The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2002.

[5] Robinson followed the Mars trilogy with the novel Antarctica (1997), which won an Alex Award, and two short story collections, The Martians (1999) and Vinland the Dream (2001), before publishing The Years of Rice and Salt.

Timur turns his army around and orders the scouting party executed to avoid the plague, but Bold escapes and wanders through the dead lands of Eastern Europe, encountering only one lone native.

He explains that their jati also includes Psin, the restaurant owners Shen and I-li, and an unknown number of others, and that their group has been especially close since an avalanche in Tibet killed them all at once in a previous cycle.

Bistami spends a year in Mecca before learning that he is being blamed for Akbar forsaking Islam, and departs again, traveling to the Maghreb and Iberia (Al-Andalus).

The caravan members found a city called Baraka on the abandoned former site of Bayonne, France, and create a model society based on Katima's feminist interpretation of the Quran.

When the wind fails to arrive, the huge fleet is swept out to sea by the Kuroshio Current and set adrift on the unexplored Pacific Ocean.

Once Kheim discovers they have infected the indigenous people with disease, he orders his crew to leave at once, but a sailor named Peng jumps ship to remain with his Miwok lover.

His friend Iwang, a Tibetan Buddhist mathematician, and son-in-law Bahram, a Sufi blacksmith, instead convince Khalid to test the claims in the books through practical experiments, particularly those of Aristotle.

Khalid and Iwang devote themselves to demonstrations that use the scientific method to greatly progress knowledge of physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and weaponry.

However, the Khan still sees Khalid as a con artist, and demands that he prove his worth by inventing new weapons to fight the rising Chinese threat to the East.

He realizes that Peng (from "Ocean Continents") made his way to the Hodenosaunee and taught them about variolation, blunting the impact of smallpox epidemics on their civilization.

Fromwest reveals that he has come to organize the Hodenosaunee into a larger defensive alliance capable of resisting Chinese and Muslim colonizers, and offers to teach them how to mass-produce their own firearms.

During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, Chinese widow Kang Tongbi takes in a Buddhist monk and his son whom she finds scavenging.

Later, Kang meets a Hui Muslim scholar named Ibrahim ibn Hasam, and they perform a ritual that allows them to remember their past lives.

In the equivalent of the Christian 19th century, the Indian state of Travancore has overthrown the Mughals and the Safavids and developed steam engines, ironclad warships, and military balloons.

Later, during the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, the Japanese enclave known as Gold Mountain (in the real-world San Francisco Bay Area) has been subjugated by Chinese colonists.

Chinese officers Kuo, Bai, and Iwa fight in the trenches of the Gansu Corridor, where the ground has been blasted down to bedrock by sixty years of bombardments.

They stay at a zawiyya, a refuge for women, where Idelba restarts her work in physics and Budur enrolls in university to study history.

Life in Nsara becomes increasingly difficult as the Islamic world faces the effects of losing the Long War, including hyperinflation, food shortages, and strikes.

Eventually, the Hodenosaunee League send a fleet from their naval base at Orkney to back the protestors in Nsara, forcing the military to surrender.

There, she convenes a group of scientists from all the major world powers, all of whom agree to convince their various governments that nuclear weapons are too impractical to manufacture.

Disillusioned, Bao leaves China and serves as a diplomat all over the world, eventually marrying and settling down to raise two children in Fangzhang (San Francisco).

After his wife dies, Bao accepts a diplomatic post in Myanmar, where he reunites with comrade from his revolutionary years named Isao Zhu.

The characters whose names begin with the letter K are "combative, imprudent and prone to getting himself (or herself) killed"[9] and "striking blows against injustice that typically lead to more suffering".

[10] The B characters are "more comfortable in the world, meliorist and optimistic"[9] and "survivors, nurturing friends and family through bad times and patiently waiting for something better".

[13] Also, later chapters take on metafictional elements, with characters discussing the nature of history, whether it is cyclical or linear, whether they believe in reincarnation, and feelings that some people are intrinsically linked.

[2] This is reflected in the title of the novel, The Years of Rice and Salt, which refers to the everyday chores of raising a family, often performed by women, despite the politics and wars of men.

[19][20] Robinson takes advantage of the romance inherent in the idea of reincarnation; it's a lovely, seductive concept, and it adds much mystical texture to the narrative.

[18] The Library Journal "highly recommended" it, saying that its "superb storytelling and imaginative historic speculation make [it] a priority choice for all SF and general fiction collections".