Finally, a blip on the KSR radar!

Kim Stanley Robinson's next will be The Years of Rice and Salt. Information on it so far is sketchy, here's what I could find: synopsis and book cover shots, may be possible to get an advance copy from here (I'll know as soon as I get offline to try it out), a hint of where the title may have come from in this text on gender roles in premodern China (long, the reference is a third of the way into the page, the gist of it is: Women in elite households called the childbearing years of marriage the years of "rice and salt," and they generally constituted the busiest time in a woman's life. Duties connected with raising children, looking after sick or aging household members, and managing certain economic aspects of the household required much time and energy, even with the assistance of servants.). By all accounts, the novel is set in a world where the Black Plague destroyed European civilization, with India and China becoming the world's dominant societies. That's all I could gather. Scheduled for release Feb 2002.