that is part historical novel, part science-fiction novel. Pastwatch partially tells the story of Christopher Columbus' expedition to the the new world and begins with a scenario taking place as the fleet is gathering. But then the story switches to the future. The humans race, mired in a bleak future develops a technology called Pastwatch that allows historians and scientists to observe history. Further development led to Pastwatch 2, an advanced version that allows them to impact the past. So people of the future tweaked things here and there, changing the past and improving the future. One of the first things a Pastwatcher typically does is investigate their own family history. One such researcher traced her roots back to a village that was enslaved. Further investigation reveals that the root of all human exploitation in the New World was Christopher Columbus. Not through direct action, but through an unproven (but soon to be proven by others) conviction that vast wealth lie in the New World. The Pastwatchers decide they can change the history of the human race for the better if they alter Columbus' Caribbean experience. As such a profound change could have a drastic effect on the future, including the very existence of their own lives, a debate ensures when evidence is discovered their history (which at this point is our history) was already modified by Pastwatchers in another timeline, and they botched it.Three people were sent back to different points of time to intercept Columbus and prepare the native tribes. They did have a profound effect on Columbus' expedition, and while we never hear from the future Pastwatchers, those in the past complete their missions and the epilogue mentions an unusual discovery in 1955 of a skull containing information describing the timeline that never was. Whether or not the over-reaching goals of the project were realized -- if human sacrifice was not replaced by human bondage, is left for the reader to speculate.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. The story is really interesting: In the future, humans have developed a machine that allows them to see any point in the past, at any location. When one researcher discovers that it's possible to not only watch, but effect past events, she raises an ethical dilemma. Knowing what they know, and possessing this power, are they obligated to do something to help all the suffering they see? The story flashes back and forth in time chronicling the life of Christopher Columbus and the researchers in the future who are studying him. This is really Card at his best, I'd rank it up with Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Suspense, great characters and a thought-provoking story.
    • 5/5
      This is another alternate reality/history. This novel begins in the distant future. A future where multiple wars, famine, disease, planetary devastation, etc have led to the creation of an ideal society. In this Utopian society a technology has been developed allowing reasearchers to review history. Actually view it like a movie or reality show. One such researcher-Tagiri-in Africa discovers what she believes to be a fulcrum in the history of the world-Christopher Columbus and his ill-fated voyage to the America's. She decides to try and figure out what would have happened had Chrisopher Columbus not made the mistakes he did, setting into motion slavery, colonization and genocide. Then send people back to make changes and prevent the devastation that befalls the world. But, to send people back you erase the timeline in which exist-you do not die because you never were-nor were your parents, children, friends, mate, etc. How much is it worth it to erase the past horrors of history? Do you sacrifice the Utopia you now have on a hypothesis that the world would have been a better place if a few things had been different?A fascinating look at history and how one person can make a difference-and not always for the better. I grew up in a time that did not revere Christopher Columbus. I view him as an idiot-he never even at the time of his death realized that A) he was NOT in India and B) that the American continent was just past modern Haiti and the Bahamas. I am also disgusted that he talked some of the native american Taino Indians into returning to Spain with him where he presented them as slaves to the King and Queen. He wanted to bring Christianity to the heathens and savages-by making them slaves and felt he was improving their lives. In short-I hate him and think it is sick that even now that we know true history and his role in it that we still honor his sorry ass with a holiday in his name. But, I digress, Card portrays Columbus as a spiritually driven man who wanted to bring Christs message and glory to all. I liked much of the supposition of the book but was frankly offended by his solution to the issue-which was to change the colonization of America and make everyone Christians-barf. Like the native americans did not have their own religion and it was not good enough or civilized enough. Otherwise a truly good book.
    • 3/5
      Not a fan of Orson Scott Card science fiction. Probably the historical aspect rendered it more palatable to me...This is a revisionist history - what would the world have been like if Columbus had not returned to Spain, if the Americas had another 50 years of progress before Europe arrived.Well written, compelling characters, and a really good read. The only down side was how quickly it all wrapped up in the end.
