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sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-18 01:31 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-18 01:31 pm
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, by Orson Scott Card
I used to love this book when I was a teen but I haven't read it for a VERY long time because I had the growing suspicion that if I were to read it again I would discover that some of Orson Scott Card's execrable prejudices had made it into the narrative. The other day I pulled it off my bookshelf with the thought that maybe it was finally time to get rid of my copy, but I glanced at the first page and all of a sudden I felt the need to reread it again first, something I thought I'd never do.
And having now done so...I was absolutely right about the execrable prejudices, and I'm mad about how much I still care about this terrible book. Look: the premise underlying the whole book is that the worst possible thing for human history would be Christopher Columbus NOT voyaging to the Americas. You can't escape the fact that the very premise of the book is insultingly, enormously racist - and then it piles on more racism and sexism and so forth on top of that, in the reading of it.
Pastwatch is a group of researchers in a post-environmental-catastrophe future, who develop technology to be able to look into the past. And as they do so, they begin to realise that maybe it would be possible to change the past in order to bring about a better future with less suffering and unhappiness. The story of the researchers is alternated with sections of historical fiction about Christopher Columbus, the figure the researchers eventually settle on to be the centre of their plans.
When I was a teen, I didn't notice most of the terrible things this book does and loved it for the things it does do well. And there ARE some very good things about it!
I loved all the characters in the Pastwatch sections and how dedicated they are to understanding other kinds of people, to promoting the importance even of the overlooked and oppressed, to listening to anyone and engaging from a basis of equality. I loved Tagiri especially, her compassion and her oddness, and how it's her oddness specifically that allows her to do the things she does instead of conformity being valued. And as a white person I had the privilege to be able to have it be nice to think of Columbus as a fundamentally good person who merely got some things wrong. It's comforting to think of a world where people are willing to redeem themselves even if they do evil things, that they can learn better and do better, that we can all make a better future together. And the writing is engaging and readable, and the very idea of Pastwatch is just endlessly interesting to think about.
BUT. There's such a big but there.
It is so racist! In that way where it is clear that the author thinks he's doing amazing at being an ally by including such racial diversity amongst his characters.
The very idea of writing a book where noted colonialist, slaver, and murderer Christopher Columbus is one of the GREATEST PEOPLE TO EVER EXIST IN HUMAN HISTORY is just breathtaking to start with.
(Why yes, the book DOES explicitly say that there's nobody else who can compare to Columbus' greatness other than the Noah figure!) (And yes, the Noah myth IS prioritised over the other flood myths of the region when discussing the historical reality behind the myth!) (And no, the idea that plenty of overlooked people could have been just as great if they hadn't been prevented due to circumstances beyond their control is never thought of!) (And obviously the idea that "great" could possibly mean anything other than "influential" is never considered!) (and yes I have reached semantic satiation on the word great and it doesn't sound like a word anymore! :P)
cut both for spoilers and for discussions of racism, sexism, ableism, and christianity-centrism
But then we also get into things like:
Columbus was clearly just a product of his time! No discussion of course of the way that throughout history there have always been people who know better than to dismiss people of other races as subhuman, and although "product of his time" may be an explanation it is not an excuse.
Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica "would never have given rise to the democratic and tolerant and scientific values that eventually emerged from European culture." YIKES. And this is put into the mouth of a Mayan character no less.
No cognitive dissonance between the above and the fact that it's in our version of reality, where white colonialism succeeded, that the planet of the Pastwatch people is ruined beyond hope of saving!
The main Muslim character volunteers for the role of terrorist bomber in order to be a martyr!
There's a secret cabal of powerful people controlling the earth and the flow of information from behind the scenes!
The plan for creating a new and better version of history involves converting the whole of the Americas to Christianity!
There's a throwaway dismissal of autistic people having any worth! (I NOW HEADCANON HUNAHPU AS AUTISTIC AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME)
There's a comment casually equating abortion with murder!
There seems to be an underlying assumption that women are more emotional and men are more rational/scientific! And yes the book also shows that both approaches have value, but that fundamental biological determinism is still there. Complementarianism time!
There's hints of that weird thing some varieties of christianity have about previous relationships ruining you for future ones, and especially for women, in Diko's rejection of Hunahpu: "Let me come to whatever husband I do have without the memories of another husband or another lover to encumber me."
