Review: The Years of Rice and Salt
- cepmurphywrites
- May 20
- 12 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
An odd habit from some in recent years is the complaint about the non-existence of something before actually checking if it exists or not. Witness Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history novel that does not involve either victory by the Axis powers in World War II nor the Confederate States in the American Civil War. It does not even involve the United Kingdom or the United States, starting as it does with the death of 99% of the European population in the 14th Century.
The absence of Europeans from historical and cultural influence for subsequent history informs not only the overarching story and plot of the novel but also how it is told. It creates a continuity of character across hundreds of years in an inventive way to give us a mostly street level view of subsequent historical events, told in such a way that a surface level understanding might classify it as a utopia but refers to events occurring elsewhere to create a much more complex world.
The Years of Rice and Salt tells a tale that spans the globe and more than 600 years of history. However, there is a great deal of continuity across the ten books that make up the novel despite disparate locations, times, cultures, and characters. Robinson achieves this through use of reincarnation as a linking element, with the characters from one book being reincarnated into the next. The reincarnation is the element that holds the work together as a novel rather than a collection of short stories with the same setting.
Robinson has told stories across multiple centuries before in his Mars trilogy. In that science fiction setting, it is the usage of an anti-aging medical procedure simply called “the treatment” that allowed for the use of the same characters long past current human lifespans. Reincarnation allows for a similar continuity in Years of Rice and Salt, but in a far more inventive way.
Unlike “the treatment”, which is hardly explained and seems to function mostly as a means to an end but winds up having massive implications, reincarnation as portrayed in Years of Rice and Salt has its own internal logic where the bardo, an intermediate state between life and death, is used to debrief the characters before they move into the next cycle. We know that the actions of the characters in one life will have consequences in their next, with one character being reincarnated into the body of a tiger rather than a human as punishment. Despite losing memories of their past lives with each reincarnation cycle (until the last few), the spirit of the characters informs the desires and temperaments of their next incarnation. The reincarnating characters are bound to each other after they all died in an avalanche during a cycle that happens before the events of the novel. We do however get a moment during the penultimate book where one of the characters becomes overcome by emotional seeing an exhibit about a village preserved by an avalanche – an emotional climax of the novel.
Contrast with Mars, where the characters are held in stasis due to simply ageing on and on. They feel stagnant compared with those in Years of Rice and Salt. Whereas the successive reincarnations of the jati, as the group bound together following the avalanche are referred to as, become emblems of progress, which is a major theme of the book to the point where some might consider it a piece of utopic fiction.
The core of the jati is based around three individuals whose names in each cycle begin with the letters B, I, and K. There is an element of the Freudian theory of the psyche to them, where the Bs are the ego, the I’s the superego, and the Ks the id in cycle after cycle. Even as their respective statuses in society are altered, or their cultures swapped, or their genders made different, the core aspects of the characters hold true. It is notable that one of the reincarnates shares the same initial as Robinson himself, and that as the id of the group is the main driver of plot in many cycles. It is K who is reincarnated a tiger early in the novel, and during a later period in the bardo actually attempts to attack the goddess Kali with a sword. That all the reincarnated characters by the end of the final book are living in what in our own history is California near to where Robinson himself lived at the time, does raise the question of how much the K character was viewed as a self-insert across the timelines. On the one hand, the K character endures perhaps the most pain of any other character in the book (but more on that later) and is the only one punished with an animal incarnation. On the other, the K characters feel injustice the most and do the most to fight it. Again, he does attack a god with a sword.
The book really did need the continuity provided by the reincarnated characters to function as the epic novel that it is. Without them, we would have 10 slices of life in very different times and places that might offer us a glimpse into the alternate world but would make the overarching theme of progress far more subliminal. It also allowed Robinson to be more experimental with the prose itself as the narrative moves across time and space. The narration in the first book directly addresses the reader as each chapter ends, much in the style of the Chinese novel Journey to the West. As books near what we would identify as modernity, that too creeps into the prose and the final chapters even venture into postmodernism.
For this reader, the opening chapters more removed from western prose norms were actually more engaging than the later ones that are more a reflection of them. This is perhaps something that could have been done more, but at the same time the further you get from the divergence the more the dominance and influence of European culture happened historically it can be difficult to imagine different formats without going into full-on gimmicks. Each book still manages to define itself on its own terms; some are rollicking adventures, some are worldbuilding, others are focused in-depth on the characters whilst they are unaware of their previous incarnations. Sometimes they blend one or more of these, and some are more interesting than others, but this will certainly vary from reader to reader.
