{"id":9663,"date":"2010-02-26T10:01:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T17:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9663"},"modified":"2010-02-26T10:01:02","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T17:01:02","slug":"the-big-idea-behind-nojojojos-hundred-thousand-kingdoms-at-scalzis-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9663","title":{"rendered":"The Big Idea Behind Nojojojo&#039;s Hundred Thousand Kingdoms at Scalzi&#039;s Whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>N. K. Jemisin (who sometimes posts here via the Angry Black Woman as Nojojojo) discusses her excellent debut epic fantasy novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2010\/02\/26\/the-big-idea-n-k-jemisin\/\">in the Big Idea feature at John Scalzi&#8217;s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>his week, in my copious free time, I\u2019m reading Charles C. Mann\u2019s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. It\u2019s basically a dissection of the history that most US citizens learned in school, and some of its core fallacies \u2014 like the idea that the New World was an undeveloped, sparsely-populated wilderness before Europeans arrived. In reality, Mann explains, the pre-Columbian Americas had a population to match that of Europe \u2014 much of it concentrated in sprawling urban-centric empires like those of ancient Rome. And like ancient Rome, these New World civilizations thoroughly engineered the landscape, building aqueducts and roads and planting forests to optimize hunting, fishing, flooding, and commerce. (Did you know there\u2019s a \u201cGreat Wall of Peru\u201d? I didn\u2019t.) It\u2019s a fascinating book, though obviously not without controversy, and it seems well-researched and well-written. I\u2019m not done with it yet, but I\u2019m enjoying what I\u2019ve read so far.<\/p>\n<p>Why am I talking about somebody else\u2019s book when I should be talking about mine? Because this is the kind of thing that really gets me going: hidden truths. History is written by the victors, after all \u2014 which means that beneath many historical \u201cfacts\u201d lie counter-facts and conflicting events, illogical assumptions and unrealized motivations, all of which would shake us to our foundations if we ever found out the truth. Maybe. Because there are always those who have reason to keep the truth alive, often at great personal risk, even if only via whispered tales and half-remembered songs. And yes, via a few lies too, told maliciously or through ignorance. One person\u2019s truth is always someone else\u2019s heresy. This is what I decided to write an epic fantasy about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2010\/02\/26\/the-big-idea-n-k-jemisin\/\">Read the whole thing.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>N. K. Jemisin (who sometimes posts here via the Angry Black Woman as Nojojojo) discusses her excellent debut epic fantasy novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, in the Big Idea feature at John Scalzi&#8217;s blog. his week, in my copious free &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9663\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}