Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

The Fiction Spot

A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature

Also in this Weekly Bulletin:
The Non-fiction Feature: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The Product Spot: National Geographic – Human Origins

The Pithy Take

At a certain point in the future, engineers have invented machines that create windows to view the past. The organization that runs the machines, Pastwatch, employs a particularly curious researcher, Tagiri, who develops an all-consuming interest in Christopher Columbus and his effect on the world. The novel seesaws to Columbus’s perspective, where he has a “divine vision” and charges forth with ferocious ambition towards the Atlantic. Pastwatch discovers that his vision was actually a hologram from a different future timeline to change the course of history. Why would someone do this? What, morally, should be done next? Orson Scott Card blends historical fact with science fiction to create a novel that epitomizes the fragility of human history and how quickly the fate of an entire species can turn on the actions of just one person.

So let’s say that in another version of history, another group within a previous iteration of Pastwatch discovered they could change the past, and they did it. Let’s say that they decided that the most terrible event in all of history was the last crusade…Why not?…The great Muslim civilization might be destroyed, and with it who knows what treasures of knowledge.