Marooned! On Mars With Matt And Hilary

We're pack, the science fiction literature podcast equivalent of tubing down a lazy river with a six-pack of beer! This week we talk about Book 4 of The Years of Rice and Salt, "The Alchemist," where Khalid, Bahram, and Iwang discover the secrets of the universe while attempting to placate the venal khan and suss out the political machinations of his treasurer Nadir Divanbegi. For a lot of readers, this is the chapter where the book really starts to click. As Hilary puts it, this is where she figured out the project of the book is really to tell the story of the emergence of modernity without a progress narrative and in the absence of Eurocentrism--because, of course, "Europe" doesn't exist! This book is also where we see how scientific knowledge develops alongside a different set of ideologies, both religious and political. Here, Robinson dramatizes how scientific “discovery” exists within other forms of knowledge and inhabitation of the world. Science is historically contingent and situated among other ways