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China Mountain Zhang 17

Posted by timothy from the no-pollyanna-story dept.
Maureen F. McHugh grew up in Ohio and has lived in both New York and China. She returned to her home state to write science fiction which has received a multitude of nominations and awards. Her fourth novel is due out shortly. China Mountain Zhang was McHugh's first novel and seems to epitomize the idea of writing about what you know. It is an expansion of two previously published short stories, one becoming the primary narrative and the other being used in counterpoint. Thanks to Duncan Lawie for reviewing this fine book.
China Mountain Zhang
author Maureen F. McHugh
pages 310
publisher Tom Doherty Associates (Tor) (1993)
rating 7.5
reviewer Duncan Lawie
ISBN 0312860986
summary Solid world building and a Chinese perspective combined into an original and interesting work.

The future Earth of China Mountain Zhang is dominated by Chinese communism. Nations in the communist sphere -- including the former USA -- are subject to a hierarchy which puts Chinese citizens, and China itself, ahead of all else. Even those who look Chinese get preferential treatment. The protagonist, Zhang, looks fully Chinese but this is partly a result of genetic adjustment. He takes advantage of this lie, but fears the revelation of his impure bloodline. He is also homosexual, and this is an additional source of paranoia on his part. In mainland China, homosexuality is a capital offense but, like the free market economy, it is tolerated in the United States.

Zhang is a negative character, inherently ill at ease with himself, reactive and self destructive. His story is a search for self belief. The opening chapters have a grey outlook on New York under the communist regime, imbued with the gloom of Zhang's self denial. The following section, set in Northern Canada, transforms the novel into a book with hope. The key point is a powerful, elegiac passage in which Zhang is confronted by the Arctic Winter. Here in the blank wastes and the long night he must also face himself. The rest of the book explores the repercussions on Zhang's life of these events.

This primary narrative is intercut with the counterpoint of other perspectives. At first, these apparently unconnected threads make the shape of the novel more difficult to determine, though they are loosely tied into the main story as the novel progresses. These "sidebars," set in New York and on Mars, offer additional context, helping to create a more rounded picture of the world in which the story takes place. It is here that the shape of America's future history is outlined: global warming and a new great depression signalled the end for the capitalist state, while integration into the communist perspective recapitulated the early brutalities of Communist China.

Too often the feeling of impending doom collapses into the most likely unpleasant reality. This fits with the underlying study of a depressive episode, but the story of Zhang's coming to terms with himself and the resulting changes in his character is neatly told. McHugh has an excellent command of mood and of language. The conflation of the original short stories is a little uneasy, though not so much that the twin sources are obvious. The inclusion of Chinese and Spanish effectively reinforces the non-Anglo background of most of the novel. This complex context seems more fully realized than many other science fiction attempts in recent years. By comparison, she colours the tropes of Martian colonisation and global warming with a light brush, allowing the echoes to be heard from many other novels without conscious borrowing. The unusual perspectives can make this a difficult work to access but China Mountain Zhang is well worth that effort.

purchase this book at fatbrain.
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China Mountain Zhang More

China Mountain Zhang

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  • China Mountain Zhang [tiptree.org] was the James Tiptree, Jr. Award [tiptree.org] winner in 1992. The Tiptree is "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that explores and expands the roles of women and men for work by both women and men."

  • If you're looking for really good science fiction stories, why not check out Alexandria Digital Literature [alexlit.com], aka "Alexlit"? It has a neat can't-miss system where you tell it what you thought of what books you've read, and based on the tastes of the hundreds of other Alexlit patrons, suggests some other books you might like. And there's a lot of science fiction and fantasy included in the list. Once you've rated a few hundred stories, you'll start to find ones you've never read appearing, and you can even print out the list to take to the library with you.
    --

  • The famous-on-USENET and now hard to find "annotated CD-ROM of A Fire Upon the Deep [netfunny.com]" was actually an anthology of all the 1993 Hugo nominees, put together by Brad Templeton [templetons.com] (then of ClariNet, and now Chairman of the Board for the Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org].

    Since China Mountain Zhang was also a Hugo nominee that year, it was made available, in its entirety, along with a short QuickTime movie of Maureen McHugh giving pronunciation tips for those of us not fortunate enough to speak any Chinese dialect, and her reading of the beginning of the novel.

    (That CD-ROM is a great toy for SF-loving geeks. No, you can't have mine, it's not for sale.)

  • China Mountain Zhang is pretty impressive considering that it's a first novel. After being blown away by the strong characterization and convincing, detailed world, I had high expectations for McHugh's second novel.

    Half the Day is Night shares the same strong world-building as her first book, but I found it plodding and lifeless. I wasn't able to get inside the characters the way I did for China Mountain Zhang. I was quite disappointed - it almost feels like it was by a completely different author.

    I haven't encountered McHugh's third book, Mission Child, yet, so I don't know how it compares to her first two. But I can't emphasize enough how good China Mountain Zhang is, and I encourage everybody to go read it.

