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The Years of Rice and Salt
The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history, opening at the dawn of what should have been the 14th Christian century. Instead, the Black Death has wiped out the population of Europe, leaving the future open to the trans-Asian cultures of the Old World. Robinson has applied his usual detailed research and rich, convincing narrative to the production of this book, giving the world he creates a lived in and liveable depth. Through this, he has successfully avoided many of the pitfalls of alternate history, growing his work from a common root but not dependent on our branch of history for its survival. This book could have been a rather tedious meditation on the absence of da Vinci, Shakespeare, Hitler and a million others. Instead, it is defined by the presence of Arabic and Chinese civilisations, expanding across the planet and finding $other cultures.
The Years of Rice and Salt covers a period of seven centuries and, in the end, the technology that these rather different occupants of the planet discover seems remarkably similar to what our contemporary world has found. In this, KSR seems to have had a failure of imagination -- he does not, or dares not, find the world too different a place. Perhaps the book would have been tedious to read, or impossible to write, if the world had collapsed into an eternal mediaeval culture. Perhaps a pure golden age ushered in by the avoidance of "Western rapacity" would have produced a story without sufficient conflict or complexity. Perhaps, in the final analysis, human nature is human nature regardless of the cultures which seek to shape it. Of course, this leads to the essential problem of alternate history, something which the book discusses directly - "we don't know if history is sensitive, and for want of a nail a civilisation was lost, or if our mightiest acts are as petals on a flood, or something in between, or both at once."
As the tapestry of its internal history is so convincing, and so little reliant on our own, it can be hard to see what the book actually has to do with us. The characters spend a lot of time in discussion throughout the book's length but as the world reaches into the modern age, it reaches also into self-awareness and the protagonists increasingly become historians and philosophers. Towards the end, the book almost dissolves into the deconstruction of it's own content. This approach seems to be an attempt by the author to give himself an opportunity to comment more directly upon our world. In the final section, the story regains the impetus as a new global culture starts to pull together. This section is written in the future from our perspective and the narrative is more comfortable as Robinson abandons alternate history for the stronger stuff of true science fiction.
In terms of technique, Robinson manages both interesting and admirable approaches, experimenting and further developing his craft as a writer. He maintains a set of central characters across the whole period in question by making use of the idea of reincarnation. This fits nicely with the idea that this is an "Eastern" book rather than a "Western" one whilst avoiding the complications of a generational saga or of writing about totally new characters in each section. It provides the reader with a thread to follow through the ten tales, tying them together in small ways as well as large and allows commentary on the progress of the book and of society. Additionally, each of the ten 'books' which make up this large novel is written in a different style, reflecting the characteristics of the period in which it is set. Even the map which introduces each section is drawn differently.
This new book is vintage KSR - so rich in detail that the experience of his milieu becomes personal. Clearly, a master builder of worlds is at work, thoroughly working his research into the foundations. It also has the fingerprints of ethical and ecological concern, encouraging us to do our best, be of good will and to maintain an upward slope for ourselves, our kind and our world. Robinson's fans will enjoy The Years of Rice and Salt. Other readers may fare better by skipping to the final chapter.
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This work is challenging on many fronts, not the least of which is that there are many long-winded and dry descriptive passages that span many pages. But it is a history!
Most of the challenge comes in the dramatic paradigm this work uses as a premise. I enjoyed the way the book challenged me to view the world from the Eastern philosophies, and the premise to continue to bring back the same characters in each era was truly enjoyable.
If you enjoy history, philosophy or the work of KSR, it's worth the read.
-dk
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Does this mean that Edward Said never publishes 'Orientalism?'
...
Maybe some other dude publishes 'Occidentalism?' So it's possible to blame the East for the same ills and misunderstanding that Said blames the West for?
More things change, more they stay the same
Things would be *much* different. The main thing you must keep in mind in that without the "modern boys" going to England and bringing back tech almost from whole cloth to Japan that they would most likely have *never* developed much beyond where they had been for thousands of years before the 20th century. This is true of most of the Asian cultures (Before you bash me for racist thought keep in mind I've lived in Korea for ~4 of the last 10 years , my wife is Korean, and I speak fluent Korean) The fact is they where never about progress. IMO there would be no modern day technology without the west.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Oh yeah, Asia is just full of gentle, earth loving Asians, who would never dare fill their oceans with mercury, run unstable nuclear reactors, deforest thier jungles, wipe out their tigers, rape their nankings and generally behave just as boorishly as any westerner. Cut the racist crap Timothy, that attitude was old when Kipling used it.
Salon reviewed this book a while back.