    • 5/5
      I have either one word or three to say about this book: Excellent, excellent, excellent! I was put off by the title at first: redeeming Christopher Columbus doesn't sound very fun or very worth while, but the book is truly fantastic. The premise is that researchers on the Pastwatch project use machines to view the past, until they realize that some people in the past are aware of their watching them. In a world that is dying from the sins of the previous generations, the researchers make the decision to attempt to change the past to create a better future. They decide that Columbus' discovery of the Americas is the point at which they can effect the greatest change. Soon, however, they discover that similar researchers in a previous future has also changed their past, resulting in the world that they now live in. They must make the decisions to create a better future than either of the previous ones, facing difficult choices and personally reshaping the fate of the world.The book is very well written, even though you never get personally close to any of the characters. The entire thing is written on the level of the socio-political, ideological, and economic forces involved. It's an intriguing look at the forces that shape the world, while also being a fun and exciting sci-fi tale. One of the most engaging books I've read so far this year. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed Pastwatch a great deal, largely because of the observers and their catalogue of history. Whether intentional or not, Card set up Pastwatch as the ultimate example in philosophical history in that there are cycles of collapse, rejuvenation and, more to the point, a macro example of Hegelian philosophical history. In short, the actions that actions in history are the direct result of the mistakes made from an earlier time in a counter-revolution to correct those problems.
    • 4/5
      This tale is set in the future, after the ecological damage of humanity has almost wiped us out. Earth is enjoying a resurrection as a now peaceful humanity is working to restore the planet's ecology. There have been many technological innovations, including a device that allows people to view the past. Many of the mysteries of history have been cleared up and many lost cultural works have been recovered. The lives of many people who had been left out of the history books are discovered and humanity is now in closer touch with its past than it ever has been before. Then one day, a pair of time viewers discover that an Arawak woman they are observing can see them! This discovery opens up the possibility that they can actually affect the past and raises the question, "Is it better to continue to heal a damaged planet or to go back and prevent the damage in the first place?" Mr. Card does an excellent job of telling the tale, as well as the complementary story of the man whom the Pastwatch crew have identified as pivotal to history, Christopher Columbus. Check it out.--J.
    • 5/5
      One of Card's best. I don't really feel there's much I can say about it without spoiling it. It's not perfect; I found the ending a bit disappointing, and only a few of the characters are likable. But if you could conceivably like a book about time travel or alternate history, you should read this.
    • 4/5
      An interesting look at the true (?) impact of Christopher Columbus' voyages.
    • 4/5
      One of the better alternative history novels out there. Not as deep as "Years of Rice and Salt", but way better than any of the Alvin Maker series. Card is near the top of his form here.
    • 4/5
      Excellent alternative history - what if Columbus never reached the americas? What if another group was responsible for influencing the timelines of history? What is people could view past events and effect them? Absolutely amazing concepts and characters. The What-If questions are answered and explored.
    • 4/5
      This was a really good book. A great vacation book and nice to get a chance to read a book in just two days. Pastwatch is a time travel book, but in my opinion, the only time travel books worth their salt (and I really like time travel!) are books where you travel BACK in time, and Pastwatch suits. There is a lot of information about American history, notably about the discovery of American by Christopher Columbus, and a lot of info about Columbus -- almost "biographical". People of the future -- it's not clear how far in the future but not incredibly far, I think -- are able to use special machines to look at the past. They can look at everything, anything they want. People pick projects and do research and keep recordings of the parts of the past relevant for their projects. One of the projects is about human slavery and Tagiri, the head researcher, through her watching, discovers that it may be possible to go back and intervene in the past in order to improve the lot of humans in the world. Much of the book is spent with this project's researchers trying to figure out when the intervention would need to take place and if the benefits to humanity would indeed outweigh the obvious problem: i.e., that current existence would be snuffed out entirely, the protagonists in the book would now never have existed. Very interesting thought process and research methods. Lots of great information. Fascinating idea. My only complaint was that everything was tied up just too neatly at the end. And that the author makes the sort of wild assumption that just because humanity might not have slavery or human sacrifice anymore, they will also be better stewards of the world. Um, okay.