#david wingrove

Holy shit! Try explaining this series! I won’t! It’s far too complicated to explain here and there’s a perfectly good Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo_(novel_series) 

it’s fucken BRILLIANT! If you like fantasy, science fiction, alternate history, and future history — this is the series to read.

I will say ONE thing. The original series started out with what you see depicted here as Book Three, The Middle Kingdom. It was titled Chung Kuo. David Wingrove went on to write another seven books in the series, so the publisher re-released the series with Chung Kuo renamed The Middle Kingdom. There are now FOURTEEN books in the series, including two prequels, Son of Heaven, and Daylight on Iron Mountain, which are depicted, as you can see.

7 Book Covers in 7 Days Challenge

Rules: Each day, I will post a cover of a book that I love and nominate someone new to start the challenge. No explanation, no discussion, just post the cover and by doing so spread some literary love!

I can’t pick just one cover, this whole series count as one! Probably you already know the videogames that inspired them and have tried them, but that doesn’t make them weaker, au contraire! 

Today I tag @nukemeh asking myself if he has tried these ones, either in books or videogames, knowing he likes point-and-click graphic adventures ;)

Son of Heaven by David Wingrove fell into the uncanny valley between pulp fun and deeper work for Doug (@bagatsen).

I remember seeing David Wingrove’s Chung Kuo books back in the 1980s and 1990s. They looked like a big, pulpish series set in a future dominated by China. A little while back, I picked up Son of Heaven, which says it’s Chung Kuo #1, thinking I would look in on this series and maybe set to reading the whole thing. I had a quick look at the publishing history of the series, in part to check buying…

This interview with David Wingrove, co-author of the Myst novels is a really interesting read. A couple of things in particular that caught my eye though…

- “along with a draft version of Book Four, THE BOOK OF MARRIM ”

- “Having got a version of THE BOOK OF MARRIM in to Cyan, I was working with Chris Brandkamp on producing a whole series of books – all of which we did 4-6 page outlines of – to extend the MYST franchise.”

- “…and we reasoned that if BOOK OF MARRIM couldn’t find a publisher, then another 12-15 books (set in the MYST universe) simply weren’t going to be picked up either.”