The Years of Rice and Salt | ||||||||
Kim Stanley Robinson | ||||||||
Bantam Books, 658 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Rich Horton
The novel is structured as a series of ten long novellas. The novellas each follow the significant events in the
lives of a few characters. Each section is set further in the future: we begin with the death of Temur the
Lame (Tamerlaine), and continue forward until the closing section, set a few decades into the 21st Century C.E.,
though of course that calendar is not used in the book. The main characters in each section are treated
as reincarnations of characters in the previous sections, and they are assigned names with the same
initial letter. The three main characters are a forceful and impatient "K", a more gentle and
nurturing "B", and a scholarly "I". The reincarnations occur in different combinations of sexes, and the
characters live in different parts of the world in each section. Thus Robinson over time can explore much of
his altered globe: sections are set in Persia, in India, in China, in North America, in a repopulated France,
etc. There are also a few sections in the "bardo", a place where souls are sent after death, and where the
recurring characters are shown discussing their failures in past lives. I will confess that I found this last
device irritating and pointless: I was happy enough with the notion of recurring characters, but the idea of
making their reincarnation "real" annoyed me, and the sections in the bardo were boring.
Robinson's interest, here as indeed in others of his books such as his Mars Trilogy, is in the sweep
of history. As such, the novel does not have a conventional plot, neither event-driven nor character-driven. Even
the individual sections tend to be "life stories" and not "book stories". In the nature of things, some of these
sections I found fascinating, and some I found boring. In the same way, I found some of Robinson's historical
arguments intriguing, and some unconvincing. He arranges for his alternate world to develop technologically at much
the same pace, and with much the same result, as our own world. This is perhaps reasonable, but I was often
unconvinced, as with the section set in Samarqand, in which a mostly isolated genius, working against every dictate
of his culture, invents much of modern science. Indeed, though some of the discussions in the book weigh in against
"Great Man" theories of history, much of the actual historical change shown is clearly the result
of "Great Men" (and "Great Women").
I have mostly avoided describing the details of Robinson's alternate history: best to discover these yourself. He
is very interesting on the notions of Chinese Colonialism, of the rigidity of Islam and possibilities for change in
that religion, of the possible contributions of the natives of North America to modern society if their cultures
had been able to survive the diseases and other depredations of the Old World invaders, of the role and place of
women in altering history. He is less interested in rigorous economics -- I'm not sure I believe in the economic
underpinnings of his altered history. And as I have suggested the technological advances have a sense of resulting
at times from authorial fiat. At a more trivial level, the specific chronology of the events in the book seems
inconsistent at times, though such errors as I found were only irritating, not fatal.
Much of the foregoing is quibbling. Should you read this book? I think so. Will everyone like it? No. It is a
long book, and hard going at times: not due to any difficulty, simply because it is dry in spots, and there is a
fair amount of telling not showing. At times we are lectured. But nonetheless it is also often intriguing, at times
quite moving and beautiful. Some of the characters are tiresome, but some are nice to know. And the alternate
history we are shown, if not always fully convincing, is an impressive imaginative construct. It is not often that
SF is as ambitious as this book: perhaps it is inevitable that such ambition is not fully successful. It's still
good to see such ambition.
Rich Horton is an eclectic reader in and out of the SF and fantasy genres. He's been reading SF since before the Golden Age (that is, since before he was 13). Born in Naperville, IL, he lives and works (as a Software Engineer for the proverbial Major Aerospace Company) in St. Louis area. He writes a monthly short fiction review column for Locus. Stop by his website at http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton. |
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