Chung Kuo Recasting Books

The brand-new prequel to Chung Kuo, a masterwork of future history standing alongside Herbert's Dune and Asimov's Foundation The year is 2085, two decades after the great economic collapse that destroyed Western civilization. With its power broken and its cities ruined, life in the West continues in scattered communities. In rural Dorset, Jake Reed lives with his 14-year-old son and memories of the great collapse. Back in '43, Jake was a rich, young futures broker, immersed in the datascape of the world's financial markets. He saw what was coming—and who was behind it. Forewarned, he was one of the few to escape the fall. For 22 years he has lived in fear of the future, and finally it is coming—quite literally—across the plain toward him. Chinese airships are in the skies and a strange, glacial structure has begun to dominate the horizon. Jake finds himself forcibly incorporated into the ever-expanding "World of Levels," a global city of some 34 billion souls, where social status is reflected by how far above the ground you live. Here, under the rule of the mighty Tsao Ch'un, a resurgent China is seeking to abolish the past and bring about world peace through rigidly enforced order—but a civil war looms, and Jake will find himself at the heart of the struggle for the future.

China is on the verge of world domination, but now rebellion threatens its dominion. Can the kingdom weather the storm? The second installment of David Wingrove's epic masterpiece Chung Kuo. Change is in the air: the generals of the Middle Kingdom await the decision of the emperor as the campaign to secure the border from China to Iraq has reached a strange impasse. Two blood enemies, Arabs and Jews, have united against their common cause. But with the lives of thousands at his whim, the exalted Tsao Ch'un, the Son of Heaven, cannot decide. Destroy the Middle East in one blinding flash, or take another path? In the court of Tsao Ch'un, men of power have become smiling lackeys, whose graces conceal their fear, or their ambition. A man that can be trusted absolutely is a rare thing. And so, with his family held hostage by the empire, General Jiang Lei finds himself appointed to a special task: the orchestration of the last great war against the West—the total dominion of America. But life in the world of levels continues. No hint of war, want, or discontent can infiltrate the oppressive, ordered society that replaces the world Jake Reed once knew. Since the first airships rolled over the horizon, nothing has been the same. His new life means new thinking, new customs, a new way of behaving, and with his every move scrutinized, Jake can only serve the bureaucracy of new China—but he is not the only citizen who feels discontent with the anodyne new order.

A war is fought within the levels of Chung Kuo's great world-spanning City in the fourth entry in this epic series The year is 2201. Chung Kuo, the great City that covers the globe, enjoys an uneasy peace, but it is a peace that will soon be disrupted by the discovery of the Aristotle File, which charts the real history of the world—a truth which has been suppressed for millennia. Cold, cruel, and calculating, Howard DeVore is determined to end the rule of the Seven T'angs and make way for his own bid for power. The harbinger of Change is the starship The New Hope—and its destruction will force the rebel factions into open warfare with the Seven. The Fight begins.

The fifth installment of David Wingrove's colossal series The year is 2206 and peace has returned. After five years of war, the Seven are weak. They have lost three of their members, and the new T'ang are young and inexperienced. Once it was considered inconceivable but now, down in the lowest levels of the immense city of Chung Kuo, new currents of unrest have awoken that threaten to tear it apart. The fight endures, but the demand for change is not the only threat to the Seven. Major Howard DeVore will use any means available to destroy them and their world-spanning city, and, from their own ranks, Wang Sau-leyan, appointed T'ang after the suspicious deaths of his father and elder brothers, plots to destroy them from within. The Seven are vulnerable and the forces against them continue to grow.

The sixth installment of David Wingrove's director's cut of his epic vision of the future It is 2206. As Chung Kuo's population continues to swell, the Seven—the ruling T'angs—are forced to make further concessions, laws must be relaxed and the House at Weinmar reopened. Change is coming, whether the Seven like it or not. The tides of unrest unleashed by earlier wars grow faster even than the population. DeVore secretly allies with newly appointed general, Hans Ebert. It seems that DeVore's plans are coming to fruition. But Ebert has his own schemes and plots—he intends to depose the Seven and control the whole of Chung Kuo. Includes more than 30 pages of character listing and Mandarin glossary.

The ninth installment in a masterpiece of a series, perfect for fans of George R. R. Martin and Frank Herbert It is 2209. In the ruins of Washington, the T'ang of North America, Wu Shih, confronts the powerful old men whose sons he has kept incarcerated these last 15 months. His foot on Lincoln's toppled granite head, he demands a pledge of loyalty. They give it, but unwillingly, and even Wu Shih knows this is not over. For almost two centuries, the rule of the Seven has put a break on change, keeping society stable, but now a threatening ferment of forces is at work. The Seven, once unanimous in their decisions, are split. Wang Sau-leyan, the resentful young T'ang of Africa, is the dissenting voice that might yet bring things down about their ears. While deep in the Triad-ridden depths of the earth-spanning City, a new and ruthless criminal—Li Min, "Brave Carp"—is seizing power, his fearless actions threatening to destabilize the whole system.

Having learned from the failure of his first assault on Chung Kuo, the real DeVore has returned to Mars to plan his next move against the Seven, and to fine-tune a new range of morphs - subtler and more deadly than the last. But among the nineteen cities of the Martian Plains, unrest has reached fever pitch, requiring the smallest of incidents to trigger violent revolution. Yet when it comes, it is from a wholly unexpected direction. Hans Ebert - much changed since his great fall from power - finds himself in DeVore's employ as a humble sweeper. Pushed beyond his limits, he kills a man, placing himself once more in DeVore's power, and as the Major sets in motion a plan to destroy Marshal Tolonen by kidnapping his daughter, Jelka, so Ebert's part becomes clear with an announcement that he and Jelka are to marry. As the cities of Mars have fallen, so might those of Chung Kuo - with even its most powerful, City North America, suddenly vulnerable. But the greater threat to the Seven lies within their own ranks. Even as Li Yuan and his fellow T'ang make plans to stabilize Chung Kuo, so the First Dragon and Head of the Ministry seeks to take charge ... for the sake of the Empire of the Han.