Crash Landing in China

New blog entry from David about the recent turbulence in the Chinese stock market. Full text after the break.

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Crash Landing in China

Or, China, Burning.

For a long time now there’s been concern over whether China’s long-sustained economic growth could continue, and many China experts have been asking openly whether, if things did go wrong, it would be a soft landing or a crash landing, and, if the latter, then how it would affect the rest of the global economy.

Well, now we –partially – know. China’s growth can’t be sustained, and we don’t need China experts to tell us that. It’s finally happened, in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, as well as in other stock markets throughout the world. Continue reading Crash Landing in China

Backwards

Mr. Wingrove checks in. And yes, a plan is in the works to roll out something exciting. More to come.

Full text after the break.

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Backwards

Sue’s up in Manchester, at a short term conference for Coronation Street, leaving me down here in London, furiously self-motivating myself to get Book Three of the time travel trilogy – THE MASTER OF TIME – written. And?

Well, it isn’t easy. I think I have the rough shape of the ending, but I have a problem. ROADS TO MOSCOW isn’t an easy book to end. Continue reading Backwards

GenSyn in real life?

I’m writing this from the site of the eMerge Americas conference, sunny rainy Miami Beach, right before the second day of the conference proper begins. In a session yesterday, a speaker mentioned a company I had never heard of before: Synthetic Genomics. This company claims to have produced the first synthetic cell, and also works on “humanized organs” and “digitizing life.” As crazy as this sounds, this isn’t some goof company or hoax — they have financial backing from BP and a few different venture capital firms.

Sound familiar? In case you need a refresher, Genetic Synthetics, or GenSyn, is a mega-corporation in the Chung Kuo universe that creates artificial life forms and other constructed genetic products. Once again, life imitates art.

For what it’s worth, I think GenSyn rolls off the tongue far better that SynGen.

For a short story that illuminates some of the life of a GynSyn creation, check out One Moment of Bright Intensity, which takes place during the events of The Middle Kingdom.

Leave thoughts in comments!

Of Gifts and Stones: A Retrospective… and Moving Forward

I’ve been doing some soul searching lately. This site has been around since February 2011, when the re-release of Chung Kuo was announced. A lot has changed since then. The re-release has been cut off at the hip, but Roads to Moscow is now a thing (a thing you all should be reading if you’re not already). I originally created this site to archive of the old essays that were floating around the internet for a fear that those sites would disappear and we (the relatively small and disconnected Chung Kuo fanbase) would lose that content forever. It grew into something I never would have expected… a community. A small one, yes, but there are regular readers and commenters (that’s you!) who also care about these works and want to see them continue and grow and succeed. And on top of that, David Wingrove, himself, became an integral part of the site, regularly supplying the community with updates and special content. Hell, the man dedicated one of his novels to me. This site has been

I first read Chung Kuo as a freshman in high school. Here I am now, 30 years old, starting a doctoral program this year, and I can’t help but look back and reflect on the effect Chung Kuo has had on my life. Small influences, but influences nonetheless. I took Mandarin in college. I visited China. I feel like the lessons in Chung Kuo about hierarchy, control, culture, and diplomacy have enabled me to approach the real works with a more critical, nuanced eye.

Having reflected on these things recently, I’ve decided to dedicate more effort into this site and this community.

Starting with… Twitter. I’ll be semi-live-tweeting as I read from @giftsandstones, starting with The Ocean of Time, which I’ve just started now that I’ve finished a re-read of The Empire of Time. Expect the first of these tonight or soon. I’ll be including the chapter number in parenthesis and a hashtag for whichever book I’m on.

I have other goals in mind for the site – some big, some small. A redesign is in order, perhaps. For sure, I want to get off horrible GoDaddy and migrate to a better web host. That might include some downtime, but hopefully not much.

I’ll leave you with two questions. First, has Chung Kuo, Myst, Roads to Moscow, The Trillion Year Spree, or any other Wingrove work left an impression on you to the degree that it has me? Second, what would you like to see out of this site? Return of the forums? A Kickstarter to re-re-publish the books? Let me know, and we’ll make it happen,  hopefully together.

Zaijian for now…

-Matt

 

Of What Is Past or Passing Or To Come

David resurfaces! Full text after the break.

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Of What Is Past or Passing or To Come

 

A few minutes before I fell off the tracking board, I dialled my brother to find out how he was and what he’d been up to. Ian’s seven years younger than me, and as a child I looked after him while my mum and nan went to work, to keep the proverbial wolf from the door. Recently he married a lovely young woman named Claire, almost twenty years younger than him, and they’ve settled and had two children, George and Rosa.

