The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:
Summary: Interested in world religion?
Review: I'm an inveterate sci-fi reader, and have also become interested recently in world religions outside the boundaries of my middle-class USA mainstream Christian upbringing. Place all that in the context of 9-11 -- curiousity in the USA about Muslim extremists and Islam overall -- and the timing on this book was just right for me.

It's a fascinating book, and a fine example of alternate history as a literary genre. The form of reincarnation -- used as a storytelling tool to provide a consistent set of characters across time -- works pretty well.

The only problem with the book is ... it's too long. Hey, we already knew that Kim Stanley Robinson writes long -- see the 'Mars' trilogy. At times, the pacing of the book is painfully slow. He slows it down this much to make room for lengthy verbatim monologues in sociology, religion, philosophy, etc. However, it's my opinion that a book of this kind would be better, more compelling, more literary, if these points had been made more in the subtext, at the thematic level, than in the text.

Still and all, I don't regret the 600-odd pages I spent on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not surprising misunderstandings
Review: As I read this fine book by Stan Robinson, I was struck by the fact that this is a "love-it/hate-it" book. Those who refuse to look past the surface are going to have a hard time with it. Yes, it does get pretty intense at the end, but personally I like the philosophizing.

This isn't just about the reincarnation aspects, or the alternate history aspacets, those are just surface effects. It's about the acceptance of age and grace and growth and advancement. It's about how the world has grown with the growth of the people, the jadi's, that live in it. And it's about how one person and/or one group can make a real change in the world, and how these changes might be reflected throughout one's existence. It covers how the growth of the "jadi" changes from it's wild impetuous, and nearly self-destructive youth up until the jadi has reached it's nirvana. The ultimate quiet and happy acceptance of the reality that what there is "here and now" is what is important, and it's what one does with this that makes a difference. There is really no debate on whether reincarnation is real, it's a debate on the interpretations the living have on the afterlife and how this changes from superstitious and confused belief systems, imposed by the "powers that be", to a more scientific and distant relationship with the universe and with the Spirit, name it what you will. A belief structure that is common in todays world.

Stan is talking about OUR universe here, and is talking about the human place within reality. If people find it preachy, then perhaps they are in need of a good preacher, especially of the Koran and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The fact that most of the technologies, etc., all get invented in more or less the same time period, to me, indicates a belief in historical predilection, ie we are here because this is the ultimate endpoint of our evolution up to this point. It also indicates that his reality isn't intended to be that much different than ours, ie, more or less the same, only without the European/American influences. If everything happened in a different order and at a radically different rate, then the parallels he tries to draw would have been lost.

Could he have been more precise on how they got to where they ended up? Yes, but the book is rather long already. Could he have fattened up certain sections, such as the Japanese reconquest, and the time among the Native Americans? Again, yes, but to what purpose? Was the section of the Great War depressing and almost too realistic? Yes, but isn't that war? War is NOT glorious and exciting, it is slogging through mud and finding everything beautiful being destroyed while some nameless bureaucrat decides who will fall next. It's endless hours of boredom, punctuated by sheer moments of terror. Our modern fascination with TV wars and smart bombs makes all seem glamorous, but war is destructive to society and humanity, nevertheless. The gates of delirium.

So, like all books it isn't, and doesn't purport to be, perfect. There are things I would probabaly do differently. There are slower sections and faster sections, but when I see someone taking "weeks" to read it, I am surprised, I found it a page turner that I couldn't put down for several days, while I focussed on it.

If the ending could have been different, the action figure sci-fi lovers would have been happier, but that would have missed the point of the parallel between the life of the jadi and the life of the individual. Both slow and become more thoughtful and reflective as old age approaches. But in the end, the Universe continues on as it always has and always will, and the cycles continue.

This is highly recommended for people who like to contemplate and discuss and delve into what are quite deep topics. You'll be in the "love-it" category. If you don't like reading other people's philospohies on life and history, or are expecting action-adventure or classical sci-fi, you'll be in the "hate-it" category. Not much room in the middle.