  • The book, I would like to know a little more of the sci fi aspects of it, but that's just me. Here is a side thought, slight OT. Anyone have any suggestions of a good robust list of interesting sci fi? I am fairly knowledgable but I always end up stuck at the book store. I am particularly fond of Greg Egan at the moment.
  • Hey hey! the book does have lots of great sci fi aspects (especially the flying bits :), and a reasonable prediction of what could be....exept for the US DOMINANCE, what is a word for crushing all others?

    re your second q I am involved in developing a site that could be what you want [scifi-books.com] and are open to suggestions, although if there is someone covering this territory already better than we could we are willing to step back.

    for the people, by the people....etc...

    btw I am quite pissed(UK) right now, opinions expressed etc...

  • I've borrowed this CD-ROM from a friend and, to my annoyance, I find there doesn't seem to be any decent way to
    read the annotated Fire on Linux...and even on Windows it kind of sucks. Does anyone have any solutions?

    You might try hacking something together using rtftohtml [brown.edu]. I haven't tried it, but it claims to handle footnotes by turning them into hyperlinks, and the RTF version of the annotations are implemented as footnotes. There also seems to be a newer shareware RTFtoHTML [sunpack.com], which I did just try (Mac version)--the footnotes get implemented as links to HTML anchors at the end of each chapter, which is a little painful to jump back and forth with.

    The Windows version of the annotations didn't impress me that much when I tried it, either, but I was running it under Virtual PC. My method for reading the annotations was to load them into MS Word (given the date, I think it was v4.0) on a Mac, which worked fairly well; it would scroll the footnote pane to keep it in sync with the main text pane. (For that matter, you could use MS Word as a really expensive RTF to HTML translator :-). Word 98 now turns the footnotes into pop-up tooltips (which is a good way to do annotations), but in the pop-ups it messes up the line breaks. You can't win 'em all.

    Of course, the other other option is just to read the raw RTF; it's not that ugly once you reflow it.

  • I have no time to find URLS but I seem to recall that "Red Star Rising" had a similar scenario of Communist Chinese taking the US and enjoying superiority.
    __

  • Chinese Communsim (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, and here I thought Communism was just Communism, with variations depending on whoever is Chairman/Premier/President/Chief/Kahuna/whatever. I know Lenin's style was drastically different than Stalin's, and that itself spawned a rift between the Soviets and Chinese. But anyhoo..

    Is it just me or hasn't parts of this "world domination" thing already occured? Not that the Chinese are anywhere there, but if you replace all referances to China with American, you'd get what we currently have. We (er, our govn't) pretty much run the whole planet and our citizens get preferential treatment over those of other nations (don't believe me? then go visit some countries relying on tourism and see how you're treated). Maybe the author simply wanted to sell books by making this less apparent and play on the fears of many Americans.
  • Pretty neat book..
    Dated in some ways, but still way neat.
  • I am a Chinese. And the book is full of difficult words. Is this book a science fiction? Did this book say that China Commuism would rule the future earth? What the author want to say. Explain to me in plain english, OK?
  • you should to, this is a good readable work, I missed all the communist parts (or I forgot, hey it's sci fi it's all kinda communist) but recently been lookinng for the sequel.

    Just like to say that as someone who read 2 or 3 sicffy books a week, this one stands out, even though I gave it (reading) up in favour of working to buy beer to waste braincells

    So it goes.

  • Yes! When I saw this review I thought immediately of my 1993 Hugo CD-ROM. It is really too bad that they never made versions of it for other years.

  • How about this: Sci Fi Literature 101? [slashdot.org]. It's an "Ask Slashdot" from a few months back.

    darren


    Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
  • I've borrowed this CD-ROM from a friend and, to my annoyance, I find there doesn't seem to be any decent way to read the annotated Fire on Linux...and even on Windows it kind of sucks. Does anyone have any solutions?
    --
  • She writes well, but it's more of a human story with elements of S.F. than a story about S.F. Her writing is nice & human paced, she doesn't try to dazzle which is refreshing. And she has nice little human insights which I liked, too. It's not Bruce Sterling, I would say its entertainment is in the story & characters rather than being a headful of S.F. The 'Chinese Marxism Wins' angle could be interesting, but it's pretty much background in the first book, I hope she explores it more in the later ones. I usually go for denser SF but I'm hooked, I'll probably read the rest of the series.
  • That CD-ROM is a great toy for SF-loving geeks
    Gosh diddly-darn it, howcum I never heard of these CDs? Can they still be got?
    As for the Hugo nominee, if memory serves the book came third in 1993, after joint winners A Fire Upon the Deep and Doomsday Book. I personally thought it was better than the former and at least as good as the latter.

    A question: was I the only one that was disappointed by Half the Day is Night? It was a good book, but by no means as good as China Mountain Zhang.

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