The later chapters grow more contemplative about the nature of history and belief. It is here we get some allohistorical navel gazing as we return in Book Nine to what was Europe (Firanja in this timeline) for the first time since Book Two when resettlement of the continent by Muslim pilgrims began. The choice of a far, far more fatal bubonic plague pandemic was a choice by Robinson to portray the “biggest change” to history as we knew it whilst still being close enough for comparison. The success of it is not treating this as a means to an end but actually a thought-out part of the history of this world. We get a great snapshot of the resettled Europe in Book Nine, including a visit to an ancient menhir circle in what was Brittany. Speculation as to why and how specifically the Europeans (more commonly referred to as Christians by characters in the book) were wiped out appears several times in the later books of the novel. Many Muslim characters describe it as a punishment from God for the European Crusades in the Holy Land, but others point out that the Muslims of Al-Andalus were similarly wiped out, seemingly disproving a divine interference. Other, more scientifically inclined characters believe that a lack of skin pigmentation makes one more susceptible to disease. This is less challenged, presumably due to a lack of disprovable evidence. Though some Europeans do survive in isolated places, perhaps the increased death rate from the bubonic plague meant isolated communities avoided it entirely.
The Book Nine also includes a trip by characters living in what we know as France to the Orkneys, where descriptions of Orcadian fishermen could very easily have been a description from our own history. Elsewhere, the Ottoman Sultans have been using selective breeding to maintain European bloodlines for their harems, remarking that the men are as protected as the women for this purpose. This is explained to the reader through the thoughts of a Muslim Armenian doctor serving the present Sultan, as the latter forces himself upon one such woman. Earlier, the works of Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, were as prized by Muslim alchemists as they would have been by their European equivalents historically.
The first contact between the New and Old worlds still leads to an exchange of disease and violence. Here it occurs later than our own history, in the late 16th or early 17th Century. It is also even more of an accident, when a Chinese fleet bound for an invasion of Japan (another attempt) is blown off course and makes its way all the way across the Pacific to California. There is a massive feeling of dread from the sailors as they believe they are hopelessly blown out to see with no knowledge of anything out there. To their credit, the Chinese sailors have better interactions with the Miwok than the Spaniards did with the Caribs or Taino people. They even pack up and leave when it becomes clear that the indigenous population is hit particularly hard by sicknesses they have carried with them. Their interactions with the Inca Empire, the winds sending them further south rather than back across the Pacific, are less friendly, seeing some of them facing ritual sacrifice. They only escape back to their ships through use of their firearms, still unknown technology to the Inca. The currents finally take the fleet back across the Pacific to Asia, with further loss of life. The Admiral of the fleet, Kheim, reports back as to the riches of gold they witnessed and the inferior weaponry of the Inca, seeing the potential to secure great treasure for the Chinese Empire. (As a note, it is Kheim that tries to attack Kali with his sword in the bardo.) His reports fall upon death ears.
Here is an underappreciated part of the alternate history portrayed: the Emperor is still far more concerned with Japan than venturing across the ocean. The invasion of Japan by the Chinese Empire, which did not happen historically, does happen in Years of Rice and Salt. One wonders if having a massive chain of islands in between lying in the way to the New World from the Old was an advantage for the indigenous peoples of the New World facing invasion from the Pacific rather than the Atlantic. This creates a massive diaspora of Japanese people fleeing Chinese oppression that even makes its way to the New World. One such member of diaspora, a samurai who winds up Chief of the Iroquois (it doesn’t get more alternate history than this), is instrumental in planning a resistance of the North American indigenous peoples against both the Chinese colonisers from across the Pacific and the Muslim colonisers from across the Atlantic.
The lessened impact of Old World diseases in the New World is also due to the influence of an outsider, a member of the Chinese fleet that first sailed to the New World, deserted before the fleet left California, and introduced variolation into their medicine. The usage of infected material to immunise people against smallpox was known in Asia by at least the 16th Century but would not historically make its way to Europe until the 18th Century, long after the diseases had taken their toll on the indigenous populations of the Americas.
Those are two direct interventions by characters in the novel that gives the indigenous peoples of the Americas better opportunity to resist colonisation from across the oceans. A far better outcome than our own history but is it alone enough to qualify Years of Rice and Salt as a utopian work? Many of the greatest atrocities of our own history are avoided in The Years of Rice and Salt, in that respect the alternate is likely better than our own. However, the worlds portrayed across the ten books are by no means perfect. Only better and not perfect would seem to indicate that this is not a utopian world.
