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February 21, 2005
The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2/20/05
It's not often you see a novel with a Buddhist point of view built in, but here's a sci-fi novel that takes it so seriously, the characters keep getting reborn. The history of the world changes when the Europeans are largely wiped out by the Black Plague in the 13th century. The other Eurasian civilizations (most notably, Islam, China and India) conquer the rest of the world and for the most part ape much of the history of our world in very different configurations. Here, the scientific revolution takes place in Samarkand and instead of Locke, we get a Chinese Moslem and his quasi-feminist wife.
It's an interesting book, but I'm not sure it has much of an audience outside of science fiction readers. I wonder if I'm actually part of a much larger existence, but really can't tell what the raft of character I know could possibly be doing in the world.
Posted by deaconmf at February 21, 2005 12:41 PM
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