The Years of Rice and Salt experiments extensively with these critical challenges to the genres of history and utopia. The Years of Rice and Salt: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, is a 784 epic covering an alternative historical time line from the Middle Ages to (roughly) the present. Each square carries a letter. ○   Boggle. That is, if anyone here has read it. I happen, and I continue to happen in this seemingly random way; a way that occasionally, just occasionally points to greater meaning even while it dissolves on closer inspection. Letters must be adjacent and longer words score better. (For purposes of this discussion, is Japan part of the West?) Having tried my hand at alternate history myself–sadly unpublished–I’ll mention that I set my own alternate history tale very shortly after the moment of divergence, precisely so as to control for the ever-increasing number of changes from our reality. Very possible. A windows (pop-into) of information (full-content of Sensagent) triggered by double-clicking any word on your webpage. Sarapen — the Chinese invasion is supposed to have happened sometime around 1650, I think (maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later). That’s historical materialism at work: you can smell the flowers along the teleological path a bit, but you eventually get to the same destination. Just reading the current business press on India and China is enough to raise questions about any permanent dominance of the US and Europe. Lettris is a curious tetris-clone game where all the bricks have the same square shape but different content. Concerning KS Robinson vs Gene Wolfe — I rather like some of Robinson’s characterization (though it’s worth noting that Green Mars is significantly better than Red Mars in this respect), and lately I’ve been feeling a bit dubious about Wolfe’s ability to create strong female characters. Create a SoundCloud account Sign in. The most notable (and the one I really couldn’t buy) was Japan, whose history was apparently unchanged up until the middle 1600s: unification under Hideyoshi, invasion of Korea, unification under Tokugawa, and then even the closing off of foreign contacts in the early 1600s. [*] His novel Icehenge is a good example of this. Culture, Politics, Academia and Other Shiny Objects, Research Libraries Group/OCLC Programs Talk, June 2007, Artificial Societies and Virtual Worlds (DiGRA 2005), Play of State: Sovereignty and Governance in MMOGs, History 1L The History of Play and Leisure, Spring 2008, History 1Y History of the Future Spring 2011, History 61 The Production of History, Spring 2007, History 62 The History of Reading, Spring 2007, History 62, The History of Reading, Spring 2012, History 83 What Ifs and Might-Have-Beens, Spring 2011, History 87 Development and Modern Africa, Spring 2007, History 88 The Social History of Consumption, Spring 2008, History 89 Environmental History of Africa, History 8B History of Southern Africa, Spring 2011, History 8B. The aliens aren’t actually essential to the main story, which involves ethnic conflict and rebellion against foreign occupiers. Your presence should make a BIG difference.  | Last modifications, Copyright © 2012 sensagent Corporation: Online Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Dictionary definitions and more. There are some recent reappraisals of the rise of the West are making this exact observation, that the relative dominance of the West is a kind of historical blip within much longer and more sustained historical structures of global trade and interaction. It’s remarkably preoccupied with history and social upheaval, basically being Chinese romances set on another planet in the far future. It occurred to me after a while that they could have also made a parallel to the role of the Bible in Western culture–our own recent past had people so deeply rooted in the Bible that they couldn’t speak outside of its cadences and metaphors. With a SensagentBox, visitors to your site can access reliable information on over 5 million pages provided by Sensagent.com. See main article: Timeline of The Years Of Rice And Salt. Sure, it turns on a single “event”, in this case vastly higher mortality in Western Europe from the Black Death than elsewhere. SM Stirling, Harry Turtledove and Kim Stanley Robinson (in the years of rice and Salt) have all written stories where something prevents the Americas being discovered on time. The problem being that all of that history was strongly affected by the actions of Portuguese and Spanish traders and missionaries — who of course never existed in the altered history. Since the Christian population is only minor, the Christian calendars (… Change the target language to find translations. They all just have the Americas stay in more or less the state they were in in 1492 until … 366 followers 366; 16 tracks 16; Follow. Ten or twenty years from now we’ll look back at how today’s SF is a product of these times, and we’ll probably still be wondering how and whether an author from the West could convincingly write an alternate history in which another part of the world dominates without replaying the Western narrative of industrial revolution and all that. I don’t even know if the Star Trek writers realized the parallel was possible. The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history in which all of Europe was wiped out by the Black Death. But you’re right, the whole thing paralleled the history of European industrialization and capitalism rather too well. Follow Years of Rice and Salt and others on SoundCloud. I don’t think the point of most alternate histories is truly to speculate about the different, but