快猫短视频

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, HarperCollins, 拢16.99, ISBN 0002246791

BY 1348, the Black Death had reached Genoa. By the end of the year it had spread across France, Spain and England. In the next two years as many as 25 million people died鈥攏early half Europe鈥檚 population. Yet Europe spent the next century and a half working up to the explosion of scientific and artistic endeavour that we now know as the Renaissance.

But what if the plague had been just a little more virulent and wiped out the entire population of Europe? How might the world have been, then, without Galileo and Newton, Shakespeare and Columbus? That is the bold starting point for Kim Stanley Robinson鈥檚 epic novel, The Years of Rice and Salt.

Using the conceit of reincarnation to follow characters from generation to generation, he ranges over time and continents. And it makes for a wonderful story, from the alchemists in 16th-century Samarkand who discover the telescope and moveable type, and the historian in 18th-century China whose assimilation of Islam and Confucianism results in something akin to communism, to the Japanese explorers who reach the New World, and the Amerindian Federation that stays independent.

Robinson suggests that the pattern of development would remain much the same鈥攑erhaps a little faster here and a little slower there. But the detail, imposed by the culture of these explorers and scientists, would make it all seem very different. A huge, complex and highly enjoyable book: buy it.