Despite Tagiri's interest in the history of her family and in the lives of slaves, the book as a whole absolutely upholds the Great Man view of history. I mean, Columbus obviously, yes, but also the whole narrative is taken up with the notion that just a few really impressive people are the ones who really matter in shaping history. There's even an unnecessary and unquestioning valorisation of Heinrich Schliemann as a great man worth emulating, for some reason.
It is strange, reading this book that I haven't read in like...13-15 years probably, wherein I am so intimately familiar with every sentence in the book from having read it so often when I was young, and at the same time seeing all the content through such a different lens now. It's uncomfortable to think how influential this book was on teen me, and how despite the truly awful stuff this book is saying I'm still filled with huge nostalgia for it. I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone else read this book, but at the same time I don't think I can bring myself to get rid of my copy of it just yet.
And having now done so...I was absolutely right about the execrable prejudices, and I'm mad about how much I still care about this terrible book. Look: the premise underlying the whole book is that the worst possible thing for human history would be Christopher Columbus NOT voyaging to the Americas. You can't escape the fact that the very premise of the book is insultingly, enormously racist - and then it piles on more racism and sexism and so forth on top of that, in the reading of it.
Pastwatch is a group of researchers in a post-environmental-catastrophe future, who develop technology to be able to look into the past. And as they do so, they begin to realise that maybe it would be possible to change the past in order to bring about a better future with less suffering and unhappiness. The story of the researchers is alternated with sections of historical fiction about Christopher Columbus, the figure the researchers eventually settle on to be the centre of their plans.
When I was a teen, I didn't notice most of the terrible things this book does and loved it for the things it does do well. And there ARE some very good things about it!
I loved all the characters in the Pastwatch sections and how dedicated they are to understanding other kinds of people, to promoting the importance even of the overlooked and oppressed, to listening to anyone and engaging from a basis of equality. I loved Tagiri especially, her compassion and her oddness, and how it's her oddness specifically that allows her to do the things she does instead of conformity being valued. And as a white person I had the privilege to be able to have it be nice to think of Columbus as a fundamentally good person who merely got some things wrong. It's comforting to think of a world where people are willing to redeem themselves even if they do evil things, that they can learn better and do better, that we can all make a better future together. And the writing is engaging and readable, and the very idea of Pastwatch is just endlessly interesting to think about.
BUT. There's such a big but there.
It is so racist! In that way where it is clear that the author thinks he's doing amazing at being an ally by including such racial diversity amongst his characters.
The very idea of writing a book where noted colonialist, slaver, and murderer Christopher Columbus is one of the GREATEST PEOPLE TO EVER EXIST IN HUMAN HISTORY is just breathtaking to start with.
(Why yes, the book DOES explicitly say that there's nobody else who can compare to Columbus' greatness other than the Noah figure!) (And yes, the Noah myth IS prioritised over the other flood myths of the region when discussing the historical reality behind the myth!) (And no, the idea that plenty of overlooked people could have been just as great if they hadn't been prevented due to circumstances beyond their control is never thought of!) (And obviously the idea that "great" could possibly mean anything other than "influential" is never considered!) (and yes I have reached semantic satiation on the word great and it doesn't sound like a word anymore! :P)
cut both for spoilers and for discussions of racism, sexism, ableism, and christianity-centrism
But then we also get into things like:
Columbus was clearly just a product of his time! No discussion of course of the way that throughout history there have always been people who know better than to dismiss people of other races as subhuman, and although "product of his time" may be an explanation it is not an excuse.
Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica "would never have given rise to the democratic and tolerant and scientific values that eventually emerged from European culture." YIKES. And this is put into the mouth of a Mayan character no less.
No cognitive dissonance between the above and the fact that it's in our version of reality, where white colonialism succeeded, that the planet of the Pastwatch people is ruined beyond hope of saving!
The main Muslim character volunteers for the role of terrorist bomber in order to be a martyr!
There's a secret cabal of powerful people controlling the earth and the flow of information from behind the scenes!
The plan for creating a new and better version of history involves converting the whole of the Americas to Christianity!
There's a throwaway dismissal of autistic people having any worth! (I NOW HEADCANON HUNAHPU AS AUTISTIC AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME)
There's a comment casually equating abortion with murder!
