Comments on: The Years of Rice and Salt

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:38:46 +0000

Wondering now if Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead might count as an alternate history/dysutopian SF novel that successfully subsumes Western history into a history of the world from an Americas-centric p.o.v….?

By: Bob Violence

Bob Violence — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 06:08:59 +0000

I haven't read the Years of Rice and Salt, but a long time ago I read Robinson's book The Novels of Philip K Dick, based on his dissertation (UCSD, 1982). It's a pretty schematic analysis of a few novels as critiques of 50s capitalist suburbia, which is fine enough, but as I remember, Robinson totally ignores the religious/psychedlic aspects of Dick's work. The whole thing came off as fairly doctrinaire and unreflective Marxism, so I'm not too surprised that he views world history through the lens of historical materialism.

By: Sarapen

Sarapen — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:57:28 +0000

While we're on the subject of China, anyone ever read The City Trilogy by Hsi-Kuo Chang? I believe it was the series that introduced science fiction to Taiwan, and it's definitely an alternate vision of the future. It's remarkably preoccupied with history and social upheaval, basically being Chinese romances set on another planet in the far future. The aliens aren't actually essential to the main story, which involves ethnic conflict and rebellion against foreign occupiers. Now that I think about it, it obviously parallels Chinese experience during the Sino-Japanese War, but with great heroes and villains instead of banal bureaucrats and incompetent leaders. It gets kind of muddled near the end, but it's definitely a look at something different from English-language sci fi.

By: Peter Erwin

Peter Erwin — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:30:19 +0000

Yes, China Mountain Zhang is quite good. It also has some brief meditations on the nature of historical development, posed partly as a contrast between chaos theory and classical determinism (the latter being, understandably, the dogma of the Marxist-dominated society in that novel). 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. 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.[*] Wolfe is perhaps less open to this -- at least, this essay has some rather odd ideas about the nature of medieval European society, and a curious tone of "I know what the past was like, and no revisionist historians are going to convince me otherwise." [*] His novel Icehenge is a good example of this.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:55:48 +0000

Thanks for the thoughts on Chung Kuo; I missed it the first time around and probably will keep things that way. But I’ll pine for the four unwritten books of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Thanks also for the tip on McHugh; about the only lengthy thing I’ve read on China is Spence’s Search for Modern China, which is probably conventional, but that’s just what I wanted as a starting point.

The Japan-dominate future was very much a product of its time. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers was the rage, and it looked like Japan was rising and the US was falling. That is if something didn’t go wrong and punch us into a timeline somewhere between Brin’s Postman and a nuclear winter. I’m sure you remember.

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. (Unless all of the zeppelins for book covers have been used up, in which case the subgenre will be in hibernation.)

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:16:27 +0000

God, I hated that Chung Kuo series. 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.

Given the length of China’s influence in world history, it’s quite possible the last 500 years will end up being but a blip. For an interesting look at a future dominated by China, check out Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang. 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.

By: Sarapen

Sarapen — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 04:31:51 +0000

Oh yeah, Chung Kuo. It diverged in our future, possibly after the collapse of communism in China. Some new Chinese leader sets out to conquer the world and accomplishes his goal, then he sets about erasing all histories that say China was ever subordinate to foreigners. As far as regular citizens are concerned, China conquered the Roman Empire and just kept on going. Kind of like Shih Huang Ti and how he set out to destroy as much of the history of the kingdoms he’d conquered as possible after first unifying what became China.

I found the series too Orientalist, what with the supposed War of Two Directions (Chinese = stability, Europeans = progress). I don’t think I ever finished it, but it’s all too hazy to remember.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:37:50 +0000

Lay readers may not have to go as far as ethnographies of globalizationl. Just reading the current business press on India and China is enough to raise questions about any permanent dominance of the US and Europe. (For purposes of this discussion, is Japan part of the West?) (Also, where did the Chungkuo series diverge from our history? That is, if anyone here has read it.)

On the far-counterfactual, is it possible that Wolfe is just a better writer than KSR? That is, Wolfe creates believable characters that are not just substitutes for the author or carriers of one idea or another. The characters’ believability strengthens Wolfe’s ability to portray a world different from our own. (I think that KSR used to better at this, as in the California trilogy, Escape from Kathmandu and Planet on the Table.)

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:52:12 +0000

I think that’s a good point. 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. Postcolonial theory definitely has a very short perspectival framework. Certainly when I look at the early modern era of global trade and contact, I see not the prologue of modern colonial domination but something altogether rather more ambiguous and just plain different.

By: cjlee

cjlee — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:36:57 +0000

At the risk of being disagreeable and/or posting a non-sequitur, my relative disinterest in counterfactuals as a historian is not that they are imagined (i.e. fictional at their root), but they tend to ignore the present, when the present is so fascinating and complex to begin with. This links to the last comments on postcolonial theory. I agree with much of what has been said on this topic (constipation, etc.), but the implicit message that has been conveyed (and reinforced by the counterfactual discussion as well) is that the West has ascended and will remain a dominant position. Is this really so? Perhaps from the 15th to the late-ish 20th century, but given what I see around me, I don’t think this will continue. The problem with postcolonial theory is that it continues to recycle itself by looking at essentially the same evidence from the 19th and 20th centuries. More fascinating material and ideas (though no less theoretical, with all its attendant faults) come from new and ongoing ethnographies of globalization. More de-centered and often counter-intuitive, if not counterfactual as such.