The British writer David Wingrove was known primarily as someone who wrote about science fiction
during the 1980s. His debut novel, The Middle
Kingdom (1989), was the first of an eight-volume
future history series that remains his only published work in the field. The Chung Kuo series is
set in a vastly overpopulated future world dominated perforce by Asia. Technology has advanced,
though unevenly, because of efforts by the authorities to retard the rate of change within society, and
computer networking is indispensable but unreliable. Crime is more rampant, and corporations are
more ruthless in their competition. There are some
outposts sprinkled through the solar system, essentially lumped into a single dictatorship under the
Chinese aristocracy.
Most of the background is established in the
opening volume. In The Broken Wheel (1990) we
discover that it is still possible for major events and
changes to be inspired by a relatively small group
of assertive individuals, despite the feeling of apathy and decay that hangs over the world. Efforts
are made to break up the monolithic control of the
solar government in The White Mountain (1991),
and in The Stone Within (1991) we are shown
graphically that barbarism and advanced technology can coexist after all. In White Moon, Red
Dragon (1991) dissatisfaction with the status quo
leads to the beginning of open hostilities. Internal
dissension causes schisms within the ruling class in
Beneath the Tree of Heaven (1993), with an extraordinary birth proving to be the catalyst for change.
A dictatorial government resorts to android soldiers in an effort to shore up its faltering authority
in Days of Bitter Strength (1997), and refugees who
fled beyond the solar system return in The Marriage
of Light and Dark (1998) to confront those who
still cling desperately to authority.
The early volumes of the Chung Kuo series
were well received, but the narrative began to bog
down in later volumes, and the last book in the series was not published in the United States.
Wingrove also wrote three novels set in the fantasy
world of the Myst computer game during the
1990s, all in collaboration with Rand Miller.