There seems to be an underlying assumption that women are more emotional and men are more rational/scientific! And yes the book also shows that both approaches have value, but that fundamental biological determinism is still there. Complementarianism time!
There's hints of that weird thing some varieties of christianity have about previous relationships ruining you for future ones, and especially for women, in Diko's rejection of Hunahpu: "Let me come to whatever husband I do have without the memories of another husband or another lover to encumber me."
Despite Tagiri's interest in the history of her family and in the lives of slaves, the book as a whole absolutely upholds the Great Man view of history. I mean, Columbus obviously, yes, but also the whole narrative is taken up with the notion that just a few really impressive people are the ones who really matter in shaping history. There's even an unnecessary and unquestioning valorisation of Heinrich Schliemann as a great man worth emulating, for some reason.
It is strange, reading this book that I haven't read in like...13-15 years probably, wherein I am so intimately familiar with every sentence in the book from having read it so often when I was young, and at the same time seeing all the content through such a different lens now. It's uncomfortable to think how influential this book was on teen me, and how despite the truly awful stuff this book is saying I'm still filled with huge nostalgia for it. I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone else read this book, but at the same time I don't think I can bring myself to get rid of my copy of it just yet.
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Besides the things you liked about it, all of which I also really like: one thing I also really like about it (and which I still think is a good thing) is that it has a strong mother-daughter relationship (which I still think is way too rare in SF!) And it was ahead of its time in talking about climate change as a Thing. And its treatment of alternate universes I still think is great.
And I mean it's terrible by 2020 standards, but in 1992 I think it's the first SF book I'd ever read with POC main characters -- oh, except I might have read Octavia Butler by that time (whom I read because Card recommended her in one of his books, actually), and it was definitely the first SF I'd read that even entertained the notion that the white characters could be wrong... so at the time I found it revolutionary and it changed my ideas of what SF could do with POC. So I guess... go us as a society that it's possible to look back 30 years later (!) and see what it was doing extremely wrong?
There's a throwaway dismissal of autistic people having any worth! (I NOW HEADCANON HUNAHPU AS AUTISTIC AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME)
Whoa, I don't remember this (it probably bounced right past me, it wasn't on my radar as an adolescent) and that's kind of surprising to me since I think his son with severe CP had been born by this time (and I remember disability inclusiveness showing up in his work in other places around this time -- which again, one of the first places I'd ever seen that happen). (Also autistic people having intrinsic worth is extremely consonant with Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints theology, which many of your other points are not either explicitly (abortion, hi) or implicitly (oh boy is there an implicit Great Man bias, even if they keep denying it explicitly).) Anyway yeah I totally headcanon Hunahpu as autistic :P :D
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I think even by the standards of 1996, the year Pastwatch was published, it was still bad. I don't think it's that there weren't sff books with lead characters of colour being written in the 90's and earlier, and with far more nuanced understandings of race than OSC is capable of; it's that the industry wasn't interested in broadly marketing such stories unless they were written by famous white men. I remember a number of sff books I read during the same era I was reading Pastwatch, also dating to the 90's, which were much less egregious, or even actively anti-racist. And A Wizard of Earthsea, also by a famous author and featuring characters of colour, dates all the way back to the 60's!
I think it's more of what I was saying above about "of his time" being an explanation but not an excuse for bigotry. Yes, maybe many famous white people were similarly racist to OSC in the 90's, but there were and have always been people who knew better. And yes the standards for conversation on the topic in the field of SFF have improved vastly in the 24 years since Pastwatch was published and that's so wonderful! But I don't think I'm willing to give OSC a pass on this one just because of the time he was writing it in.
Also autistic people having intrinsic worth is extremely consonant with Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints theology
Hm I may have been very slightly unfair to OSC on this one, I double-checked what the book says and it's not that it's saying autistic people don't have worth, it's saying that we are incapable of interacting with other people or surroundings. Which is still Very Bad but a different flavour of bad! Here's what the passage says: "And yet it was not as if Hunahpu were autistic, unable to respond. He looked at what was around him and clearly registered what he saw. He was polite and attentive when she spoke." That's sure a pile of stereotypes of what all autistic people must be like. Hunahpu is autistic now and OSC can shove it.
