Talk:The Years of Rice and Salt
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Assessment comments
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- Not only because of the long time scale, but also because of its realistic-utopian elements, and because of the frequent reflections about human nature, The Years of Rice and Salt resembles Robinson's Mars trilogy, a utopia brought to Earth.
I don't understand this: is it trying to say the Mars trilogy is "a utopia brought to Earth"? --Sam
No. I tried to say that there are similarities between Robinsons utopian Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt in the points of:
- long time scale
- realistisc-utopian elements (i.e. ambivalence of utopia)
- reflections about human nature
So, YRC is the Mars utopia brought to earth. -- till we *) 22:07, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
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[edit] Chronology
KSR seems to have written much of this book (excluding the Chronology at the beginning) without knowing that the Muslim calendar is lunar, and consequently he starts his story, which begins in AD 1405, in "AH 783". (The correct year 1405 can be deduced from where he diverges from actual history, having Timur travel in a different direction. The sickness that's affecting him in this book is what in fact kills him in our history.)
Later -- and this was corrected in the British paperback -- he calls the present year 2002 "AH 1381", and there are a few other places where he seems to be using solar (Persian) Muslim years. He should have gone back and corrected the entire text. I've replaced "ca. 1400" for Chapter 1 with "1405". --User:Heian-794 0:01, Jan 11, 2005
- User:Ericg, Zheng He doesn't figure in part three at all. I've taken the liberty of editing your revision and putting him back in the first chapter. -- User:Heian-794 23:08, Apr 19, 2005
[edit] Utopian?
As someone who hasn't read this, I'm a bit confused. Is Robinson suggesting with this book that we would have utopia if all Europeans had died? And this is supposed to somehow be realistic? He seemed to touch on themes of this in the Mars Trilogy as I recall, but it sounds like this book was an off-the-deep-end bashing of all things Western. Perhaps not...? RobertM525 06:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
- Robert, I think the "utopian" label is not necessarily because of the death of the Europeans, but rather referring to the hopeful tone of the last chapter, where a world that has endured a horrific multi-generational war between two throroughly opposed ideologies has still managed to recover and progress towards the same positive future that we see coming about at the end of the Mars trilogy.
This book is not at all a bashing of all things western. Give it a try; you'll enjoy it! Heian-794 07:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
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- It's not a utopian novel in the traditional sense, i.e. if the world was organised in such and such a way , and people made to do this and that, than we would have a paradise on Earth, far from it. The characters find themselves re-incarnated more often than not into lives ruled by political despots, but also despotisms of the mind and imagination. Despotisms that are the children of radical Islam, and the bureaucratic traditionalism of China. Nor is the novel religously utopian, the protaganists find no relief or reward from the pain of rebirth, from a life lived well or badly. There is no paradise or bliss following death, only rebirth, all one's hard won achievements, wisdom and insights lost, to be learnt again from the start.
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- It is utopian in its belief in the fundamental goodness of individual human beings despite circumstances, the belief that the human spirit can be unbroken by setbacks even when cast against providence itself. The belief thatat no life is wasted even if it ends seemingly in failure; as do the majority of the individual incarnations. The "utopian" world at the end of the novel, is only possible because of the un-recorded eforts of those who went before, the acumulated toil of the untold billions who never made it into a history book "..the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing...".
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- Actually you might not enjoy this book, it might frustrate and irritate you, for example when favourite characters get no respite with neat easy resolutions; but if you persevere with this book and do so with an open mind, you'll be the richer for having read it.Koonan the almost civilised 20:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Cover YearsOfRiceAndSalt.jpg
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[edit] A minor question...
"In the last chapters the book becomes increasingly reflexive, citing fictional scientists and philosophers introduced in previous chapters as well as referring to Old Red Ink, who wrote a biography about a reincarnating jati group."
Shouldn't that be 'reflective'? If it's referring back to itself, that would be reflecting on itself, wheras 'reflexive' would be, well, 'a reflex'.
- Nope. Check your dictionary. "Reflexive" means operating upon oneself. It's a term borrowed from grammar, to describe works which self-reference. --Orange Mike 13:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
