Chung Kuo

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This article is about the science fiction book series Chung Kuo by David Wingrove. For other uses, see Chung Kuo (disambiguation).

Chung Kuo is a series of science fiction novels written by David Wingrove. The novels are set in a future world.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Setting
2 Storyline
3 Discontinuity
4 Books
5 External link

[edit] 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 worlds populace of untold billions (ruled 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.

[edit] 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 mostly 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.

[edit] Discontinuity

As the plot proceeds, a man called Howard Devore becomes the main villain. A former major in the government's security forces, he uses rebel groups to further his end, the annihilation of the human race. Why he does this is never explained, but his perverse sexual and sadistic lusts seem to be intended to represent pure evil.

By the end of the series, Devore has become an immortal deep-space spider creature (an Eddirudimanu), and has died by the hand of a wei chi master named Tuan Ti Fo, also an Eddirudimanu. This contrast strongly with the much less supernatural tale told in the first 4-5 books (which concentrate on sociological themes of utopian and dystopian bent), and may well be viewed as a not very successful attempt of the writer to end the story in some climactic way. The last book feels especially unconnected to the main storyline in its mood, with Deus Ex Machina resolutions involving separate parallel dimensions.