The Day the Future Came

Today, in honor of the 50th post on this website, I’m going to take a break from the barrage of archived blog Goodies to present something remarkable and of great interest to long-time fans of the series. Before there was Son of Heaven, there was The Day the Future Came, the Chung Kuo proto-prequel. This is the first-person story of Jake John Reed and the coming of the Jiang Lei and the Chinese into England. In Mr. Wingrove’s own words:

This was written early in 1992 (yeah, 19 years ago) specifically for a writing workshop, WRITERS BLOC, to which I, Rob Holdstock, Gary Kilworth, Chris Evans, Lisa Tuttle, Dave Garnett and Geoff Ryman attended. I’ll try and dig out comments, but this was a genuine uncorrected first attempt at the subject, and I think it has real archeological value. Not a very good story at all, but interesting for its ideas. I also love seeing just how many wrong choices I make in terms of how to present information. SON OF HEAVEN is so much more elegant, so much better paced and far far more interesting. But here it is. […] The very fact that I didn’t then write a corrected second draft says a lot about my attitude to this material at the time.

Keep in mind that The Day the Future Came is absolutely non-canon, but is certainly an interesting look into the ideas preceding the new Book 1. Here it is, complete and unedited…

Continue reading The Day the Future Came

Why China? (the official site version)

This version of Why China? appeared on the official Chung Kuo site in Janurary 2011 and is a different piece than the Why China? that was written as the original The Middle Kingdom first appeared in publication. Though the answers to that titular question are the same, the perspectives are written more than a decade apart. Full text after the break…

Continue reading Why China? (the official site version)

A bit of restructuring…

Sorry for the delay in posting archived material — I’ve been away on a short vacation in blazingly hot Key West. That time away from reality got me thinking… if I’m to continue archiving these old blogs from the official site as they drop off, perhaps I shouldn’t label them as part of “The Vault”. I find Mr. Wingrove’s posts about China and everything miscellaneous to be highly insightful and thought-provoking, but I think it’s a good idea to segregate them from the classic pieces that were the reason I started this site.

So, from this point forward, blogs that’ve lemming’d off the main site will be categorized as “Goodies”, while the more substantial Chung Kuo-related pieces will stay in “The Vault”. I’m in the process of retroactively changing the labels on previous posts to that effect, as well.

In the meantime, while I juggle all these posts around, here’s a picture I took of a 19-year-old street performer in Key West, atop 10-foot stilts, juggling fire at sunset.