"Pastwatch", Orson Scott Card

[+ poolboy48220]

it's not his most famous work (I'd guess "Ender's Game" has to be considered that) but this book hit a lot of my buttons - time travel, historical fiction, the theme of redemption. It's about researchers in the future meddling with the circumstances of Columbus's first trip to America.

 

Card's shown himself to be quite the homophobe, and a remark he made about making Ender's Game into a movie, and the problem of finding enough talented child actors might be over because of Jake Lloyd's performance in "The Phantom Menace" (really?) has always puzzled me (especially since "The Sixth Sense" with Haley Joel Osment came out the same year).

[+ oldNbusted]

It's a shameless apologia for the European lead genocide of the Americas in general and Columbus in particular. I think it's important to remember the time frame it was released. For years, people were anticipating a huge celebration of the modern world in 1992, the 500th anniversary of the voyage. Major motion pictures were put into production.

 

At some point, more progressive people picked up on this and a pushback started, resulting in very little happening.

 

Sea of Troubles : Celebrations: The 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage is raising waves of controversy over whether the trip was for good or ill.

 

So it was after this, the book was published in 1996. I'm generally not in favor of suppressing books, but this was one of a couple of books I threw in the trash because I didn't want to play a role in someone else reading my copy. Essentially arguing that if the Europeans had not conquered the Americas, the kingdoms of the Americans would have conquered Europe in a campaign of murderous terror is a pathetic case of hypothetical whataboutism.

[+ FrankR]

Although I love the genre, i have never enjoyed his story telling. I tried really hard; wanted to enjoy the books but gave up after the 2nd book sampled. Just not for me. Nobody is perfect, but I will stick with David Weber, John Ringo and S. M. Stirling.