Chung Kuo Six: White Moon, Red Dragon, by David Wingrove
As cataclysm after cataclysm afflicts the Earth of the future, something has happened to David Wingrove’s ability to write a complex novel: instead of developing conspiracy plotlines and revealing character through action, he’s decided to write the novel as one might watch a videotape–fast-forwarding and stopping only for the good bits. Too much of the important action happens between the chapters: important personages are poisoned, others disappear, others build spaceships, others build an invading army of FOUR MILLION CLONES somewhere around Pluto and fall in love with clones of other people! Oh, how the potential of the early novels is wasted here–I think Wingrove is so giddy at the prospect of fulfilling the oracles of his early novels that he’s lost all sense of balance and proportion–in a novel where the disembodied guiding spirit of the machine tries to teach balance to both heroes and villains over a good game of Go…The result is a series of cheap short-cuts, and cringe-worthy, wholly unoriginal stereotypes: The redemptive power of the Black Man! A pseudo-Catholic priest who needs either sex with altar boys after worship, or to be flogged by them! Yuck.
This series is often compared favorably to Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Let me argue that this is both laudatory and prescient, because the latter half of this series is as muddled and decadent as in Dune.
I’ve read four of these novels in a row, and it’s time for a break. My next book is Dexterity by Douglas Bauer.