The “what if” genre of science-fiction seems to be getting very popular. “What if” 20th century technology and thought were introduced into bronze age Europe? (S. M. Stirling, Island in the Sea of Time and its sequels.) “What if” the South had won the Civil War? (Harry Turtledove, So Few Remain and a host of sequels.) “What if” the earth had been hit by a comet late in Queen Victoria’s reign? (Stirling again, Peshawar Lancers.) ⁽¹⁾ “What if” 20th century technology and thought were introduced into Germany during the Thirty Years’ War? (Eric Flint, 1632, along with a whole lot of sharecroppers in a series of sequels.)

Robinson’s contribution provides an answer (not necessarily the answer) to the question: “What if” the Black Plague at the beginning of the 15th century had killed off not 25% of Europe’s population, but 99.9%?

The Years of Rice and Salt (apparently a Chinese term referring to middle age) starts with Mongol horseman Bold Bardash and his companion Psin going on a scouting mission into Eastern Europe for the conqueror Timur and finding a land in which everyone is dead. It then follows Bold and a select group of companion souls, a jati in Tibetan religious terminology, down through more than 700 years and ten specific episodes of history, leading to a world quite different from our own but with what would appear to be similar problems. Much of this history has to do with the struggle between a wealthy, outward-looking China on the one hand and a fragmented but, without competition from Christianity (which mostly disappeared with the Europeans), powerful Islam. Dravidic India (“Travancore”) and the native nations of North America (“The Hodenosaunee League”) also have an important role to play. ⁽²⁾

Readers in Northern California may particularly appreciate those episodes which take part right here. Descriptions of the city of Fangzhang, sprawling across what we call the Marin Peninsula, are attractive (the peninsula south of the “Gold Gate” is kept in a parklike state — after all, as one character points out, who would want to live there?), and the last chapter takes place in an agricultural college town on the banks of “Putah Creek” in California’s Central Valley — some readers may recognize the location, if not exactly the place itself.

I also liked Robinson’s attempts to change the style of writing from story to story. The first episode (“Awake to Emptiness”) uses the gimmicks common in the Chinese classic novel Pilgrimage to the West (and, in fact, is preceded by a quote from that novel). Another episode (“Widow Kang”) includes explanatory notes interpolated in the margins. There is quite a bit of poetry, and perhaps (for some tastes) overmuch philosophizing. ⁽³⁾ Each episode is preceded by an appropriate, though not overly detailed, map of the world or the part of the world in which the episode takes place. The list of unanswered questions (“What remains to be explained”) on pp. 741-742 (paperback edition) is interesting; while half of them are specific to the universe of the novel, the other half deserve attention here, as well.

I’m not one of the world’s great Robinson fans (I read his Red Mars and Green Mars, but never found the opportunity or will to finish the trilogy with Blue Mars). But I genuinely enjoyed this novel.

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⁽¹⁾ Large parts of Stirling’s recent Conquistador take place in an alternate world in which Alexander the Great did not die on schedule, but this plays little part in the plot of the novel; the “what if” parts are included more to titillate the reader than to advance the story line. Stirling’s new Dies the Fire might also be considered a “What if” novel, starting as it does in a changed 1998, but that’s more a conceit of the author’s than anything else.

⁽³⁾ Much of which may not be totally pleasing to readers over on the political right.