Kim Stanley Robinson · 2002 · global

Kim Stanley Robinson's 2002 alternate history imagines a world where the Black Death killed almost all of Europe, and follows a handful of souls reincarnated across seven centuries through the civilisations that rise in its place. The route traces their journeys from China and India through Samarkand and the Islamic world to a resettled Europe and the New World.

1. 1
   Beijing

   In this history where the Black Death emptied Europe, China becomes a colossus, its fleets and philosophers reshaping a world that never knew a European Renaissance.

2. 2
   Travancore

   In the south of India the kingdom of Travancore forges a league of science and industry, a beacon rising against the great powers of China and Islam.

3. 3
   Samarkand

   On the Silk Road at Samarkand, where all the world's cultures meet to trade, a disgraced alchemist stumbles into the beginnings of the scientific method.

4. 4
   Mecca

   Across the centuries the pilgrim road to Mecca draws the reincarnated souls together, one life after another, toward the heart of a Muslim world.

5. 5
   Al-Andalus

   In an al-Andalus never touched by the Inquisition, Islamic Iberia flowers, the western anchor of a civilisation that inherited an empty continent.

6. 6
   Nsara

   Europe, long a plague-haunted wilderness, is resettled from the south as Firanja; at Nsara on the Atlantic coast, women fight for the science and freedom the new age needs.

7. 7
   The New World

   Beyond the ocean lie continents the Old World barely knows, where a league of native nations holds its ground against every empire that comes seeking gold.