Earthdivers, Vol. 1: Kill Columbus

[cornerofmadness]

Earthdivers, Vol. 1: Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I wanted to love this because I love Jones' work and the art was great but there were some world building issues for me that were hard to get past not to mention the convoluted time traveling story line (CW, lots of violence including child murder) So it's 2112 and the world is all but dead and much of humanity has taken off for the stars. Later its stated white people left but I see no African, Latinx, Asian etc people in this. It's a hundred percent indigenous people of varying groups, which okay Jones is Indigenous and he's dedicated to telling the stories of those peoples.

Somehow they know that this cave somewhere (we're not sure where) can time travel back to a certain destination if you bring something to represent that time period but otherwise have to go Terminator-style, i.e. naked. Their plan is to break up Sosha and Tad's marriage so they can send Tad back to do the titular action, kill Columbus so that America is never created and the world is saved. Sosha would have a much harder time being a woman given the restrains of women then and Tad has the cool bonus of being a polyglot. I very much liked that touch.

And this where I stumble hard. How do they know how this cave works? It seems like its a one way trip because the group left behind keep checking the ever changing history books to see if Tad manages it so I'm assuming he can't go back once he kills Columbus. Let's say they did the math or experiments or something and know what the cave does, the idea of killing one man to change the world seems naive. It's the whole 'Let's Kill Hitler' trope of alternative history stories (though I suppose killing him might have saved a whole lot of lives)

I don't buy into the idea that in killing Columbus, no one will ever interfere with the Indigenous people and America (or whatever it would be called) will be this happy egalitarian country and all of humanity won't be destroying the world with pollution and greed. For one the industrial revolution didn't start here but America sure embraced it and made it worse. Two, there are countries that pollute far worse than America (not many but they're out there) And three, for pete's sake Europeans were sailing all over the world. You kill Columbus and another European will take his place with most likely the results and I suppose you could argue they learned from Columbus (provided he got to America and was killed there) and killed any new foreigners, let's remember Columbus wasn't the first, just one of the worst. And the world isn't that small. Eventually America would be brought into the world stage no matter if we kill Columbus or not.

That is a big hurdle to get over so that's why I rated it three stars. That said, Tad and company are interesting. Tad's infiltration of Columbus' crew does not go as well as he'd like. People die. Lots of them. (same with what's going on in 2112) Tad is earnest. His descent into violence is interesting to watch. I did get a laugh when they were sure he was demonic because he didn't grow facial hair in the two weeks they had him locked up. Really? What about the fact that he went back to the past with one side of his head shaved and that never grows in....

I wanted more of the people in the past which I swore were all female at first (Emily being a transwoman) but might be wrong about the Blackfeet character, Yellow Kidney (we get some cringy are you Indigenous enough stuff with them) How did they meet? How did they learn about the cave? Why didn't they leave on the space ships (I think that might have made more sense if we changed one word about who left, the rich left, the poor were left behind)



I got this at the library. Would I read more? From the library yes.



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