Travels With Monkey:The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson.
Written: Aug 04 '03 (Updated Aug 12 '03)
Product Rating:
Pros: A well crafted alternate history, very clever and intriguing.
Cons: The story becomes convoluted, the world too similar and too familiar to our own.
The Bottom Line: Great premise: Europe is destroyed by the plague. Earth left to China and Islam. How would this affect our history?
Great novel, even with many flaws.
avepythagoras's Full Review: Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt
The Big Question of 'What If': Where it Goes Wrong
I've never been a fan of 'alternate history,' there are always too many problems with writing such things. In order to do so successfully, you have to think outside the box, literally, and ask, how would the world be different if...
But I don't think we can think outside the box, and any speculation we make concerning the 'what ifs' in history are always somehow poisoned by our present understanding of how the world actually is--or merely how we perceive it to be. Therefore, all alternate histories have familiar landscapes, familiar people, and familiar histories regardless of how hard the writer is trying to avoid this. Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, is no exception.
What if the black death had been much more unkind, what if the black death killed with the impunity of the Ebola virus, leaving no more than 1% of the European populace alive? What would that do to history? How would our world be different?
Apparently, not too different...
Someone discovers that gunpowder can be used to fire bullets of metal at high velocity from a tube, and not just make fireworks and decorative explosives. The obvious consequence of firearms is the development of bigger, more powerful firearms, thus itˇ¦s only a logical step to make canons. This alternate history's main weapon of choice is the firearm. And these firearms eventually become machine guns. With similar circumstances to the development of the machine gun prior to World War I.
A further someone develops an interest in mathematics and develops calculus as a means of understanding gravity and projectiles. Because of his work, he is forced to make bigger and better weapons, and all the while discovers the spectrum of light when he uses a prisms. The science of optics is a mere logical consequence of this discovery; microscopes and telescopes are invented in short order. All by the same man. And all within a few years of his initial discoveries.
America is discovered and inevitably the natives suffer from pestilence and imperial expansion...but this time they fight back and win, earning America mostly for themselves. (Granted this was a little different).
Someone, a woman, discovers radioactivity and dies of radiation sickness. She wasn't Marie Currie, though. This knowledge helps to slowly develop a theory of nuclear physics...
Computers and something similar to the Internet are used to communicate and send 'email'...
Regardless of the difference in worldviews, the Chinese, Indians and Arabs discover Darwinian evolution and make the same exact inferences Darwin made...humans from apes, natural selection, and survival of the fittest.
The world fits our own too well; the discoveries are too similar, too European. I was hoping that Robinson wouldn't fall down this trap. The world isn't new and different; rather, it's nearly a carbon copy of our own. Just the names and faces are different. Culture is a funny thing, regardless of the fact that we are all human, our cultures make us act in radically different ways. Certain cultures think differently, they view life and family and country in different terms and as a consequence develop large idiosyncrasies. Hence, I don't think science and philosophy would make the same discoveries if China or Islam were running the show. This isn't to say that Europe had far superior scientists. No, itˇ¦s just, as a culture, we thought through things differently. We were able to come to different conclusions. What if, instead of firearms, the Chinese used fireworks and rockets as primary weapons, they had the ability to do this hundreds of years before a European knew what gunpowder was. That would radically change armaments and could possibly advance missile technology far ahead of basic muskets and flintlocks.
This just goes to show, given the chance, things would've been radically different if China and Islam were the key players in developing pre-industrialized/industrialized human history. Robinson's world is too familiar, we see the same things happening, nothing really happens out of order; everything is in a similar place as it was with our normal, actual history. The same discoveries were made, with much the same applications.
A Surprise: I Actually Liked The Book
Despite these problems: The Years of Rice and Salt is a well-written novel. I enjoyed reading it. Robinson is good with characters and writes with a subtle craft lost to most modern science fiction writers. He's got poetry, charm and wit. I love well-written novels.
But he had some problems with this book. Itˇ¦s obvious that he struggled. The main plot revolves around a Tibetan bodhisattva known as monkey and his friend Tripitaka as they plunge through endless cycles of reincarnation. Tripitaka is headstrong and doesn't seem to get the game. Monkey, who is enlightened, tries to lead in the right direction. Progress seems to be made. But we never know what really happens. About three-fourths of the way through the novel we loose this quest. Monkey and Tripitaka are no longer considered key players and Robinson works on developing his world and its history. Robinson got caught trying to do too much, and in the end, is unable to produce the masterpiece-that-could-have-been. By the end, the story has gotten convoluted and overly idealistic. We never learn if Tripitaka and Monkey are successful: do they or do they not attain nirvana? Instead, the final portion of the book discusses the unreality of reincarnation, how it was an old myth used to provide meaning to a primitive world. Even though we've experienced the reincarnations, seen Monkey and Trip in different forms and different personalities. Robinson decides to depart from the prime focus his world, and as such ends on a rather sour note.
In The End
Regardless, it is a good book. In fact, I would say The Years of Rice and Salt is a great book. Worth the time spent reading it. Robinson's talent as a writer carries the story even with the blemishes. And as such is worth something, even if not the title 'masterpiece'.
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