[nekokami]

The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card is a fairly interesting time travel story, though I felt it ultimately fell short on addressing the most intriguing questions it posed.

In particular, Card sets up a moral dilemma: is the misery of countless generations justified by the resulting society? If the resulting society develops technology which would change that prior misery, but would result in the extinction of that future society (disregarding the paradox involved), do they have a moral justification to do so?

Spoiler:

However, ultimately Card's future society realizes they are going to starve anyway, so the question of their continued survival is moot and the moral dilemma disappears. I thought this was an extremely weak direction for the story to take. I really can't understand why Card went that way. It didn't fit the rest of the story at all. I'm tempted to suspect editorial interference of some kind, though Card is such a "big name" that it might have been interference from someone other than a professional editor-- a close friend, etc.

On a lighter note, I've forgotten, did we already cover Niven's Rainbow Mars in this thread? Really a collection of extremely silly time travel stories, loosely strung together into a book. Great fun.