Progress is a major theme of the book. It is difficult to understand progress without knowing how worse things were, and we get a major indication of that in the first book. It is not the trek of Bold across a post-apocalyptic Balkan landscape, encountering only a single person after escaping execution on the orders of Timur. Instead, it is what we witness happen to Kyu, a fellow slave of Bold’s aboard a Chinese treasure fleet, when their slavers castrate the young African. This is described in a nauseating level of detail at odds with the Journey to the West inspired Book One. It really stays with you and informs not only the actions of Kyu but also each of their reincarnates throughout the novel.
There are acts of violence and cruelty in later books, but none compare to the sheer horror of witnessing not only Kyu’s castration but also his painful recovery. We do know that some of the horrors of the 20th Century, including aerial bombardment and chemical warfare, are still developed during the “Long War” portrayed in Book Eight, but these mass methods of destruction do not have their horror conveyed the way the individual act of mutilation of Book One did. This may have been a deliberate choice, given how much progress is a theme and Robinson considers himself a writer of utopian science fiction. What we don’t hear about would probably convince us that the world is not as much of a utopia as you would think just reading the synopsis alone. For instance, during speculation in the later books on what if the Europeans had not been wiped out by disease, one character wonders if they would have been “enslaved like the Africans”.
(Africa remains largely outside the narrative after Book Two, where it is only present as a character travels across the Maghreb to Al-Andalus. The world by the era of the Long War has divided into four major power blocs, and Africa is controlled mostly by the Muslim nations of Dar al-Islam, except for the southernmost part of the continent which is controlled by Indian based Travancori League.)
It is worth remembering that, as much as the narrative follows Muslim pilgrims resettling Europe with a more liberal interpretation of the Quran, or the development of modern science in Samarkand, or the Iroquois preserving their culture, or the Travancori ruler wanting to unite the world as a democracy, that there is plenty happening outside of the travails of the jati. It is told selectively, and as much as it may eschew Great Man history to an extent, the characters are still prominent and impactful in world events as admirals and alchemists and Chiefs and pilgrims and scholars and revolutionaries. One could tell a tale of our own history in such a selective way using reincarnation that could lead the reader to determine our own history is the utopia. This is not to the detriment of the book, rather some of its reviewers; it in fact makes the world portrayed much more interesting than if it had been a straight utopia. Or a straight dystopia for that matter.
The ending also might strike some as utopian, where in Book Nine a conference of international scientists agree to overplay the impracticality of developing nuclear weapons and foster greater cooperation between cultures. Book Ten ends with a character teaching a diverse group of students in what we know as California – a peaceful ending. The avoidance of nuclear weapons as a gateway to a happy ending is something very rooted in the experiences of an author who grew up during the Cold War. Published in 2002, environmental concerns are mostly absent, surprising for an author who made them such an integral part of the entire Mars trilogy. We see plenty of environmental destruction, the Gansu Corridor being blasted to bedrock and the petty destruction of the summit of Mount Everest by artillery during the Long War, but the long-term impacts of humans on the environment is unmentioned aside from in relation to nuclear weapons.
Similarly, starting on a far more fatal Black Death and ending on a note of positive globalisation does hit differently after COVID-19. Finally, the account of the Long War and the Muslim world later suffering civil unrest, hyperinflation, famine, and attempted coups is likely meant to evoke the aftermath of the First World War. We only see the coup that is stopped by the intervention of the Hodenosaunee (Iroquious) navy in Book Nine. By the time of Book Ten there is still unrest in the world exemplified by revolution in China. One wonders if we’re actually seeing The First Years (as Book Ten is subtitled) or if we’re seeing the final years of an Interwar period.The Years of Rice and Salt is an epic work of alternate history, all the more special for covering subjects, cultures, and topics not usually handled by the genre. In such a prominent work of the genre too it should really be held up more to show the potential of alternate history beyond the stereotypical dystopias arising from the American Civil War or World War II. It is not just notable in contrast but completely stands on its own merits too.
However, it would be reductive to call The Years of Rice and Salt a utopia. It is a simplistic understanding of the work that you might only get from reading the synopsis rather than the book itself. It has utopic themes, but no more than a selective retelling of our own history might have. History might have been a bit better at avoiding the worst atrocities of our own, but it is by no means perfect.
As a final note, for this reader the usage of reincarnation to form a link in narratives spanning hundreds of years and myriad different cultures has been revelatory. It should probably be done more and not just in alternate history, there are plenty of situations in fantasy, science fiction, and epic storytelling in general where this aspect of The Years of Rice and Salt could be applied to their betterment.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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