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Autistic: Lol yeah that is pretty bad (though differently bad) and it would have slid right past me, yup. Hunahpu always pinged me as on the spectrum (though I didn't have the words for it then).
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Another beloved author of my younger days, Tamora Pierce, included some really crappy racial stereotypes in her Alanna books, written and published in the 80's. But I can see her over the course of her career really trying to learn more and do better by her diverse readers, and so I feel differently about Pierce's early mis-steps than I do about OSC's because I know it was merely one point on a journey.
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(It's also true for me that in this particular case, I additionally have extremely complicated feelings due to sharing a religion with him, not least because it gets all tangled up with my extremely complicated feelings about said religion, but that's my problem and not anyone else's.)
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That makes a lot of sense! And I totally agree about Alanna and how much better it gets - I have a lot more sympathy for the misguided attempts with Alanna because we get Daja (and many others but she's such a favourite of mine).
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YES. It's about the trajectory!
Not that I want to defend OSC but
When I first encountered autistic advocates on the glorious early Internet, that the diagnostic term was synonymous with 'a person incapable of interaction' (therefore not worth bothering with) was massively infuriating. I'm so glad that Autism Pride exists now! (Although it doesn't stop people deploying Autistic as a slur, in the manner of the r-word.)
Also, I wish to express my delight for the number of parentheticals in your eighth paragraph.
If the underlying Pastwatch trope thrills you, may I commend to you the first three books of Kage Baker's The Company series? They go downhill from there, but Baker whittles some very large masts into lances with which to poking holes in the Great Man theory of history.
Re: Not that I want to defend OSC but
I'm glad you enjoyed all my parentheticals :) I regularly have to pare down the number of asides I try to put into my writing but sometimes I just go for it and embrace it.
A friend of mine told me that the ending of the Company series is so infuriating she doesn't feel she can actually recommend the series to anyone, so I'm a bit leery of investing my time in reading them, but that approach to history sounds excellent!
Re: Not that I want to defend OSC but
Re: Not that I want to defend OSC but
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(So much of classic skiffy hits me as extremely reactionary that way. How the fuck this genre ever deluded itself that it favors progress I do not know, even with a very broad definition of progress.)
...I don't know if that made any sense. I just woke up.
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So there's three different timelines this book is dealing with. There's our timeline, which ends with climate disaster and Pastwatch; there's a different timeline we never see but we know exist, where Columbus did not go to the Americas and the Mesoamericans invaded Europe and everything was very bad forever (this is the ORIGINAL timeline, and the Pastwatch equivalent from that timeline sent Columbus to the Americas to stop this happening, and thus created our timeline!); and then there's the timeline the Pastwatch team create in the end, where Columbus goes to the Americas but then can't return home and Columbus rules a new and better nation in the Americas which technologically advances and then goes in peace to meet Europe.
So Card is in fact arguing that time travel for the express purpose of changing things can be good, as long as you carefully consider both the future you're trying to avoid AND the future you're trying to create.
And you're right that that's an unusual perspective! I hadn't thought about that before, but it's true that a lot of time travel stories are actually fairly committed to not mucking up the timeline, which is really interesting, and I think you're right that it's a reflection of an idea that we can't hope for a better version of reality than the one we're in, which is a very.... lowercase-c conservative perspective, that tradition and stability are the thing to value.
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But yeah, the "we can make a better world and it's by thinking Columbus had governing capability" is... wow. Definitely the most colonialist way possible to handle the options. (I mean, the concept of a time-traveling organization deciding what's best for everyone has its own basic potential for colonialism, but really, as soon as you can time travel, you're deciding whether to change things for what you think is the better or not, it more depends whether the author wants to go for "best of all possible worlds" or "better the devil you know" or something else.)
But really... I feel like this is sort of reductive, but at the same time I have to say: what the fuck can you expect from someone whose idea of a Great Man is Heinrich Schliemann?! O_O Like at least Columbus has a, a mythos not entirely perpetuated by himself. All Schliemann has is mostly a cascade of later archaeologists cursing his name.
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WOWWWWWW. I mean there's a lot going on here but WOW. I was assuming, you know, "the Columbian exchange made so many things happen and some of them were good" rather than... that.
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