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beccastareyesI actually finished all the novelettes for the Hugos last night, meaning I've read for four awards. I might do the novelettes and short stories in one post, rather than do these.
Hey, it's a story involving time travel (sort of) and WWII and not Nazis!
"The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" is told as if we're watching a documentary from the near future, the ever classic 20XX. We have Evan Wei, a Chinese-American historian who had done all his work on Heian-era Japan… until he chanced to catch a documentary about Unit 731 with his wife, documenting WWII Japanese human experimentation on Chinese prisoners in Manchuria. And Evan becomes obsessed with making sure the world is aware of this an bringing closure to the victims' families (as many of their immediate relatives are dying, since this is in the early 21st century), and in documenting what happened as a historian should.
And, since this is his a science fiction story, Evan's wife, Akemi Kirino is a Japanese-American physicist that just happened to discover a quantum mechanical effect that lets us observe the past… once per time/place.
So, in addition to the muddy waters of international US-Chinese and US-Japanese relations, there's also talk of who owns the past and the ethics of archeology: Akemi's machines let a witness observe the past once, wiping out all information from that site in the process, much like how you can only dig up a given site once. And a lot of the fact history is dead, but it's not, and the peculiar reliance humans have on what our fellow humans have to say about things (rather than, say, 'hard data').
I happen to love fake documents and this uses that a lot: we have segments of an older Akemi narrating, cut with things like Congressional hearings, 'person on the street' reporting from the time, old footage of Japanese soldier testimony, Evan's PR campaign to get people to remember Imperial Japanese war crimes for much the same reason we remember Nazi war crimes (but complicated in that Japan had a much less clean break from its WWII era than Germany did).
The author even thoughtfully provided notes about where one could learn more (and a comment about the inspiration for the commentary: the internet provides many things, including message boards where people express their opinions).
Hey, it's a story involving time travel (sort of) and WWII and not Nazis!
"The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" is told as if we're watching a documentary from the near future, the ever classic 20XX. We have Evan Wei, a Chinese-American historian who had done all his work on Heian-era Japan… until he chanced to catch a documentary about Unit 731 with his wife, documenting WWII Japanese human experimentation on Chinese prisoners in Manchuria. And Evan becomes obsessed with making sure the world is aware of this an bringing closure to the victims' families (as many of their immediate relatives are dying, since this is in the early 21st century), and in documenting what happened as a historian should.
And, since this is his a science fiction story, Evan's wife, Akemi Kirino is a Japanese-American physicist that just happened to discover a quantum mechanical effect that lets us observe the past… once per time/place.
So, in addition to the muddy waters of international US-Chinese and US-Japanese relations, there's also talk of who owns the past and the ethics of archeology: Akemi's machines let a witness observe the past once, wiping out all information from that site in the process, much like how you can only dig up a given site once. And a lot of the fact history is dead, but it's not, and the peculiar reliance humans have on what our fellow humans have to say about things (rather than, say, 'hard data').
I happen to love fake documents and this uses that a lot: we have segments of an older Akemi narrating, cut with things like Congressional hearings, 'person on the street' reporting from the time, old footage of Japanese soldier testimony, Evan's PR campaign to get people to remember Imperial Japanese war crimes for much the same reason we remember Nazi war crimes (but complicated in that Japan had a much less clean break from its WWII era than Germany did).
The author even thoughtfully provided notes about where one could learn more (and a comment about the inspiration for the commentary: the internet provides many things, including message boards where people express their opinions).
