The Years of Rice and Salt-Kim Stanley Robinson

Title of work: The Years of Rice and Salt

Original title: The Years of Rice and Salt

Author's name: Kim Stanley Robinson

ISBN: 0-553-10920-0

Original language: English


Narrative form: Uchronics novel and science fiction

Editorial: Bantam Books, HarperCollins

Years editions 2002

Year of Reading:2015

Additional Information:

I really like the way played with the follow ideas:
-Even when it can be slow, the approach has given to reincarnation is interesting.
-How it would be the world, if Europe's influence disappears in history.
-The Evolution of science.
-That no matter what happens in the history of the world, there will always be wars.

We do not like you
-The Narrative is slow.
-The Exploration of events is very limited.
- Lack of details   and characters .
It's a book that could have much more potential and action.

Summary of the book:

The Years of Rice and Salt belongs to the subgenre of speculative fiction alternate history. The novel begins in the year 1405. The Black Death has wiped with 99% of the population of the European continent.
A if the book explores the alternative timeline, how would the story, if the events of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which originated in the European continent disappears. As affects the void left by the Black Death in Europe, to the great empires of the time focusing particularly China and the Muslim empire.
He began the book is inspired by the book Journey to the West, where he acquired several characters including the Monkey King, the book most of the time is the same people who died in an avalanche and that they reincarnated throughout the book. And they are easy to recognize because almost always the same initial letter for each of the characters is preserved. In the book involves several historical figures.

The book is divided into 10 books or chapters to maintain a chronological order.

These are the books or chapters:

1 Awake to Emptiness - 783 D. H. / 1381 A.D.
This chapter is where we discover that all merchants and stopped going to China and that the European continent is nearly empty. All this is narrated dare the story of a soldier who defected and is captured by the Arabs and sold into slavery, manages to free ending his days in China, working on him emperor's palace.

2 The Haj in the Heart- 970 Years D. H. / 1560 A.D.
This book begins with the stories of farmers using north India and continues the pilgrimage of a Sufi master to Fatehpur Sikri, after Mecca and finally to Al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula) and a tigress saved his life.

3 Ocean Continents - Years 1030 D. H. / 1620 A.D.
This book tells how China discovers the Americas, which give the name of Yingzhou. Also comments as made contact and trade with native Americas the
in the Incas.

4 The Alchemist - 1050 D. H. / 1640 A.D.

In this book, the birth of modern science with alchemical base scans as results in the scientific method, but even if it has brought progress in both science and weapons, in the end everything is lost.


5 Warp and Weft - Around 1100 D. H. / 1687 A.D.
The book begins when a ronin (which is the name that was given to a samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period of Japan) He sits and manages North American group under his command several American tribes, which prepares to address the threat of conquest of the China empire along the coasts of and Pacific and the colonies of the Muslim empire in the Atlantic.

6 Widow Kang - 1190 D. H. / 1776 A.D.
When a mendicant monk dies, partly because of the irresponsibility of their son, a widow Chinese starts to behave strangely. She marries a scholar who investigates the problem and move to Lanzhou a troubled area where various Chinese and Muslim factions end up crashing. Both they analyzed in depth and insight both its violent environment and historical significance and their disparate attitudes reciprocally fertilize the profuse writings of the two serving as a seed of modern egalitarian thought of subsequent centuries.

7 The Age of Great Progress - From 1200-1281 D. H. / 1787-1863 A.D.
This book begins with falling Konstantiniyye (Constantinople) at the hands of the travancorí league ( a fictitious   nation ) that made great strides in war machine. Explore the attempt to improve and make more just global society. Also continues the story Fangzhang (San Francisco) with conspiracies by a clandestine Japanese organization supported by the Travancorí League to fight the Chinese authorities in the region. Which end in a great war between the Chinese Empire and a kind of federal system of the Muslim empire.

8 War of the Asuras - Around 1400 D. H. / 1979 A.D.
In the years of the so-called Long War, three officers of the Chinese army fighting a horrific trench warfare, and seemingly endless standing against Muslim troops in the corridor of Gansu. After the death of one of them, its armed forces are moving en masse to the south through Tibet to northern India in pursuit of the retreating enemy is wreaking havoc on religious symbols from their opponents.

9 Nsara - Since the early 1410-1423 D. H. / Years 1990 - 2002 A.D.
A teenage Emirates Alpine provinces (Switzerland) in Firanja (Europe) escapes from his family with his aunt to the city of Nsara (Nantes), which is a relaxed and stimulating environment and a teacher that greatly influences. Her aunt, an important physicist, is about to get into serious trouble when the police began to suspect that his research could be used to develop a terrible hypothetical weapon coveted by the recently defeated in the devastating Long War Muslim states. The girl becomes archaeologist and travels at a major scientific conference, shadowing the Pugwash conference in the city of Isfahan where he suggests, influenced by his aunt, ways for scientists to remain united as a counterweight against the brutal trends in the states. However, you must return quickly when the army suspended the government and try to take advantage Nsara a long and debilitating crisis. Most of the city's population is opposed to the intentions of the army openly for days until an intervention by the League Hodenosaunee restores the previous government.

10 The First Years - Shortly after a revolt and defeat the Chinese government that emerged from the Great War (La Quinta Assembly Military Talent) the main leader of the rebellion is killed. His henchman work as a diplomat then begins in many parts of the world until it accepts a position in the city of Pyingkayaing where he works for the Agency of the League of All Nations for Harmony with Nature (League of All People's Agency for Harmony for Nature) which returns to be with the ideologue of the Chinese revolution during an intense course in analyzing human history. Finally, he sits in Fangzhang (San Francisco) and work there and professor at a college of agricultural engineering.