Rating:
Summary: More of the same
Review: The first half of Years of Rice and Salt made for pretty good reading. I was kind of caught up by the episodes in an alternate history interspersed with scenes from the Tibetan afterlife, where the characters try to make sense of it all.

Lamentably, the second half of the book covered all too familiar terrain. If you hated Robinson's long digressions into poorly-informed political theory in Red|Green|Blue Mars, you're in for much the same in the last 200 pages here! There's little plot, no characterization, and a bland writing style, but page after page of tedious sermonizing.

More's the pity, because there was the kernel of a great book here. We get tiny glimpses of some inspired ideas, including my personal favorite: the native americans recognizing the cultural threat of the new worlders, and consequently unifying into a nation that becomes a Great Power in the modern era. But Robinson spends far too little time here, in favor of yet another vignette about the hidebound Muslims or bureaucratic Chinese.

Despite all of the author's economic "theories", one of the most obvious flaws in his alternate history was the comparative lack of economic development. Even once the story reaches the equivalent of the present day, everyone seems to hold the job of "farmer", "scholar" or "oppressive overlord". Maybe his point was that this would be the reality absent western thought & values, but it seems unlikely that such societies could support railroads, air travel, space flight, nuclear power, computers and the other trappings of modernity that he grants them.

Summary: if you've read any other KSR book, no need to bother with this one.

Rating:
Summary: How to suck all the life out of an interesting idea
Review: I always thought that one of the more interesting aspects of a world without Christian Europeans would be how the development of science and technology is effected. Kim Robinson apparently does not. He devotes nearly all of the book to comparing Islam with Buddhism and takes the easiest way out with regards to science. Chances are, without Christian Europeans, many inventions probably wouldn't have been developed until later, others perhaps much earlier. Some may not have even been invented at all. This was the main reason I bought the book, to see how different the world would look without Europeans. But after the first few pages, where I encountered the first of many, many interjected poems, I feared that it wasn't going to be that kind of book. And it isn't. It's really more of a plodding [###] page theological debate between the author and himself.

Tragically, he simply hands over scientific discoveries like magnetism, pasteurization, and the atomic bomb to an Asian person to be developed at around the same time they were in real life. All he does is change a couple of the words, uranium is alectin, electricity or energy is "qi". Some effort. Other world-changing technologies, like the airplane or telephone, are mentioned only in passing. Robinson spends the middle fifth of the book creating a Central Asian rip-off of Isaac Newton, but by the time he gets to the 20th century he barely mentions technology at all. Yet somehow everyone still rides trains, flies (on airplanes I guess), talks on the telephone, and pays their monthly electricity bills. Oh, I mean, "qi" bills. Radical.

As for being an alternative history, Robinson just takes a map of the world and redraws some boundaries, handing them over to various Chinese or Middle Eastern powers instead of European ones. Like his cop-out with technology, Martin Luther King and Gloria Steinem are bluntly transformed into an outspoken Gallic Muslim woman, World War I into the "Long War". A little creativity would have been nice. Maybe his point is that nothing would have fundamentally changed, that history would have taken the same path regardless of which group of people took the reigns. But I don't want to read [###] pages of an alterative history book to hear that.

I wuz robbed!

Rating:
Summary: This is not science fiction
Review: I don't understand how Robinson's books can be considered science fiction. Granted they are usually set on another planet (Mars) or in another time (Middle Ages), but there is virtually no science in them and they are almost completely socio-political speculative fiction.

Is Robinson emblematic of what's happen to the Hugo and the Nebula Awards? Have the social, political, speculative, fantasy-fiction crowd taken over? Is this why the widely-read sci-fi writers of the last decade have been ignored? Whose stacking the vote at the Hugos and Nebulas and why?

Rating:
Summary: Alternate History - Reincarnation
Review: This book is interesting due to its exploration of:

1. Reincarnation.

2. A comparison of world religions and how they effect society.

3. An alternate world history in which western european civiliation does not exist.

If you are interested in any of those topics, the book should be worth reading.