Duncan Lawie wrote the review, not Timmy. The editors do enough stupid stuff on their own, I hate it when they get blamed for what others write.
I should also develop the more interesting ones
in books...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
you miss the point.
he says just after "Western rapacity"
Perhaps, in the final analysis, human nature is human nature regardless of the cultures
so what he is doing is pointing out that there is a "lie being fed" and therefore you are just agreeeing with what he says.
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
While I do enjoy KSR, and will probably continue to read his works, he does have a tendency to fall into preaching a bit much: he definitely has an axe to grind and is not at all afraid to hone it in public. This isn't a bad thing for a novelist, after all, large amounts of Huck Finn are written in this mode. KSR needs to develop a bit more subtlety about it. Some advanced irony courses would probably help him ;-).
;-), he does a better job of staying away from the long omniscient passages of Blue Mars that so damaged that novel. It still could have been tighter, IMHO. But then, I didn't write the book. It does seem very, very difficult to paint a picture of a society using only the materials at hand, instead of relying on conversations and exposition that explain everything that a person in the society would already know. I really find novels that eschew exposition more satisfying, as the mental effort to understand the world is more enjoyable than having it spoon fed. Besides, if things are left somewhat ambiguous you can have endless arguments about what particular passages "mean", leading to endless flame wars on USENET ;-).
As for TYORAS (hey, a pronounceable acronym
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Sure, and in the future, people will wear clothes made out of shiny space-blanket material and cook all their food in microwaves, and decorate their walls with pictures of fractals. Feh.
As much as I'm sure you'd like to think your toys are paradigm-shattering conceptual breakthroughs, you know they only continue along the same path that Gutenburg forged.
The ASCII character set is nothing more than a new way to implement the character set used by the press. The important advancements made possible by the press are only re-codified by computers. Ebooks are nothing more another way to store a text, and a crappy way at that. Audio books are even worse because they're not even texts. You can't highlight or mark on ebooks (yet), and more importantly, you can't pass a cherished old ebook to your child as as heirloom.
The physicality of books is important and wonderful, and you're cheating yourself if you don't appreciate the experience of reading a real book in a quiet place. You should curl up with a real book in a room with no computer and get some perspective on this technological terror you've created.
In that time period -- 15th to 18th century -- a strong mercantile class and a commercial culture developed, that would eventually result in dramatic decentralization of power. In addition, the power of the centralized church gradually waned, as secular institutions gained strength and leaders became more pragmatic and much more focused on temporal power rather than spiritual merit. Economic power became a major motivation for exploration and colonialization... and for science, with monarchs interested in such questions as how to determine longitudes at sea, or anything else that would provide an edge, in addition to prestige-motivated financial backing.
In short, Europe was undergoing massive societal changes between the 15th and 18th centuries. I'm not too familiar with Eastern cultures except, to some degree, with Japan and China, but IIRC, those two needed external stimulation (the arrival of colonialists with comparatively advanced technology and a willingness to use it) to really get going.
It might have something to do with Confucianism and Buddhism, both of which strike me as being a bit stability and contentment-oriented -- basically, don't rock the boat, release yourself from material greeds, make peace with yourself. Both of those two societies also were quite insular, and China at least had attained a sufficiently high level of technology (especially compared to their known neighbors) that it fueled complacency...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
while the mars series was quite good,I'd hardly call KSR a dominate force. When he add's another 5 books to his list maybe I will start echoing that sentiment.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
They most likely would not have. While it is true that the Middle Eastern world was the primary center of scientific and mathematical study and knowledge from approximately the Fall of Rome to the coming of the Inquisition, Middle Eastern societies, with the possible exception of Turkey seemed to stagnate somewhere around the 11th Century.
How much of this was due to the destruction that occurred during the Crusades is an open matter for speculation. It is possible that, in a world free from European influences, this stagnation wouldn't have occurred. However, it is just as likely that, absent European influences, the continued intellectual development that occurred in Byzantium might have withered on the vine.
I guess this is the stuff that science fiction, alternative history and other speculative literary genres are made from.
utter rubbish
This is a huge annoyance to me. Unlike most people, unfortunately including KSR, I have a strong education in the history of science and philosophical thought, with a very strong and particular emphasis on actually doing the scientific work and carefully reading the various texts. For someone who approaches the evolution of western empiricism in this manner, it is very often a surprise at how natural, obvious, and reasonable so many false scientific beliefs are. Very often, Kuhn's paradigm shift is a very difficult and sometimes unlikely event that is enabled because some crucial prerequisite(s) is satisfied. In my opinion, the archetypical example is geocentricism versus heliocentricism.
