I just read this Orson Scott Card book, which flirts with being an AH and does involve time travel. Personally, I consider Card one of the best and most imaginative writers in modern science fiction and am curious if others on this board have read this book and what they think of his "solution" to avoid the rape of the new world by the old?
Pastwatch, the Redemption of Christopher Columbus
- Thread starter zoomar
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I flipped through it a year ago. It seemed OK, but I was kinda put off by the prolestysing ("Yes, I know Columbus was pond scum, I GET THE POINT!!!") and the idea of the Tlaxtecs conquering Europe. It seemed a bit too "Civ II-ish" for my tastes.
Actually, if anything I thought it presented Columbus and his motivations in a very positive light.
The book definitely belongs to the "Great Man" school of historiography which will no doubt rub many the wrong way.
Yes, the "other history" with Tlaxcala conquering all of MesoAmerica and then being in a technological position to conquer Europe a few hundred years later is pretty far fetched.
But the "new" history engineered by the book's time-traveling protagonists sounded to me like it could work - and it was imaginatively done.
My biggest beef was the linear concept of time: No branching, just one time stream which changes when the others snuffed out. Too much paradox to me.
The book definitely belongs to the "Great Man" school of historiography which will no doubt rub many the wrong way.
Yes, the "other history" with Tlaxcala conquering all of MesoAmerica and then being in a technological position to conquer Europe a few hundred years later is pretty far fetched.
But the "new" history engineered by the book's time-traveling protagonists sounded to me like it could work - and it was imaginatively done.
My biggest beef was the linear concept of time: No branching, just one time stream which changes when the others snuffed out. Too much paradox to me.
That book, and Philip K. Dick's "Man In A High Castle" got me interested in the subject of AH. That being said, it involved an interesting and not commonly encountered premise (possible conquest of Europe by Mesoamericans with the POD in XVth century, even though rather unlikely - especially since any crusade of a magnitude described in the book, no matter how devastating on the victors and losers alike, would leave Europe with generations of battle-hardened warriors with not much to do - think post-Reconquista Spain, and the places these Spaniards, considered the finest soldiers in Europe at the time, ended up in), and the outcome that actually for once had characters play god and succeed.
It's been awhile since I've read the tome — I've got it somewhere on my bookshelf — but I thought it was rather interesting. As another thread contributor stated, the idea of having just one time stream with no splitting whatsoever was a bit of a letdown ... but each author to thine own devices, eh?
BTW, Civ II rocks! I've had the Aztecs messing up Europe and Africa more than once in games I've played.
Usually they get beat up by the Sioux and/or the Americans, though.
RealityBYTES
BTW, Civ II rocks! I've had the Aztecs messing up Europe and Africa more than once in games I've played.
Usually they get beat up by the Sioux and/or the Americans, though.RealityBYTES