The Years of Rice and Salt

Winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel • The bestselling author of the Mars trilogy boldly reimagines the past seven hundred years in this Locus Award-winning saga, constructing a world vastly different from the one we know. . .

“A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review

It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population died. But what if the plague had killed 95 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? The Years of Rice and Salt is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.


Through the eyes of women and men from all walks of life—soldiers and kings, explorers and teachers, inventors and exiles—renowned storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson explores the place of religion, culture, power— and even love—in this bold new world.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed The Ministry for the Future, Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Galileo’s Dream. He has been named as one of Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment.” He serves on the board of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.