Moderns assume that the ancients and Ptolemy were just plain batty and obtuse in their adherence to a geocentric geometry of circles upon circles upon circles. Isn't it obvious that a heliocentric model is simpler and compelling? There is an attitude that the ancients were simpletons for not recognizing this. But they did. They were well aware of a heliocentric model, and Ptolemy concedes its simplicity. However, they had absolutely no context within which to find the idea of the Earth in motion (and the consequently enormously large universe) an acceptable idea. Until Galileo's telescope, from an empiricist standpoint, the geocentric model seemed to be completely correct. We grow up learning that the Earth rotates and that it revolves around the Sun, and so vastly underestimate the counter-intuitiveness of that idea.
In closely examining the history of science, over and over this sort of thing becomes evident. Outdated, supposedly absurd ideas are found to be far more reasonable (in context) than is commonly assumed; and modern ideas far more radical, even in context, than is commonly assumed. It takes a lot of hard work, profound insight, chance, and a friendly social and political environment for even the incremental, but crucial, changes in thought to occur.
The reason this is important, in my opinion, is because we are no more exempt from the hubris that arises from ignorance as our ancestors were. The contemporary scientist who has nothing but contempt for those ignorant ancients and their ridiculous ideas -- because they are very sure in the assumption of the (overall) correct state of contemporary thought -- is really no different from those ancients they are ridiculing. "All or most of the things I think about the world are true, isn't it obvious?"
Lest cranks and fringe scientists think I am validating their loonyness, I hasten to make it clear that I am not. In truth, the conservative nature of science and scientists is a necessary and good thing. It's a crucial part of skepticism. The hubris of close-mindedness is the enemy of the Newton or Einstein, that's true. But, while there's only ever going to be a few Newtons or Einsteins, there's (currently) millions of everyday working scientists. So, functionally, this attitude isn't a problem, it's a feature.
But if one has any pretensions of wisdom and education -- and many scientists do -- then a deep and profound skepticism is a necessity. One should respect the immense mysteries of the cosmos and recognize that they dwarf one's puny certainties. Not only because there's so much left to learn, but because there's also very likely much to unlearn. That is the lesson of the history of scientific thought. You don't really need know this to be a good, productive scientist. But you do need to know it if you wish to exist as thinking being in this universe in the manner that the scientific tradition exemplifies.
And, without question, philosophers of science, writers of the history of science, or science-fiction writers constructing an alternate history of science -- for all of these, this comprehension is also a requirement.
Kim Stanley Robison's The Years of Rice and Salt fails in a crucial way for this reason. As he attempts to reconstruct an evolution of empirical thought that mirrors our own, he demonstrates that he doesn't really understand his subject matter. His subject matter is not merely the scientific ideas themselves; but those ideas in the context and tradition of the rational, empiricist tradition and the complexity of factors and ideas that have enabled and nurtured it. He sees the facade, and confuses it for the entire structure and its engineering. That's an egregious error in the context of this book.
Sure, and in the future, people will wear clothes made out of shiny synthetic silk material and cook all their food with electricity, and decorate their walls with pictures of cars. Feh.
As much as I'm sure you'd like to think your toys are paradigm-shattering conceptual breakthroughs, you know they only continue along the same path that Homer forged.
The Gutenberg character set is nothing more than a new way to implement the words used by real poets. The important advancements made possible by the spoken word are only re-codified by letters. Books are nothing more another way to store a text, and a crappy way at that. Parchment is even worse because its not durable. You can't sing or chant books (yet), and more importantly, you can't pass a cherished old story to your child as as heirloom.
The communal aspect of oral storytelling is important and wonderful, and you're cheating yourself if you don't appreciate the experience of being told a real story in a social place. You should curl up with a real storyteller around a fire with no paper and get some perspective on this technological terror you've created.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
What might the "modern" world have been like if Queen Elizabeth I had been assassinated, the Protestant movement put down in England, and then subsequently across the European mainland and the New World?
Through a series of intertwining vignettes, author Roberts presents us with a present time England under papal dominance. Where steam locomotion is the norm (as the church has not sanctioned fossil fuel burning), the inquisition still reigns terror, where electric lights are forbidden as heresy and where individual spirit and idea are considered dangerous. Yet how long can the people be held down?
Roberts doesn't present the world at large as being negative, for their is a pastoral peace and simplicity to life, but he shows us how papal dominance can hold back both science and individuality.
Highly recommended!
PAVANE
Keith Roberts
Ace 1968
PB 285pgs
ISBN 0-575-06103-0
-wjc.
