Product Description

The Great Plague destroyed Europe. Now the world's a different place ! From the award-winning author of the Mars trilogy, 'the ultimate in future history' (Daily Mail), comes the most ambitious alternate history novel ever written. As Bold Bardash, a horseman in the army of Temur the Lame, rides west across the steppe and on to the Magyar Plain, he comes across a town in which everyone lies dead. Long dead. Plague has struck Europe. Kali's black blanket has fallen over the lands of the West and nothing will ever be the same again. Into this empty land pour the opportunists: the merchants, slavers and warlords. The Chinese cross the oceans in their huge fleets; the Arabs traverse the deserts by camel and mule and the mediterranean by dhow. The last Europeans are killed or enslaved -- consigned to the seraglios of the sultans. So die the ancestors of Da Vinci and Copernicus; Columbus and Machiavelli; the Spanish Inquisition and the Conquistators; Shakespeare, Newton and the Pilgrim Fathers; Einstein and Hitler. And the world becomes a different place. In this extraordinarily ambitious, poetic and powerful novel, Kim Stanley Robinson takes us on a journey through seven hundred years of history as it never was, but might have been.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32463 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Kim Stanley Robinson's ambitious exploration of alternative history in The Years of Rice and Salt poses the daunting question "How would our world have developed without Europe?" (Or, rather, without European culture?) When the scouts of the Mongol leader Temur the Lame (Tamburlaine) enter Hungary in 1405, they find only emptiness and death. Plague has swept Europe off the gameboard of history.

The centuries that follow are initially dominated by expanding Islamic nations and the monolithic Chinese empire. It's a grand chronicle of rising and falling cultures, with individuals forever struggling to make a difference to the slow-motion landslide of events. Extra continuity is given by a touch of fantasy as the Buddhist wheel of reincarnation brings back the same characters (coded by initials) again and again with varied roles, relations and sexes. Their stories are touching and very human.

Episodes of our own history are artfully echoed. America is discovered by Chinese ships from the west, with fateful effects for the native tribes and the "Inka" theocracy further south. The scientific ideas of da Vinci's Renaissance are reflected by the Alchemist of Samarkand, reluctantly devising fresh weapons of war. New forms of government arise. Islamic splinter groups move into empty Europe and in that softer climate develop dangerous notions like feminism. A First World War eventually comes, later than we'd expect but horribly prolonged.

Then Muslim scientists begin to see the implications of the mass-energy theories of a savant from the Indian subcontinent:

Invisible worlds, full of energy and power: sub-atomic harems, each pulsing on the edge of a great explosion...There was no escaping the latent violence at the heart of things. Even the stones were mortal.

This immense tapestry of history that never happened is constantly illuminated by the small comedies, tragedies, romances and triumphs of memorably real individuals. The Years of Rice and Salt is a brave new landmark in alternate history, deservedly shortlisted for the British SF Association and Arthur C Clarke awards. --David Langford

Review
'A huge, complex and highly enjoyable book' New Scientist 'A dazzling work of speculation with all the qualities of a great historical novel -- it is by turns thrilling, tragic, funny and thoughtful' Scotsman 'Stunning' Guardian 'A 600-year tapestry of striving, joy, unhappiness and ambiguity ! this marvellous book may be the most hopeful thing you read for a long time.' Evening Standard 'Robinson writes beautifully' The Times 'A novel of ideas of the best sort' Publishers Weekly 'The Years of Rice and Salt does what good speculative fiction ought to do: it arouses discussion and debate' TLS

From the Publisher
The Great Plague destroyed Europe. Now the world’s a different place … From the award-winning author of the Mars trilogy, ‘the ultimate in future history’ (Daily Mail), comes the most ambitious alternate history novel ever written.

Customer Reviews

Huge, fun, clever, flawed
Subject-wise, _The Years of Rice and Salt_ pushed all the right buttons for me - opening with a Journey to the West pastiche was always going to score it points, then there was a section set in Samarkand, quotations from Ibn Khaldun, and some deftly-drawn portraits of medieval China. I'm a sucker for a) cleverness, and b) well-crafted settings outside the pseudo-medieval fantasy norm, and this book hits both markers. So I wanted desperately to like it. In some ways, I did.

