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So I finally finished The Years of Rice and Salt by KSR by recommendation of @self_made_human and my 15-year-old self. I loved this book when I was a teenager (I even based the last two parts of my Paradox mega campaign on the success of the Iroquois in these books. Unfortunately, like the final book of the Mars Trilogy, this book didn't really hold up, although that is not to say that there aren't positive aspects or things that I really liked on this read through. My main issues with the book revolve around the confused nature of historical materialism and great man theory of history that Robinson seems to subscribe to, and the fast and loose approach he has to religion and ideology.
The Years of Rice and Salt is a series of collected novellas taking place in a world where white people basically don't exist because the black plague wipes out 99% of the population. Each novella takes place at key moment in this alternate history following four characters that are continuously reincarnated. In the earlier novellas, reincarnation plays a more central role in the story, with each containing a chapter where the characters are in the Bardo (a waiting room for being reincarnated), and a clearer link between each reincarnation: each character can be identified throughout time by the first letter of their name and a key personality trait. For example, K characters are prickly and impulsive, B characters are gentle and loving, I characters are intellectuals, and S characters are generally idiots. Both of these features drop out of the narrative over time, which I think was deliberate (more on this later). The constant reincarnation and relatively short length of each novella (10 in ~750 pages) made it difficult to get to know the characters, especially as they shifted away from their archetypes in the later half of the book. The purpose of reincarnation in the first half of the book is clear: as a road to enlightenment and Nirvana, and the characters do make great strides in correcting their flaws throughout these first few novellas. However, by the second half of the book it's clear that for all their actions, world history is following a pretty set course, and the best that they can do is enjoy "those years of rice and salt" as a character puts it in the book. I generally liked this, and I think it's a positive message that would resonate much stronger in this world where Buddhism, rather than Christianity is the dominant religious force. One of my frustrations with Christianity is that the goalposts are so focused on the afterlife, which, at least subconsciously creates disdain for the world in the here and now.
On a macro, worldbuilding level, however, my opinion about this book has not held up at all. The destruction of Europe by the Black Death leads to a world that is dominated for much of the novel by a struggle between Islam and Buddhism. This should be a very interesting premise, and indeed starts out extremely promisingly. The great struggle occurs not in the Atlantic, in much of our timeline, but in Central Asia, the heart of the world, which is very much reflected in the settings of the various novellas. However, by the end of the book, history has disappointingly reconverged to something that resembles very much our timeline. Muslim-dominated Europe is impoverished because of a world war, China has fallen to a Communist revolution, America (governed by native peoples) is the dominant power because of control of international maritime trade. Science, culture, and economics have taken their exact same courses as in our timeline, and it very much feels like Robinson swapped out skin-colors and funny hats from our timeline. Of course this is perhaps not surprising given Robinson's political and philosophical views (materialist Neo-marxist), but it does stretch believability, especially when the reincarnated characters so frequently behave like "Great Men" of history to make it all happen. Although I have sympathy for this view of history (I am currently reading Marx and find him sympathetic), I also find it to be a little insular and self-limiting. China and Islam are very different ways of looking at the world as compared to Faustian Western civilization, and it seems a little myopic to believe that technological and social development of these societies really would have ended up in the same place without Western influence. Heck, even in the West we didn't have to end up in this particular present: I would argue that the development of the personal computer and the internet especially, rather than more analog tech like that shown in the Fallout Universe was a very real cultural path. The author's blind spots both within his universe and in real history are pretty glaring. In one novella Constantinople is easily captured by a force of Indian Dreadnoughts, but in the next Islam is somehow able to stand united against China, India, and the Iroquois for 60 years in a global war. The scale of that war also completely stretched my credulity: look at how exhausted all the combatants were by 4 years of WWI, and how absolutely destroyed the USSR, Britain, and Germany were by 6 years of WWII. Robinson also chose an interesting Native American confederation to be the basis of his replacement America. Robinson portrays the Iroquois as a model democratic people, which not entirely misguided, misses their own blatant imperialism and destruction of other native groups to create a glorified game reserve in the 17th century. Luckily this whitewashing does not extend to other cultures: the Chinese and Muslims are both shown to be just as imperialistic as our timeline's Europeans, which I think is something that KSR's usual audience probably needed to hear.
So in short, while I found the character work and personal themes to be pretty decent still, I was very disappointed in this book's theory of history and exploration of non-Faustian culture. Muslim France and Iroquois America ending up exactly like France and America in the 21st century doesn't seem to very realistic to me, nor to be a very interesting exploration of non-Western cultures.
To a lot of people, especially those who deny HBD, there seems to be a complete lack of connectivity between real world actors doing things that drive forward history and history itself. It's like they see history as a movement independent of people. That it was preordained or inevitable that certain developments would happen at certain times.
To that extent the sentiment being expressed when exploring alternate realities like this ends up being a sneer: 'You only got there first. If you hadn't been in everyone's way things would have been better for us.'
It does not have anything with regards to HBD, it is more related to Hegelian philosophy, or one could even call it a religion. Hegel was the most influential philosopher of the 19th century who integrated older philosophers like Schiller and Rousseau into his concept of History - the concept where the history is a progressive project of Hegelian dialectics, where people are only actors "discovering" the preordained path of how to abolish opposite concepts into their new higher synthesis. Hegel himself was more of an idealist, where he saw his Geist as the moving force ranging from Weltgeist through Zeitgeist and Volksgeist. In his view the great men of history are products of their Zeitgeist - they are the ultimate incarnation of their era who move the history forward into another revolution, they personalize and enable the synthesis of higher level of Geist in an inevitable march of progress. While I would not say that Hegel's philosophy is explicitly racist, it is also not not-racist. It is absolutely possible that the forces of history will obliterate races, ideologies, religions and basically anything else in lieu of progress. It may not be necessary, but in this philosophy the end justifies the means - what if billions need to perish for progress, if it will bring more progressive society for untold trillions.
Of course Marxism is an offshoot of Hegelianism, he just flipped the script from idealism to materialism. Heck, Karl Marx himself popped out of Young Hegelian movement so of course his philosophy incorporates many of Hegel's concepts including dialectics, now called Dialectical Materialism, Hegel's concept of History which Marx turned into his focus on class struggle stemming from material conditions and his historical stages toward Communism and many more. But I'd also argue that OG Marxism is not against HBD or racism, similar to Hegel, these concepts are tangential to the true forces of History. It is only the more modern interpretation where racial oppression was added to the whole edifice, often on top of class oppression. Marx himself was extremely racist - at least from modern moral stance - approvingly quoting Trémaux theory that the common Negro type was a degeneration from a quite higher one in his letter to Engels in 1866, probably spurred by the fact that his son-in-law Paul Lafargue was of creole origin an Marx had some nasty things to say about him in his letters. Although to Marx "defense", he was extremely nasty person to everybody around himself including his wife, children, parents and his best buddy Engels, so this should not be surprising.
Tolstoy articulated the Hegelian worldview beautifully in his chapters on Napoleon in War and Peace; I don't know if I believe him or not, but certainly more than after hearing excerpts of Hegel.
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