The book covers thousands of years. The author ties different eras and geographies together through use of reincarnation. Three different personality types appear as different characters throughout the book. To me, a very interesting and novel approach. I particularly liked the chapters between chapters that describe the bardo, or the afterlife between lives. The descriptions are not very graphic or technical, but they do a good job of describing that state as dreamlike and full of potential.

Although I found the reincarnation theme interesting, the author had a more difficult time tying the characters from one life with the characters in a subsequent life. Makes sense. We generally do not remember our past lives. But, this made it difficult to sympathize with the many characters in the book.

I also found that there were certain story lines that were much more interesting than others. I particularly liked the portion of the book that discussed Native American civilization. The book describes the native american nation of tribes and how the nation was organized. It also briefly introduces a character that was a Samurai warrior in Japan and his dealings with the natives of the American continent. Really, interesting, but brief. I think that this idea could have been a book by itself. Other story lines tended to be somewhat dull.

Over all I think this is a worthwile read if you are in to Alternate History, reincarnation or comparative religion. If not, you might want to try something else.

Rating:
Summary: Instruction Disguised as Fiction
Review: This is another example of Orson Scott Card's admonishment of science fiction as info-dump. At its outset offering much promise, as early as the chapter entitled The Alchemist the narrative elements have become increasingly subordinated to didactic discourse on early metallury and technology, as well as ruminations upon Eastern philosophy. The end result, as John Deakins suggests, is tedium, with the already peripatetic and episodic storylines assuming all the narrative interest of an instruction manual.

A darling of the critics and techies, this is the fourth novel that I have read by Robinson in which the narrative elements have been subsumed by the author's over-riding desire to inform or incorporate discussion or speculation that would be better served by nonfiction. Bottom line, those books that I have read by the author are narratively boring, as he often confuses story with text. In this case, without even being aware of Mr. Deakins' warnings, I abandoned the work three quarters in, based upon prior experience with Robinson certain of what was coming as well as what was not.

This will be the final novel I pick up by this author. If I wished a lecture in metallurgy, alchemy, theories of history, or Eastern religion and philosophy, I would be far better served -- as well as likely more intellectually stimulated -- by any number of college courses, or the more comprehensive and at times insightful writings of scholars. At least I wouldn't have to put up with nonfiction masquerading itself as story. Those of you who like this sort of pseudo-pedagogy, or find fictional legitimacy lent by technical detail or ongoing discourse, are welcome to it, though I question the author's approach to fiction is compelling, either as narrative or as instruction.

Rating:
Summary: A frequently misunderstood book.....
Review: As I read these reviews, I'm struck primarily by a misunderstanding of some of the basic thematic features of the work. One of the reviewers even states that the character's recant their beliefs in reincarnation. This isn't true, what occurs is a shift to a belief that life is only meaningful if one is living and working in the now, and cycles of reincarnation are ultimately pointless to dwell on. This is actually the thrust of where Buddhist theology has traversed, and such notions about the nature of being "present-minded" are being incorporated into many new forms of psychotherapy. Though heralded as "preachy," this tends to be more a bias of some readers than the author. While he is opinionated, the mechanism only reinforces many of the political views.... i.e. if you're born randomly in different classes or of different sexes, then one must accept the arbitrary nature of this and work against distinctions based on class or sex under the law.

To reiterate one of the more recent reviews, the notion that we must struggle through the years of rice and salt is really the point of the final chapters so many of the reviewers are seeing as superfluous. The point of the meaninglessness of reincarnation, or the understanding of repressed histories, is that all one can ever work in is the moment. Even his points about the importance of science are quite prescient, since we live in a country where basic tenants of biological science are challenged by ignorant religious zealots, and our president doesn't understand enough of science to acknowledge the reality of the greenhouse effect.

