Details Books Supposing Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1)
| Original Title: | Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus |
| ISBN: | 0812508645 (ISBN13: 9780812508642) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Pastwatch #1 |
| Literary Awards: | Sidewise Award Nominee for Best Long Form (1996) |
Orson Scott Card
Paperback | Pages: 402 pages Rating: 3.97 | 13682 Users | 957 Reviews
Identify Epithetical Books Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1)
| Title | : | Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1) |
| Author | : | Orson Scott Card |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 402 pages |
| Published | : | March 1st 2016 by Tor Books (first published February 1996) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction. Time Travel. Historical. Historical Fiction. Fantasy. Alternate History. Science Fiction Fantasy |
Narrative As Books Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1)
Orson Scott Card’s very entertaining 1996 novel Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus is a time travel book and so much more.Many great science fiction / fantasy writers have had fun and great success with time travel as an extension of their speculative vision. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Bradbury, de Camp, H.G. Wells, Vonnegut, Twain, and Piers Anthony to name just a few. There seems to be as many approaches to the time travel conundrum as there are writers, but generally falling into one of two camps. There is the classic paradox scenario where a time traveller actually goes back in time and is a part of the action and so perhaps changes his own destiny. There is also the time traveller as voyeur, where the agent can only view and report.
This is a little of both.
Setting up a time travel process whereby scientists can “see” into the past, the sightseers make an astonishing discovery that perhaps they can be seen and influence those in the past. From here comes the next step of travel, and so Card is off.
The subject is good ole Christopher Columbus and his world-changing voyage. Should he have gone east instead of west to influence the Crusades? What would that be like? Could travellers making influential changes create a worse result? Card asks and answers many of these questions and creates a fecundity of time travel paradoxical theorizing.
Columbus is more than just a time traveller’s target, Card spends plenty of time getting to know the Genoese and this history seems well researched and deftly produced.
The reader is thus entranced and entertained, spell bound by Card’s exceptional storytelling and invited to consider a myriad of time travel what ifs.
Rating Epithetical Books Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1)
Ratings: 3.97 From 13682 Users | 957 ReviewsDiscuss Epithetical Books Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (Pastwatch #1)
Pastwatch was one of those books that got better and better as I read. The concept of being able to change history is incredibly fascinating, both from a physics time-travel point of view, and from a historical/philosophical context. The concept of "Pastwatch" - being able to scroll through history as if watching it on film (or microfilm, as it were, which is how I pictured it in the book) is both well-constructed and well-executed in the book. Definitely a recommended read for history buffs,Pastwatch is a really interesting alternate history by Orson Scott Card.It is really hard to give a summary of this book without giving away any spoilers. Normally I'd give a short summary and then go into my opinions, but I don't feel comfortable giving a summary here because one of the most important plot points isn't something you discover until half way through the book, and I'm not going to ruin that for you guys.One of the most interesting parts of this book is that it takes place during
This book is in the key of C Minor, because it's just that tragic. Final Verdict: 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 Stars Sometimes, English teachers make horrible choices.Pastwatch is no exception.It was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad book. Three Big Things that Epically Suck About Pastwatch, in No Particular Order The First: The Plot HolesIn Pastwatch, the characters go back in time and try to prevent the people of the past from dying. In one scene of the book, Manjam (a
Recommended by Jocelyn and Joje. It's a science-fiction, utopian novel as well as a thoughtful and well-researched reflection on History and its twists, a moral tale filled with lovely, compassionate and clever characters. At some point in my reading, I thought that the story was lacking a major villain (there is a minor one) to make the plot even more exciting and a little less heavy on the politically correct, but this may have been my wicked mind speaking. In the end, I came to realize that a
This is an idea book, not a character book. In this book, Card is exploring the idea that a group of people would deliberately go back in time to alter events in such a way that human history would work out "better." The height of hubris, definitely, for any group of mortals to think they could predict future events accurately enough to know what to "improve." I think that Card is right that humanity would have to be in the brink of extinction before they would permit such an experiment.There
This wasn't my favorite Orson Scott Card book, but it was still a good read. I don't think I've ever read anything bad by him; so I'm not surprised at all. I thought the story was very interesting, but a little sad because some of the things I wanted to happen couldn't happen with how the story went. Unfortunately, I can't put much detail into this review as it has been several months between reading the book and posting my review, and the things I remember clearly would definitely be considered
This is a well-written work of science fiction, as are all of Card's works. Like his Rachel and Leah, however, the characters of this book who pretend to be historical are not very accurate. I enjoy good fiction and exciting narratives. I dislike fiction masquerading as history or a work such as this blurring the lines between history and fiction so thoroughly that it is impossible to see where the imagination ends and facts begin. The idea that the voyage of Columbus changed the entire face of
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