The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:
Summary: Interesting plot and entertwined stories, drags on too long
Review: The Years of Rice and Salt is quite an undertaking... how would the world have been different if the Black Plague killed off most of Europe and hence severly limiting the influence of Western Europe on the rest of the world.

Robinson, as he does in his other books, is quite thorough in putting it all together into a cohesive story that is well-thought out and filled with detail and explanation. Unfortunately, it bogs this book down. I forced myself thru the last third of the book.

The mini-stories that are linked together are a mixed bag. Some are a delight to read while others are mind-numbing. Discovering their link as you read the book is interesting. The chain of events is quite believeable and thought-provoking.

This book is a good read but might take you a while to finish if you don't carry enough momentum into the second half of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Well done! A book that challenges you if you let it.
Review: This is a compelling "What If..." novel. Kim Stanley Robinson covers over 700 years of an alternate history dominated by the Chinese and Islam. The novel is made up of a number of short stories at various points in time dating from the Great European Plague to modern times and beyond. Using a simple naming convention, the lives of the characters are somewhat easily connected by the reader from story to story, as they are reincarnated, and we follow their journey through the "bardo" into future lives on Earth.

Kim Stanley Robinson draws the reader into the epoch by using the writing style of the era or culture. The interludes in the bardo are humorous while also thought provoking as the characters attempt to understand their lives just ended and set goals for the ones to come.

Indeed Buddhist philosophy and reincarnation feature prominently in these stories, and are a counterbalance in some sense to the extremism of Islamic beliefs, although Robinson goes to lengths to show that pure Islamic tenants are not in tune with the bastardizations wrought upon it by the religious zealots.

Scientific advances and discoveries progress at a different pace in this alternate history, and references are made to many familiar technologies, but what is not mentioned is also as telling. As a hard science writer I suspect Robinson especially enjoyed brainstorming in this area. Certainly Islamic cultures that dominate Robinson's world are less curious than Western civilizations have been, and this has a profound impact on the path of history, and provides the Chinese with an edge enhanced by their great numbers.

Robinson also introduces us to other cultures and people that emerge as primary players in the new world order he creates. We see how Indian and native American cultures evolve and influence the political and scientific balance.

Certainly Robinson has his own thoughts about these things, and a liking for utopian societies and Buddhism, yet he is not heavy handed with his views, and allows for the reader to formulate his or her own.

All in all, this is an ambitious undertaking and one that is very well done and researched. Those familiar with Robinson's past novels will find much that is familiar, while he tells a story that goes in directions he has not ventured before. Those new to Robinson will hopefully also look to discover more from one of the best writers in Science Fiction today.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating alternate history
Review: This is a complex and challenging novel, covering a group of related characters through multiple lifetimes, over centuries from about 1400 to the present, in an elaborate alternate history in which the black plague almost completely wiped out the population of Europe, preventing the rise of European culture and religion to world dominance. Definitely not a lite read; it takes effort to follow Robinson's alternate history, accompanied by alternate geography and chronology. But readers who have a taste for serious and thoughtful SF will be rewarded for their efforts.

Some highlights from the alternate history: (Contains some spoilers for early sections) about 1400, a mutated and incredibly potent version of the black plague wipes out most of Europe, eliminating it as a political or military force. Christianity is eliminated as a civilization, and the later events are dominated by Chense and Islamic culture. Muslims, some of them refugees from mainstream Islam, gradually repopulate Europe. Meanwhile, a Ming expedition, outfitted to invade Japan, gets caught in a strong Eastern current, misses Japan entirely, and winds up in San Francisco Bay. The expedition is still very much a success, especially when it travels South and discovers the rich mines of Peru. A later Chinese fleet succeeds in conquering Japan.

A group of reformist Muslims, chased by more traditional sects, sails west from Normandy and discovers Manhattan. The Iriquois federation, becoming aware of the presence of alien cultures on both the West and East coasts, forms the North American tribes into a great union, capable of keeping the outsiders largely restricted to the coasts and holding the interior of the continent.

There is more, covering alternate histories of the Industrial Revolution, WWI, and the dicovery of fission, up to an age that look like roughly the present, with increasing global cooperation and, presumably, an alternate Francis Fukuyama to announce the End of Alternate History.

At key events in this timeline, we meet repeatedly the same group of people, recognized by keeping the same initials. The key figures are:

B - A spiritual seeker, frequently a Buddhist clergyman.
I - A scientist or intellectual, fascinated with acquiring knowledge.
K - The activist of the group, at first seeking revenge, at other times power, and ultimately social transformation.

All of these are followed through various lives and deaths, meeting up repeatedly in the Bardo, the between life area of judgment from Tibetan Buddhism. There are some minor accompanying characters, such as S, which is generally a feckless or irresponsible person, often of considerable authority, but these are the main ones.

Robinson has created numerous striking characters from these broad templates: a soldier in Tamerlane's army who ultimately becomes a slave in China, a protective tiger, a servant boy caught in the floods of a Chinese California, a young woman growing up in post-war Islamic France, and many more. It's really a virtuoso trick to fit 600 years of alternate history into one book while still having real characters to live the history, something Robinson has accomplished superbly.