Chung Kuo

[benpeek]

Painting the office recently meant that I moved the books around. I figured this was probably a necessary evil, because the books had spread across the floor, left the shelves, and were trying to escape, or so it seemed. They had to be captured, returned, kept, caged... and in doing so, I have discovered a lot of things that I have just not seen

Comments

[coppervale]

Never heard of him before... but this sounds really, really intriguing...

[benpeek]

like i said, man, the first six were really cool. this whole prequel and new end business sounds like a bad idea--i mean, when has it ever been a good one--but i did dig them...

[coppervale]

If nothing else, I already respect his ambition.

[ataxi]

Slightly tangential, but do you know what "chung kuo" means? I ask because it's something that comes up in Deadwood when Al Swearengen and Mr Wu become allies to rid the camp of the "San Francisco cocksucker". Mr Wu doesn't speak English, but he and Swearengen confirm their alliance by repeating the phrases "hang dai" and "chung kuo", words which Swearengen does not understand.

[benpeek]

i was under the impression it stood for middle kingdom or something like that. i just double checked on the net, and that seems to be it.

[ataxi]

Hmm, what is this google you speak of? Can't believe I didn't just search it myself. Guess I was short on a spelling before. Now, to find out what "hang dai" means ... apparently it could mean "brother", which would correspond to the two fingers gesture that Wu and Swearengen use together with it.

[benpeek]

heh. you know, the funny thing is i didn't google the other term you had there...

[ninebelow]

I read the first five in the mid-Nineties but took my eye off the ball and between him finishing the series and me looking for the last volumes they want out of print. Re-issued as nineteen volumes, eh?

He also updated Billion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss as Trillion Year Spree after finishing Chung Kuo.

[benpeek]

i can only assume that those nineteen volumes will be... smaller.

[drasecretcampus]

I think Trillion was first - 1987 [edit: in paperback; I suspect the hardback was 1986] as opposed to through the 1990s.

Back in the day these were deeply controversial - the size of the advance paid to an author who had at that point only published nonfiction and apparently only a handful of stories and the response to reviews of the early volumes.

Ken Lake reviewed the publicity bumph - apparently sent to a considerable subset of the membership of the BSFA - and Catie Cary negatively reviewed the third volume as (if I recall correctly) pornographic or verging on it. Wingrove and others responded to this - always a mistake for an author to take issue with reviews, although I'm not supporting the reviewers' views. But a very definite storm in a tea cup. (I seem to recall similar spats over the reviews of Trillion in Foundation)

[ninebelow]

I was getting confused because my edition (House of Stratus) does cover the Nineties. I've just looked it though and apparently he did a very short update chapter in 2001.

The books do indeed contain a lot of graphic sex.

chung kuo

[anonymous]

chung kuo means central country or middle kingdom, was reference to china because of their self imposed isolation. The volumes written by David Wingrove was very engrossing and imaginative, very imaginative. The last novel was admittedly rush and was not the firstly conceived ending. David had said in an interview that he would redo the ending, glad his is a man of his word. I recently found out about the prequel and the reprinting of the original volumes. I even heard of a screen play to be written, wow.