Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus

by Orson Scott Card
PRMS discard, hardbound, 398 pages
genre: SciFi

Although Card is one of my favorite authors, I have been plowing through this slowly over several months. I'm on page 256, and I've decided to just let it go. I've never been a huge fan of time travel stories and this one is partly fascinating and partly irritating. "Pastwatch" is a technology that allows the watchers to go back in time and observe people and events in the past. Then a watcher realizes that the people being watched can *see* her! This changes everything.

The Christopher Columbus portions of the story - his history, motivations, and beliefs - are interesting, but I wonder how much research Card did and how accurate he is. His sources list at the end is pretty impressive.

A few passages really caught my attention. On page 49, "His words were so confident - yet she felt a dizzying vertigo, as if she stood on the edge of a great chasm, and the ground had just shifted a little under her feet. What sort of arrogance did she have, even to imagine reaching back into the past and making changes? Who am I, she thought, if I dare to answer prayers intended for the gods?"

The conversation on page 194 about going back (and who should go back and why . . . ) would have been a fascinating conversation to have with my peers when I was a teenager or a young adult. Now it doesn't interest me. It seems pointless.

This comment on page 203 amused me. "I know that to mate with someone without marriage is a repudiation of the community, a refusal to take one's proper role within the society."

It feels liberating to not spend more energy on this book. I have so many others I want to read!

A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card
paper, home library, 299 pgs

This was a re-read (multiple times). Why do I do that when I have so many other books to read? I think it has something to do with not wanting to actually have to think when I'm tired. Since I know the story already, it's a lazy read. It's similar to other people "vegging out" in front of the tv - mindless entertainment.

Card is my favorite SciFi author, but he wrote this book early in his career and it is a rough read! It lacks the smoothness of his later work, but is still an intriguing story. The descendants of an intellectual rebellion are each making the most of their ancestors' strengths. The Muellers are using their genetics to regenerate human body parts. The Nkumai are selling physics (e.g. faster than light travel). Lanik Mueller is both hero and pariah in this story of power, mystery, and salvation. (Not the kind that Jesus offers, though!)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

This is at least the sixth time I've read this. This used to be my all-time favorite SciFi title, I think I'm at the point where I like Ender's Shadow better. The only books I've read more than this one are the Bible and Jane Eyre. What is it about a certain book that can make it just as enjoyable upon multiple readings as it is the first time through? I have such a huge reading stack right now that it's hard to believe I took the time to re-read this! Onward!