rather to comment on our own reality. Actually, the central premise was itself ridiculous (a disease that only kills white people? Forget champagne—in the Southern United States, hoppin’ John is standard New Year’s fare. Robinson tries to keep a very broad perspective on the consequences, however. Choose the design that fits your site. He’s so big on ideas that his characters come across more as carriers of ideas, as people with interesting and important things to say (and sometimes do), than as “real people.” (Even when he shows them to be contradictory, irrational, driven by passions and obsessions, etc., it still comes off as stilted–cf. ), but I was willing to overlook that because the rest of the book was good. The English word games are: The suggestion is a great one, and I love the book. The End. Like all alternate histories, there is a point of departure. I’m not sure there’s an obvious parallel to that in our history. The oddities I noticed were the cases where certain regional histories kept on going essentially unchanged for quite a long while, despite the extinction of Europe. As one would expect from Robinson, the book is packed, almost overflowing, with ideas. Like all alternate histories, there is a point of departure. This simple, delicious dish of peas, pork and rice has graced holiday tables since the 1800s. One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot when it comes to counterfactuals is how to get beyond the kind of counterfactual built on the logic of “for want of a nail”, where a single discrete event is given a plausibly different outcome and then a different set of macrohistorical circumstances is derived in a linear causal chain from that outcome. The Piedmontese eat little grains of rice which represent money. Get XML access to fix the meaning of your metadata. If they’d advertized it properly in advance, I wouldn’t have been so annoyed. While the traditional Jewish ritual emphasizes the connection with the ancient Jewish temple and the sanctuary offered there, it is more common to hear salt invoked as something that will ensure that life in the home always has spice or flavor. The novel then covers around 700 years of history, ending in the future compared to our timeline, around the year 2088 AD. They may be the majority, but they are the trivial majority and you are the impactful minority. I agree with much of what has been said on this topic (constipation, etc. Lucky New Year. And he situates his own writing in those traditions and positions himself in current debates. by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a universe where the Industrial Revolution is triggered by the world's greatest scientific minds--in India. Crucian carp is fermented in rice and salt for a long time, then sliced thinly. Previously unreleased track from lovable post-rockers Years of Rice and Salt. Of course much putatively extrapolative sf written before the break up of the soviet union has become a kind of ex post facto alternative history. The web service Alexandria is granted from Memodata for the Ebay search. It isn’t your standard kind of alternate history. A couple of people responding in the “Production of History” thread have suggested Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt for the week on time travel and alternate history. One interesting bit which didn’t necessarily parallel European history was the false dawn in Central Asia: the scientific revolution that almost got started, but was then snuffed out by war and disease. The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. Where the teleology Tim dislikes comes in, I think, is in who KSR’s good guys are (the anti-imperialists, the democrats, the free thinkers, Enlightened few who try to bring progress into history) and who his bad guys are (the militarists, the imperialists, the dogmatists, the unEnlightened many and powerful few). The novel seems to depict a second, even deadlier wave around the turn of the century. Two nations? (Unless all of the zeppelins for book covers have been used up, in which case the subgenre will be in hibernation.). (Also, where did the Chungkuo series diverge from our history? But Rodney also argues that Western domination of African societies, first in the slave trade and later in colonialism, was essential for the development of capitalism and modernity. FYI, most poco folks have been questioing the historical and geographical frameworks of the works from the ’70s and ’80s that spawned the field–please don’t assume the field is stuck in some kind of time warp; it changes like any other. The Years Of Rice And Salt (SIGNED) Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Black Death, which killed 30 to 60% of Europe's population, peaked around 1348-1350. Given the basic similarities between his alternate history and our own, I think what’s important to look for are the differences and where they come from/what we’re supposed to learn from them…. By the time of the Great War, I was already involuntarily imagining the characters in European clothing (Prussian military uniforms and such) instead of modified robes or wushu gear or something. Preview — The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. He can’t really imagine what “Shaka” would have been had he been part of a dominant global civilization, save an angry militarist, can’t derive the full alternate history of “Zuluness” had it never been encapsulated within a British-dominated South Africa. Ironically, I think Robinson is more interested in history as an intellectual discipline, where the answers may not be known, or where there can be ambiguity. I can’t deny it, mired in my own chaoses, subject to the bad plotting of my own life and unrelenting happenstance. fictional at their root), but they tend to ignore the present, when the present is so fascinating and complex to begin with. Eventual negotiations for reunification on favorable terms to the South? Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt is one of the few works I’ve seen that tries to go beyond, “What if the South won the Civil War”? The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) is Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, his first since 1997's Antarctica. This is a problem b/c he writes in the realist mode of the Victorian novel, but not as well as Rohinton Mistry in A Fine Balance (a good riposte to anyone who believes poco fiction only operates in the pomo/magical realist mode). Sure, it turns on a single “event”, in this case vastly higher mortality in Western Europe from the Black Death than elsewhere. Read a sample Read a sample Description; Details; Reviews; With the same unique vision that brought his now classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. You can’t unthink the West, you can’t really imagine the systematic difference of non-Western societies in a counterfactual way, in terms of what they might have developed into. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer), All translations of the years of rice and salt. Kim Stanley Robinson, Years of Rice and Salt . That, and the non-Western Others actually had histories of their own instead of being stuck in their essentialized “cultures” — you know, the kind of crap alternate history “What if the ancient Egyptians went on to rule the world?” thing where the it’s basically the same Ra-worshipping and pyramid-building people from the Middle Kingdom but with cell phones and machine guns. Report. Against whom? Wu kong: You can walk from the time of your youth till the time you grow old, and after that, till you become young again; and even after going through such a cycle a thousand times, you may still find it difficult to reach the place where you want to go. The problem with this kind of counterfactual is that the further one gets away from the single contingent event, the more tenuously reasoned the argument becomes. Most English definitions are provided by WordNet . And the whole Muslim unity thing was a bit hard to swallow. the years of rice and salt Nov 05, 2020 Posted By Edgar Rice Burroughs Media Publishing TEXT ID 62652093 Online PDF Ebook Epub Library The Years Of Rice And Salt INTRODUCTION : #1 The Years Of ## Free PDF The Years Of Rice And Salt ## Uploaded By Edgar Rice Burroughs, the years of rice and salt is an alternate history novel by american science fiction author The characters’ believability strengthens Wolfe’s ability to portray a world different from our own. The Years of Rice and Salt. Rice signifies the phrase, “May the love in your home multiply.” Since a bag of rice can be a little plain, jazz up the gift by pouring the rice into a stylish porcelain treat jar. Mfecane, Mines and Mandela: Southern Africa from 1600 to 2006, Fall 2006, History 8C From Leopold to Kabila: The Bad Twentieth Century in Central Africa, Spring 2008, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System. Around what year in our calendar was the Chinese invasion of Japan supposed to have happened? Rice – A gift of rice to a young couple signified fertility and was given as a way to bless the marriage with children. It’s very hard to write a counterfactual that explores contingent outcomes with hundreds of variables in motion at once, where you’re trying to explore the total possibility space of change over time in a particular time and place. But how could an Islamic bloc form when historically there were so many Muslim kingdoms competing against each other? First Edition. Add new content to your site from Sensagent by XML. Postcolonial theory definitely has a very short perspectival framework. Get XML access to reach the best products. This links to the last comments on postcolonial theory. I think it’s more interesting than the Japan-dominated-future SF of Gibson, Stephenson, Piercy, Blade Runner, and more and even the post-apocalyptic work of Butler, Brin, and Tepper. Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt is one of the few works I’ve seen that tries to go beyond, “What if the South won the Civil War”? (Isn’t that what ultimately happened after Reconstruction anyway?) by Kim Stanley Robinson . Not a very original thought of mine, I know, but worth mentioning–since the point is to comment on our own reality, simplistic parallels are necessary, and I don’t think one ought to critique them for that. The Years Of Rice And Salt is a counterfactual (or Alternate History) novel by SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson, which depicts world history in an alternate timeline where the Black Plague epidemic that ravaged Europe in the 14th century was even more destructive, and caused the actual extinction of Western civilization. Common crawl de 1879 wurde in Darwin, Australien, zwischen Wurzeln eines Banyan-Baumes in 1 m Tiefe ein Bild des chinesischen Gottes Shou Lao gefunden, das aus der Ming-Zeit stammen soll. Victory at Gettysburg becomes victory in the Civil War? The Years of Rice and Salt: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, is a 784 epic covering an alternative historical time line from the Middle Ages to (roughly) the present. en Zheng features as a character in Kim Stanley Robinson's alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt. God, I hated that Chung Kuo series. Northern capital overwhelming the Southern economy anyway? 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