Chung Kuo (novel series)
Chung Kuo is a series of science fiction novels written by David Wingrove. The novels are set in a future world.
Setting
The Chung Kuo novels describe a Chinese-dominated, world-wide system of enormous city states (named after the continents which they span continuously - with some exceptions in mountainous regions and for farm land). The cities are built of 'Ice', an artificial material which allows for a continuous structure of several hundred living quarter levels atop each other. The world's populace of 34 billion (ruled by but not fully composed of people of Chinese descent) is led by a hereditary group of seven T'angs, whose main goal is imposing stability on history. During the books it is shown that in this quest and their desire for perpetual dominance, they have erased the true history timeline from human knowledge, especially the exploits of the western societies before Chinese ascendancy and eventual world conquest from the 21st century on.
Storyline
The novels tell the story of two differing streams of thought, a mostly Chinese-dominated group which stands for stability and the continuity of the cities, and a western-descent-dominated group which desires change. Both sides use assassination, police and secret organizations as well as various terror tactics. The novels are full of political maneuvering within the Earth's cities and some of the colonized planets of the solar system. During the latter books, the once-stable society disintegrates increasingly, with civil war and outright destruction of whole cities, with untold loss of life and plagues of robotic and nanotechnical dangers.
The story is told through the eyes of a wide variety of characters and their descendants serving the T'angs or their opponents, with the dramatis personae containing several hundred people at the end of the series, most of them dead at that point of the storyline.
Books
- The Middle Kingdom (1989)
- The Broken Wheel (1990)
- The White Mountain (1992)
- The Stone Within (1993)
- Beneath the Tree of Heaven (1994)
- White Moon, Red Dragon (1994)
- Days of Bitter Strength (1997)
- The Marriage of the Living Dark (1999)