The Years of Rice and Salt

Alternate history is one of the most fascinating and, when done right, enjoyable fiction genres available today. Writers who pose themselves a “what if?”, and then proceed to answer that question, seem to be rather few and far between, so whenever I come across a novel that claims to be alternate history, I often pick it up - more so if it deals with a particular period of history, or the history of a particular nation, that I am especially fond of.

This is how I came to pick up The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. The “what if” question posed by Robinson was, in many ways, the clincher for my picking it up: what if the plague, instead of killing a third of Europe's population, instead wiped out an overwhelming 99% of that population? What would happen to the world then, with Christianity reduced to a mere historical footnote, and the grand European civilizations wiped completely off the map?

Some of the answers were immediately obvious to me before I even opened the book. It was clear to me that, with Europe and Christianity eliminated, that left only China, India, and the Middle East as the top contenders for what remained of the rest of the world. While I knew India had the potential to be an important power in such a scenario, I wasn't entirely sure how it would be that. I only knew that the Middle Eastern powers would most certainly expand into Europe, especially since they already had a foothold in Spain, and China had the potential to be a powerhouse of knowledge and technology, and with that it could attempt to dominate the rest of the world.

The Years of Rice and Salt certainly answered those questions. The Middle East does indeed expand into Europe, easily taking over both Western and Eastern Europe to create a collection of emirates, but they take another century to make their way to the British Isles. China continues to trade as before, but then, through some miraculous stroke of luck, a fleet of Chinese ships manages to discover North America - by landing on the West Coast, not the East. However, the Industrial Revolution is not sparked by either of these nations - it is sparked, and set into motion, by India. The effects of all these incidents upon the world are explored up until the twenty-first century.

As has been noted, that is a very large swathe of time that needs to be covered, and could potentially require several volumes and a great many characters just to get right. Robinson, however, manages to condense all that time into the contents of one book by employing a unique narrative strategy: the main characters are reincarnated into various lives scattered throughout the entire timeline covered by the novel. Early in the novel, the end of a previous life and the beginning of another are separated by a brief moment in a place called the bardo, a Tibetan Buddhist term referring to that transition state between one's previous life and one's new reincarnation. Since this has the potential for deeply confusing the reader in terms of identifying characters, especially since given names change with each incarnation, Robinson uses a simple mnemonic to keep things tidy: the main characters all have names that start with the same letter. Certain personality traits also stay the same throughout incarnations, and this is an additional aid in identifying characters.

This has the interesting effect of giving the novel a slightly chopped-up feel, as if it were more a collection of stories than an actual novel. While some might view this as a bad, thing, it seems more like it is the best way to tell the story, given the amount of time and place that Robinson wants to cover. This slight imperfection in terms of cohesiveness might alter the way the book is perceived, but it is the only way the story can be told.

However, while the premise for the novel is incredible, to say the least, the execution and content certainly leave much to be desired. The world-building - something which I always look forward to in novels dealing with history or alternate history - is not very well done here. Certainly, Robinson gives glimpses of the world his characters inhabit, giving enough detail to remind the reader that this is not the history they know, but I would like to have read something far more substantial than just those glimpses. Of course, this would most certainly have made squeezing in the entire timeline Robinson used practically impossible, but I would have been quite content with a book that focused intensively on only one or maybe two points in time, but which are then explained thoroughly, with enough room for the reader to go exploring, so to speak.

And then there is the very narrative device that Robinson employs. While it might allow for a great stretch of time to be explored in the story without making his characters immortal, it does get in the way of getting to know the characters better. Instead of lingering and exploring a character's life, what the reader gets are flashes of who they are and what they think and what they do given the circumstances. It is, quite frankly, not long enough a time to spend with them in order to get to know them better, and then get attached to them - and attachment to a character or a set of characters is rather crucial in so episodic a narrative.

I also have issues with the use of reincarnation in this story. While I have no quarrel with believers of the concept, or even in the concept itself (some of my beliefs regarding life after death involve reincarnation), it is the way it is used here that really irks me. Reincarnation is not a time machine, and while Robinson really does try to make sure none of the spiritual value of the concept is lost, there is simply something about its use in the story that bugs me to no end. I attribute this to the fact that it allows Robinson to skim over a period in time in this narrative, since it permits him to kill off the characters, give them a brief moment in the bardo, and back to living they go, in a different time, with different names, and under different circumstances. This prevents the intensive world-building that I so crave in this particular genre, and prevents me from getting to know the characters well enough to get attached to them before they die and are plugged in a different body entirely, with a somewhat different personality.

These flaws, which I found were a hindrance to my total enjoyment of the novel, are really a pity, since the themes of this novel are particularly strong and very relevant. I find it especially interesting what Robinson implies about women: he seems to think that if women were granted more power and were allowed to run the world, then humanity would not be as messed-up as it is now. I think a lot of women believe this might be true, and Robinson explores the idea fully.

But interesting as this idea might be, and interesting as the premise for the novel might be, the flaws I mentioned earlier might get in the way of full appreciation of the novel. The warning “Proceed with Caution” certainly applies in this case, because this book has the potential to make the reader either enjoy it somewhat, or hate it entirely.