So there I am, on the phone, asking my brother, “How are you? How’s things?” And he answers, “I was great up ‘til five minutes back. I’ve just heard. Claire and the kids have been involved in a car crash.”

While Ian works in London, Claire and he are based in Norwich, where – even as all this was happening – they were supposed to be moving to, having sold their flat in London to buy a much bigger house near Norwich.

Over the next few hours further news came in. Things could not have been much worse. We learned that a big estate car had crossed the road and hit Claire’s car head on, trapping her in the car, from which the fire brigade had had to cut her out. The kids – just picked up from nursery, ten minutes earlier, sustained far smaller injuries, but they were shook up and frightened. They were taken off to hospital even as the fire brigade did their best. Claire’s mum, who lived five minutes’ walk away from where the accident took place, got a phone call and ran all the way to the site, where she was told it was eighty per cent likely Claire wouldn’t survive. Continue reading Of What Is Past or Passing Or To Come

Roads to Moscow, Book 2: The Ocean of Time

Happy new year everybody! Yes, I’m still here (and I hope you are, too). I haven’t heard from David since September, but I trust that all is well and that he’s keeping busy with writing.

Amazon UK has Roads to Moscow, Book 2: The Ocean of Time available for pre-order with a stated release date of March 26 – right around the corner!

Here’s the cover (click the image for hi-res version):

There’s also some additional info over at the Random House page for the book.

I’ll post any new news as it comes in… (and if anybody knows of anything I’m missing, please fill us in!)

News bits and a happy birthday to David!

David’s sent along some updates, including some upcoming projects. Wishing him a happy birthday! Full text after the break.

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It’s been busy here in North London these past few days, but nothing to do with writing. Monday last was my sixtieth birthday – and yes, I was surprised, too! – and we all enjoyed celebrating it. I saw a lot of old friends and was given some wonderful presents – including (from, my darling Susan) a one week holiday on my favourite Greek island, Poros, which we’re off on in a week or so’s time. Continue reading News bits and a happy birthday to David!

Gaza response

…and a quick response from David to all the Gaza talk going on in the comments from Blood On The Rooftops.

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Gabe, I’m sorry. It was totally remiss of me not to comment on Hamas, and to assume that you (out there on the web) should know what I think of terrorism. Living in London in the seventies and eighties, I grew up in a society that feared going out socially – visiting city centre pubs, for instance – because we were likely to be blown to bits by IRA bombs.  All we learned from that was that terrorism achieves nothing.

Put simply, I have no time for Hamas. However, what I think or feel about Hamas does not stop young Arab men from joining the ‘cause’.  Quite the opposite, in fact. What Israel are doing in Gaza is making it easier for Hamas to recruit more and yet willing young men. Martyrs to the cause. Just as the IRA did during the Troubles.

A hard line is not what is called for here. Like Kaneda, I really do think that a policy of restraint would achieve far more for Israel. It would get the western world on its side, for a start. But things will never change if current policies are maintained. They will just escalate, year by year. Added to which, the provocative measure of taking over Palestinian land and building new settlements really, really does not help.

Reading through Kaneda’s comments, I cannot but agree with him. I’m sorry, Gabe, but I think Netanyahu’s got it wrong. That said, it’s no excuse for some of the anti-semitic behaviour that has broken out. A bit of reasoned thought is what we need, and a lot more understanding… of both sides of this argument.

That’s it for now.

David  22 August 2014

Of Worldcons And Other Matters

As promised, David’s sent along an update from Worldcon. Sounds like a blast — wish I could’ve been there. Full text after the break.

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Of Worldcons And Other Matters

Okay, I did promise to blog during the World Science Fiction Convention, but sheer exhaustion kept me from the task. Travelling across London in packed trains – Highbury to Stratford (with a ten minute wait), to Canning Town, to Prince Regent and back – ain’t no fun, and after a day spent wandering about the gigantic aircraft hangar that’s the ExCel centre, I had little energy for anything when I got back here. Mike (Cobley) was staying with us for the duration, and he can vouch for how tiring it all was. Oh, and if you haven’t read Mike’s books then do. It’s big screen space opera of an intelligent and humane kind. The Humanity’s Fire trilogy.

So. What can I say? I both enjoyed and didn’t enjoy it – it all depended on what time of day it was, what was happening about me, and lots of other factors. I didn’t watch as many panels as I planned, but I did meet a lot of old writer friends, and even got to shake hands with George R R Martin. Of which more later. Continue reading Of Worldcons And Other Matters