The answer is provided by Hunahpu, an Amerindian researcher with Pastwatch.

Realizing that someone has already changed the timeline they try to figure out what might have been different if Columbus had headed east instead of west. The researchers realize that this vision is actually a hologram sent back in time by people from an alternate timeline in order to influence the direction of Columbus' life. She uses a new, and more visually sensitive, version of the time viewer and discovers that after surviving the wreck Columbus received a vision directing him to head west to convert the people who lived on a previous undiscovered continent. The mystery of exactly why Columbus changed his mind is solved by Diko. Columbus only changed his mind and decided to head west across the Atlantic after nearly drowning in a storm. Tagiri and other researchers note that Columbus had always yearned for greatness but that as a young man he had been determined to head east in a new Crusade to liberate from the Muslims the Holy Land as well as Constantinople, whose fall was a recent and painful event to Europeans of Columbus' generation. They are eventually joined by their daughter Diko.Ī parallel narrative tells of Columbus' efforts to secure financial and political backing for his voyage across the Atlantic.

Unsure about what to do with this knowledge she is nonetheless put in charge of a project to explore it along with her husband Hassan. One day she accidentally discovers that the machines may be used to send information backwards in time (meaning the past is not unalterable). Her special interest is in the colonization of the Caribbean and the life of Christopher Columbus. Tagiri is a researcher at Pastwatch, the organization in charge of these machines. Sometime in the future, humanity invents a series of machines which allow them to view events in their past. These alternate with chapters describing Columbus' career and his efforts to obtain backing to his project of travelling across the ocean - much of which can be considered as historical fiction. Much of the action deals with a group of scientists from the future who travel back to the 15th century in order to change the pattern of European contact with the Americas. The book's focus is the life and activities of explorer Christopher Columbus. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996) is a science fiction novel by American writer Orson Scott Card, the first in a proposed Pastwatch series.

Orson scott card