Fridge / The Years of Rice and Salt

• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why is there a Renaissance and an Industrial Revolution very similar to the ones in our timeline on a world without Europeans? Because these changes were not European. They were caused by people who were reincarnated, like the main characters in the book.
  • The writing style, in addition to updating its style across the centuries, also goes from describing the intimate details of foraging for food and a horse's reactions to glossing over war and socialist revolution within a few paragraphs. Why? Because these stories, too, are part of the Great Wheel, going inward to out across time, and the hub of a wheel describes a much smaller arc than the spokes or the rim.