Ultimately, however, this is a story about the types of people we attract or are drawn to in our lives, and what we do with those relationships. The difference between a lover and a friend is sometimes only timing, but some relationships are best nurtured for the sake of having them, whatever the outcome. I recommend you read this, with those themes in mind.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to snuff
Review: I too was disappointed. The premise was interesting, but the re-incarnation aspect left me bored. It could have gone in a multitude of better directions.

Rating:
Summary: So beautiful and important I gave it 5 stars despite flaws
Review: _The Years of Rice and Salt_ is different from Robinson's other novels in that it isn't really science fiction. It's speculative fiction, certainly -- as any alternate history novel is, and the strong religious elements also suggest that categorization -- but its lyrical prose and philosophical/spiritual content reminded me much more of Hermann Hesse than of Robinson's sf contemporaries.

Robinson is a utopian, an unusual thing to be in this age of cynicism and irony. Many of the utopian works of the past have taken the form of the author, in narrative or expository form, describing the perfect society to the reader, often in the form of a kind of fictional guided tour. The implication of such works is that if only society were organized in the way the author envisioned, peace and prosperity and abundance would instantly result. Robinson's utopias (as articulated in the Mars books as well as this one) are different. Not only are they imperfect, but progress is extremely gradual, happening over hundreds and thousands of years. Only after centuries of work, setbacks, more work, fighting and wars, more work, catastrophic tragedies, and even more work does society advance to a point where human beings can live without the suffering that stems from scarcity and competition for resources. This pragmatic but fundamentally optimistic point of view, expressed through a narrative of rich cultures, dynamic characters, and epic history, somehow left me feeling that a kind of utopia - or at least significant progress towards such - was indeed possible. Robinson's suggestion that these are the years of rice and salt - the middle period of a Chinese woman's life, the period of work - is a call for all those who would live in a kinder and more stable world to take up whatever tools they have available and labor honestly for change.

While adhering to no one particular religious world view, _The Years of Rice and Salt_ is a deeply spiritual novel. It is set against a colorful and detailed backdrop of mostly Eastern cultures - China, Islam, Japan, early America, India - and explores themes of religious belief and practice in many cultures (with special attention to Buddhism and Islam), familial connections that have nothing to do with blood, and the inevitable corruption of idealistic religious traditions by the forces of dominator societies. Perhaps more importantly, however, the book portrays characters whose ultimately scientific examination of society and the physical world is a deeply religious activity. The false dichotomy of religion and science in contemporary America is broken down; for many of the characters, the honest exploration of creation is a devotional activity, one that deeply honors the sacredness of people and the world.

As beautiful and meaningful as the book is, it does have flaws. Though the first half has a lot of action and moves quickly, Robinson's descriptions of complicated hypothetical political dynamics start to drag in the second half of the novel. The final chapter, while containing some of the most vivid and beautiful narrative passages in the book, spends too much time on the main character's ruminations on his life and the nature of existence. Though executed with clarity and grace, I found myself disappointed to be told explicitly and obviously about all the ideas and themes carefully developed through the book's subtle narrative. Robinson puts in enough unique material and striking images to make the chapter worthwhile, though, and the ending is perfect - I can only think that he must have been planning it from the very first page.

As always, Robinson's style is epic, discursive, and lyrical, but there's something in this novel for every reader - vivid characterization, an intricate plot, poetic descriptions, complicated politics, sex and drugs, romance, strong women, mystics, gods, warfare, the birth of science, philosophy, technology theory, and much more. I highly recommend this novel to those whose faith in the possibility of a better world has been shaken: its message is eternal hope, even as it allows itself to grieve deeply over tragedy. In the early twenty-first century, with its atmosphere of fear and suspicion, this may be one of the most important novels that will be written this decade.

Final note: I was surprised to see reviews here that claimed that the book had no overall story, that it was just the separate tales of the characters' incarnations. The overall tale is the one of the characters' successful work in building a more peaceful society. It's amusing and exciting to see them unknowingly referring back to and building on their previous incarnations' work. As a metaphor for human history, I think the device works wonderfully.