The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Kim Stanley Robertson

I've been thinking about books for Summer Girl, books I can lend her. Since my library is almost entirely science fiction, and she only likes the more level-headed ones (no men with wings allowed), I've been wondering what to lend her... and it's only recently that I thought how perfect the works of Kim Stanley Robertson are. KSR has to be one of my all-time favourite authors. His characters are easy to identify with, have depth and meaning, and are central to his books in a way which the trashier end of the market would do well to emulate. His science is always level-headed and believable. In fact, I would recommend most of his works, but most especially I have to go for the Mars trilogy, which is utterly brilliant right until the end (the final book in the trilogy still has my favourite last line of any novel); Icehenge, which is short and elegaic (sp?) and beautifully unresolved at the end; and this one, The Years of Rice and Salt.

Briefly, now: this is an alternative history, based on the premise that the Black Death killed off 95% of Europe's population instead of about 30% (is that right?). In this history, Islam and China grow to fill the void, and Europe is relegated to an Islamic backwater of bickering Taifa states (love that word - don't know what it means, think it's a type of rock, but love it anyway). The backbone of the book is a group of characters who are a sort of cosmic family, a jati, who are reincarnated over and over again and always somehow find one another, without really knowing why or who they are. It's a brilliantly told fable. There are a few rare occasions where KSR gets out his broad brush and starts lecturing, but these are truly rare, and for the most part the stories are well told, the characterisation is splendid, and each episode is touching in its own way.

Highly recommended.

Land of the Headless

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Adam Roberts

Imagine turning over the paper in your Pub Philosophy exam, and seeing the following question:

1. A fundamentalist government may well use severe punishments such as beheading. However, future medical progress may make such punishments less terminal. Discuss.

'Land of the Headless' is Adam Robert's answer. It's also a nice novel following a rather foolish, impetuous man who has his head cut off and then has to deal with becoming part of an underclass in a rather stilted fundamentalist society, but who eventually finds love, escapes, and lives happily ever after. As ever with Mr Roberts, you kind of get the feeling that the plot is almost incidental; but what it lacks in drive, it makes up for in sheer wonder. The characters are typical Roberts creations - stupid, stiff-necked, misunderstood creatures whose paths through life is complicated by their own mistakes, they are all the more human for their so-obvious failings... and that delicious central premise, that beheading is no longer a final judgement but leaves behind a rather embarrassing human residue, is a nice satirical comment on the current rise of fundamentalism in our Age of Technology. I enjoyed it enormously.

All in all, Land of the Headless is not the B-movie gorefest it's title might suggest (sorry Tara), but what they call a 'high-concept' novel - presumably because the plot has been kicked out to leave more room to explore ideas. Another novel which I've been wading through recently also claimed to be 'challenging literary concepts', but Hal Duncan's Vellum is at the other end of the scale. Frankly, I wish I'd paid more attention to that phase about literary concepts when I'd read the blurb on the back, as it might have set some alarm bells ringing. Hal wants his story to transcend time (And maybe space, too); his protagonists are archetypes, replaying the same story in different worlds at different times. Done well - as a series of short stories, perhaps, in a Michael Moorcock style - this could have been an interesting concept. As it is, however, it makes for a choppy read. The scene/story changes happen so quickly it's tiring; flipping between ancient Sumer/twenty first century Bible Belt/the trenches of the Somme/deserted beach hut on the brink of the Apocalypse every paragraph gets dull quickly, and most of the backdrops felt like cliches. That's not to say there aren't some nice set-pieces; but they're not enough. What's worse, the plot doesn't make a great deal of sense - presumably it will be explained in the sequel, but really, I won't be bothering. It was hard enough slogging through the first volume.