Years of Rice and Salt Map!

[Workable Goblin]

Ah, couldn't help myself.

Bruce

That's a pretty good map (better than any in the book, though that's unsurprising since there's a lot less room and color to fit things in in the book--I figured everything there was fairly schematic anyways)

(The Muslims _were_ kicked out of eastern Yingzhou in the long war. Whether this means there are Muslims under Hoden-etc. rule, or that there was horrible crunch gooey genocide, I dunno. The OTL Iroqouis, for all KSR's Native American-worship, were pretty harsh guys in warfare.)

This is also about 200 years later, which is plenty of time for cultural standards to evolve a little.

No. The Great Plague didn't just wipe out white people. It wasn't selective. It wiped out pretty much Europe (Except for a sialdn or two up near Scotland) but it also wiped out the Granadians it says in the book and the plague may have killed some of Timur's army after he died. Though on Constantinople it seems that they may have also been hit by the plague as wellna dmost likely would have resulted in western Turkey being decimated. Though KSR doesn't explain the fall of Byzantine so it is likely as much that it survived for a little while longer but was eventually conquered-probably alot faster that its western trade was decimated.

Since Bold gets picked up by the Barbary pirates at a place I figured was Athens (pagan temples were mentioned, which I interpreted to mean the Acropolis), I thought Byzantium was taken out with everything else. Which leaves the problem of how Alexandria and the Barbary coast is still alive. But oh well.

Anyway, the Hodenosaunee League is the weakest spot in the story. KSR doesn't explain at any point how they make the transition from early agricultural society to industrial superpower, and yet their mighty ocean-spanning fleet shows up as deus ex machina not once but twice.

Ah...I thought it was a combination of being left alone (more or less) by the surrounding powers (since both the Muslims and Chinese are more concentrated in the Old World, with the Muslims in particular colonizing Europe), and Japanese and other anti-Chinese/anti-Muslim people giving them the weapons and techniques needed to resist Muslim/Chinese rule (not as OTL--here there are free agents). So, between improved agricultural techniques and metalworking/domesticated animals/and so on, they manage to hang on in the middle and eventually become a superpower capable of kicking the Muslims out and absorbing the Chinese.

 

[Constantinople]

I always wondered how many christians were left in the world. Obviously you can't wipe them all out. Perhaps they are in a similar position as Jews, an affluent minority? Also a big hole in the story, I feel, is the surviving Christians in Europe. Obviously it is going to take a century or two for Islam to even lightly populate most of the population. So the 1% that survives has an ok chance to repopulate some areas. Perhaps parts of Scandinavia, Northern Scotland, Finland, little bits of Russia.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I always wondered how many christians were left in the world. Obviously you can't wipe them all out. Perhaps they are in a similar position as Jews, an affluent minority? Also a big hole in the story, I feel, is the surviving Christians in Europe. Obviously it is going to take a century or two for Islam to even lightly populate most of the population. So the 1% that survives has an ok chance to repopulate some areas. Perhaps parts of Scandinavia, Northern Scotland, Finland, little bits of Russia.

It's specifically mentioned (in the Samarkand section, IIRC), that the Christians are like the Jews or Gypsies. Affluent trading minority, occasionally pogroms or the like, I suppose.

 

[DrakeRlugia]

The Years of Rice & Salt was actually the first AH I actually read, and probably what got me interested in the genre. I thought it was interesting, but this was before I knew of these boards or anything, or whether anything was implausible or not. It was certainly interesting, and definately one of my favorite books.

 

[Petike]

Ah, couldn't help myself.

Bruce

Much, much better...

 

[Constantinople]

Ah, couldn't help myself.

Bruce

What is with New Norway?

 

[Hendryk]

I always wondered how many christians were left in the world. Obviously you can't wipe them all out. Perhaps they are in a similar position as Jews, an affluent minority? Also a big hole in the story, I feel, is the surviving Christians in Europe. Obviously it is going to take a century or two for Islam to even lightly populate most of the population. So the 1% that survives has an ok chance to repopulate some areas. Perhaps parts of Scandinavia, Northern Scotland, Finland, little bits of Russia.

There isn't any mention of surviving Christianity in Europe, outside of the Feroe islands in any case. But the non-European Christians weren't affected, so sizeable Christian communities remain in the Caucasus, the Middle East, India, Egypt and Ethiopia. Many of them faced persecution during the Long War, and it's hinted that there were attempts at wholesale extermination towards the end of the war.

 

[B_Munro]

What is with New Norway?

Icelanders fleeing Muslim raiders took refuge in the Americas, stopping briefly in Greenland (and finding it too damn cold), moved on to North America where they eventually found refuge among the local tribes. Later they carved out a wee little state of their own, and are nowadays members in good standing of the H-etc. league and much intermarried with the Amerindians, if a bit unusual in being mostly Christian (albiet their Christianity has a lot of "heretical" elements they've picked up through long co-existence with their polytheistic neighbors).

Bruce

 

[NomadicSky]

Ah, couldn't help myself.

Bruce

Thats beautiful. You should post that in Wiki.

 

[area11]

Thats beautiful. You should post that in Wiki.

it is very good although unless Kim Stanley Robinson sees it and says thats what the world should look like I doubt it would be allowed
also I feel that China won't have been able to hold on to Australia

 

[Sovereign12]

it is very good although unless Stirling sees it and says thats what the world should look like I doubt it would be allowed
also I feel that China won't have been able to hold on to Australia

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote this one, not Stirling.

 

[area11]

oops I have a terrible memory for names