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RICE_AND_SALT

                                                   July 10, 2010

In the grip of a weeks-long fever (an
antibiotic resistant strain of bronchitis),
I read Kim Stanley Robinson's novel,
"The Years of Rice and Salt" (2002).

As I began to read it, I had a fear that he was
going to write over my head.  This is a fiction
of alternate history, and he was assuming a fair
knowledge of history to begin with.  Would I even
notice the point at which the fictional history
diverges from the real?

I actually did read past it, in my fever-addled state,
but he made it clear enough.  To the question "what
happened to the Khazars?" he answers, reasonably
enough, that maybe they all died off in a plague.  He
then observes that they were located upstream (albeit
some distance) of Constantinople: in this version of
history, Constantinople is wiped out along with the
Khazars, so this is essentially a version of history
without Christians.

Question: what does Robinson think would be different
about a world without Christians?  Answer: nothing
much.  The industrial revolution begins in a
different place (Samarkand), feminism develops a
little later, in the Islamic world, and so on.
There's an analog of World War I not much different
from our own (trench warfare, gas, bombs).

    In the first few sentences of the book-- which
    is also a reincarnation-based fantasy, by the
    way-- Robinson informs us that he's writing
    about Monkey, the Chinese folk hero from a           MONKEY
    16th century novel.  Nothing is actually done
    with this notion, and the character bears no
    resemblence to Monkey.

    I think Robinson was just jamming, doing
    a little of this and that, and seeing
    where it all ended up.

                  The answer, in my opinion,
                  is "nowhere": this is book     Many people appear to disagree
                  entirely without a point.      with this, however, and we
                                                 might make some allowances
                                                 considering my aforementioned
                                                 fever-addled state.




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