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
To me that's like saying "who has the time to cook a meal when there's take-out food."
Sitting down, relaxing, reading a good book. Those are some of the best things in my day. I'm tired of being "on the go" I'd rather be "on the stop"
As to whether it's time to give up paper books for e-versions. Consider the following.
and finally
Well I'm sorry I have an actual opinion. Excuse the fuck out of me?
Go get another latte, punk.
In the first few chapter the reader was admonished to find out what happens next byu reading the next chapter. Ungghh, how annoying.
Again, from "Red Mars", which I liked, the notion of monotheism as a shepherder idea.Unghh, ok, but does this have to come up in every book?
I found very few of the characters interesting, or related to the sweep of history. In "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy or "Winds of War" by Herman Wouk the author manages to tell a sweeping story where you care about the each part and each character. This book missed that.
All that said, read "Red Mars", you'll probably like it.
A great book by Sean Russell called The Initiate Brother, and its sequel The Gatherer of Clouds. Actually, I recommend absolutely anything by Sean Russell.
Most of his books are set in alternate pasts, and the two above take place in an empire similar to ancient China, full of both internal and external conflict. Some arises from dissent within a religion similar to bhuddism, whose monks have attained near-magical abilities through their meditation and training practices. There are rumors of invasion from the barbarian North, intrigue within the court is causing trouble for everyone, and all kinds of interesting things are going on.
His characters are really compelling and act, think and speak in ways that make you really feel you are experiencing a different culture, not just your own culture dressed up in another time and place.
The writing is great, the story is interesting, you want to know what happens to everyone, and although all of the events are fictional "history", you get a great feel for what that part of ancient China could have been like.
Doing my part to piss off the religious right.
Well, KSR's Mars books stand as really the definitive Mars work of our generation, much as The Martian Chronicles once did.
I'd say that KSR is the modern science fiction equivalent of James Michener. Not everyone reads Michener, but you can't really ignore the magnitude of his work. So it is with KSR.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
is not about the 'efficient' distribution of information.
In fact, it's my advice to read a novel at no greater speed than it took to write it.
Otherwise Romeo and Juliet becomes 'effciently distributed' as:
" They fell in love and they died."
The End
KFG
Sorry can't remember the name of it. But Anderson wrote a story of an alternate history where the plage instead of killing say 1/3 of Europe had killed 3/4 of Europe. Thus letting Islam take over Europe. The story is about an Englishman voyaging to the Americas, by the grace of Allah, to visit the Aztecs and the norther Indian civilisations. Where the Aztecs have overcome their sacrificial past and are now into an enlightenment phase and producing an Industrial revolution with the invention of steam engines and steam cars. An interesting different view.
Someone mentioned "Pavane" also. Hmmm. I'd guess it would be a spoiler to point out that it really isn't an alternate history ... but history being re-run to avoid a nuclear war. Therefore, the religious oppression of invention is seen as a delaying tactic to prepare the world. Maybe I shouldna said that ... nah ... I'm a bastard, so there :)
Bitter and proud of it.
A strong mercantile class and (more or less) commercial culture existed in all East Asian cultures when they were more or less near their peaks.
The question really is, what do people choose to do with their surplus wealth, power, and time?
In just about any society, many of the people who have these things (landed nobles, mostly) turn to the arts and sciences. (Not all of them, obviously. Many more spent their time drinking, womanizing, conquering, or on fox hunts.)
I think the basic difference between the wealthy classes in Europe and (for example) Japan, is that Japanese nobles look to their own pasts (or other cultures) for inspiration. They compete with each other to perfect existing arts and sciences. The push is to have the best handwriting, paint the best landscape, keep the most perfect garden, or write the most moving poem.
Europeans, rather than perfect existing genres of art and science, compete with each other to produce better and better genres. Europeans want to be leaders (or independent), but usually not followers. What better way to lead than to be the first person to write a great psychological novel, be the first person to document certain properties of electricity, or be the first person to the North Pole?
The peers of the European say "wow, that's new and interesting!" The peers of the Japanese say "wow, that's really well done!"
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I would say they were already "catching up", not "moving ahead".
Oh, and Japan does have a standing army. Quite a large one, in fact. The Japanese navy, for example, is about five times the size of the Chinese navy.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
How much did the geography and climate of NW Europe influence the social order of the people who lived there, and by extention their attitudes regarding the natural world?
:)
Specifically, given enough time, would a group of Arabs or Chinese living in the dense German forests and subjected to periodic small Ice Ages come to develop a culture similar to that of NW Europe today?
Discuss.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao