Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus - Hardcover

Card, Orson Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312850581 ISBN 13: 9780312850586

Publisher: Tor Books, 1996

Synopsis

In the not-too-distant future, after a scientific innovation allows researchers to open a window on the past, a young woman meddles to send an individual onto a slightly different path in life, interference that has unexpected repercussions for the present and future. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

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

About the Author:

ORSON SCOTT CARD, the author of the New York Times bestseller Ender's Game, has won several Hugo and Nebula awards for his works of speculative fiction. His 'Ender' novels are widely read by adults and younger readers and are increasingly used in schools. Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy, biblical novels, the American frontier fantasy series' The Tales of Alvin Maker', poetry, and many plays and scripts. He currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0312850581
• ISBN 13: 9780312850586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 351