But there are two fundamental flaws, in my opinion. Firstly, the device of reincarnating the same set of characters fails; none of said characters are distinctive or memorable enough from life to life, and so end up being effectively 'new' in every section/time period. There's little chance for the reader to develop any emotional investment before the section ends and the whole thing starts again, and it becomes difficult to truly care.

Its second problem is, curiously, its lack of scope and vision. While the novel's stage is an entire world over six or so centuries, the device of keeping the characters together in each incarnation means that each section concentrates on one small area, robbing the narrative of the benefits of multiple, varied viewpoints. The scale is narrow rather than epic, and the action tends to get bogged down in details. This would be fine if the details were used to build character or illuminate the larger picture - the themes of this alternate, Europe-less world - but a lot of it reads like navel-gazing.

Many of the truly interesting implications are skipped over in favour of scientists ahead of their time discovering exactly the same things at almost exactly the same time their counterparts did in the non-fictional world, as if Robinson feels that certain universal boxes must be checked along the road to 'development', whatever the structure or imperatives of a society. (Meanwhile, literature, drama and art get short shrift). Often even the same words are used - I know little about the history of scientific thought, but would a world whose development was shaped by Arabs and Chinese still have used so many Greek and Latinate constructions to label their deeds? (okay, so he can get away with Greek, Islamic scholars were big on Greek. but still).

While there are glimpses of greater things - Buddhist attitudes and beliefs are used very well, and the different trajectory of American history is intriguing, but frustratingly underexplored - Robinson seems to be more interested in following a pretty conventional path. Perhaps dictated by his reincarnation device, he surrenders to the temptation to work towards a conclusion, as if human history could have ultimate purposes or goals. (I imagine one could argue that this reflects the world-view of those he writes about, but intentional or not it doesn't work!). Ultimately, this is too big a topic for one novel, and in trying to cover everything the author spreads himself too thinly, and ends up short-changing a fascinating world.

Despite these caveats, this remains a hugely enjoyable and memorable read, a rich tapestry of cultures and ideas rarely explored in genre fiction. Worth a look.

A good book - Pity, it could have been great.
As a history addict, particularly ancient and medieval, I always find fascinating any scenario of what might have been and never was. The central idea of this book - a world shaped not by Christian European influence but by the East, that being Islam, India or China, seemed a very good start. And, having read the "Mars Trilogy" by the same writer, I was expecting much, maybe too much.
Well the book is not bad. It focuses on particular moments of this alternate History of Mankind, following a set of characters through successive reincarnations, as they try to understand themselves and the world around them, always trying to make it a better place in the small way that they can. I believe we could do very well without the reincarnations and the intervals in "Bardo" as the writer puts it. The book would loose nothing of its narrative potential and we would not have the trouble trying to follow which is which every time.
Otherwise, the general impression is that, although History is changed, it basically remains the same since the same gross and terrible mistakes are made by different peoples and nations.
I would not go so far as discourage anyone reading the book, I enjoyed it personally. But the overall impression is one of a really great book that it might have been, and sadly never was.

Best KSR novel ever.
I've just finished reading KSR's latest, and greatest novel. If you've read any of his previous books, you'll find the the same qualities; attention to detail bordering on obsessive, beautiful, rich narrative which describes people & places with such colour that one feels as though one is remembering a personal experience. The trademark tiny flashes of humour; a line here, a phrase there.

This novel is a good deal more accesible than the Mars trilogy; you don't need to be a historian to enjoy it (though I did learn a great deal about our actual history). Rather, this book is about personal relationships, with the historical events often appearing as background, rather than the principal subject. Using reincarnation as the plot device to carry the same characters through almost 1000 years, I really became attached to the characters through the book, much more than I did with the Mars characters.

As the story of the world-without-Europeans unfolds, 'B', 'K' and 'I' continually meet each other in a succession lives, and slowly begin to realise that they knew each other in previous re-incarnations. And between lives, they re-group and attempt to lay a kind of path for themselves, always to be re-born as different people, but always as the same individuals.

Up to this point, 'Pacific Edge' has been my favourite KSR book; The Years of Rice and Salt now takes the lead. Take a week-end off and eat, drink and live this book; you'll have a new appetite for knowledge of the world around you.