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China Mountain Zhang
China Mountain Zhang
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CMZ: Is it a dystopia? Cautionary tale? Be careful what you wish for?
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Hey, we're light on discussion this month, I was kinda hoping to spark something with the above. Feel free to riff or introduce your own ideas!
(view spoiler). As I get further away…the less I want to think or talk about. I read some of the reviews….and people love it call it hands down the best sci-fi out there. I just don’t see it…and I wonder if they love it because they want a socialist world or something …. So there is that. THAT is why we read the books, people.
Not a dystopia.. This is just a world that is different from our own although not that different. Today in the US you take a job or starve when unemployment runs out (this isn't any different in other capitalist societies). You can be forced to apply for work or your money runs out. You live where you can afford to, not where you want to.
As I mentioned on Discord I think the book is showing the life experiences of an outsider interaction with the established would power and finding a way to fit in with a 90s role reversal between China and the USofA.
IN this book Americans become the third world workers desperately trying to survive an alien system. It has resonance with my experiences working in the US in the nineties.
As for the gay stuff. The discrimination hasn't changed just the targets (trans instead of gay).
AS for which overlords are worse this depends on your perspective. Pretty sure I would not have enjoyed living in Chile in the seventies after the US sponsored a military coup. There is no way I would want to live or work in Florida or Texas at the moment. It all seems to be a matter of degree and who wins the next presidential election. The US may well be a dystopia in a few years that is only marginally preferable to China.
I haven’t finished reading it yet so my opinions may change, but so far it doesn’t seem any more dystopian than real life. The dehumanising experiences of the migrant and his daughter are similar to what many people undergo today, only on Mars, and there are many places where gay people face discrimination and even the death penalty. This book strikes me as neither a dystopian warning nor a cautionary tale: it’s an exploration of a possible future through the lives of ordinary people. Things in this future are neither hugely better nor worse than now, just different in some ways, and similar in other ways.
I kind of saw the point of the book in my immediate impulse to classify it as a Dystopia. It's so hard to know what to key into with plotless books like this, it obviously invites comparison with reality but didn't seem any worse or better than it is for people living in the world right now. The book never gave us a wide enough perspective to make the classification, but I instinctively viewed this future where we have colonies on Mars as something I wouldn't like to see. I guess it's a little bit of a monkey's paw kind of a future, "Hey Genie I wish we were already living on Mars" and reality changes the channel to this book.
"Here you go Human",
Humanity may have gotten the chance to colonize the stars but maybe you feel the trade-off wasn't worth it, I didn't. I mean forget chafing under the thumb of the party, think about the oft-mentioned cleansing winds in the book. I hate to imagine a world where the U.S. takes "the great leap forward", even moreso an American Cultural Revolution. I think about the death toll alone and I wager it isn't a future I would trade for.
It's definitely a Dystopia for some, but maybe we already live in a similar one.
I'm about 3/4 through and found this one really heavy going.I agree with a lot of what's already been said regarding this largely being a slice of life novel, but taking place against a reimagined background. I feel it sort of squanders the premise though by not really leaning into the altered cultural background and being quite unadventurous in it's speculation on future technology.
I mean, Climate Change was enough of a thing that monitoring atmospheric CO2 is now a topic of conversation and the American Mid-West is now unlivably arid but sea levels didn't rise around Coney Island and Baffin Island still has frozen sea water.
I assume Western culture is also heavily suppressed by The Party in this future but I don't recall this being made explcit in what I read so far.
Perhaps a gay protagonist was enough to make it stand out in the 90's. Maybe the fact we're not really talking about that is signs of progress.
Things aren't relentlessly bleak. Martine and Alexi bring some joy to each others lives. Zhang is able to make some progress up the career ladder despite the depression that comes from not being open about his sexuality.
But mostly in the future Life is Hard. Which is not a message I really want to hear repeatedly when I'm reading because I think we all sort of knew that anyway, right?
If I were going for a lazy shorthand description of China Mountain Zhang it would go something like 'Take Gibson's Sprawl series and replace the overt Japanese influence with Communist China. Then remove most of the cyber and all of the punk.'
Iain wrote: "AS for which overlords are worse this depends on your perspective. Pretty sure I would not have enjoyed living in Chile in the seventies after the US sponsored a military coup. "I think this is exactly the way to look at it.
When this book came out in 1992, fresh off the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea that the US might be conquered by a foreign country aided and abetted by willing US citizens no doubt seemed preposterous. But today, with our elections being undermined by Russia and the far right embracing Putin and other dictators? No so far-fetched.
We’ve certainly seen the cracks of capitalism writ large in the past couple years. This year alone we’ve had so many strikes and calls for unionizing in America that most people have forgotten about the ones which happened just a year ago, or heck, even earlier this year. Teachers in various cities, not to mention all the autoworkers striking against the Big Three simultaneously, plus the screenwriters and actors striking at the same time, nurses, Starbucks employees, CVS pharmacists… just on and on. UPS narrowly avoided a strike. 36,000 people went on strike in 2022. 10 times that many have already gone on strike in 2023.
The UK, Germany and France have had similar strikes: teachers, railroad workers, airport workers, doctors… seems like every industry had a strike in the last 12 months. Combine this with unions making a comeback, especially in industries where they previously didn’t have a foothold, like fast food and animation/CGI workers, and it feels very tipping-point-y.
I think it’s because for a lot of people America already feels like a dystopia.
So it’s not unreasonable to project that America could slide into dictatorial communism given the right push. What seemed ridiculous 30 years ago suddenly seems all too possible today.
Mod
I think with the rise of the loonie Fundamentalist Conservatives in the US, that it's more likely to go to the other extreme end of the political spectrum and end up as a fascist run dictatorship.
I worry for the US if Trump or one of his acolytes win the 2024 election. They may never hand power back.
That seemed ridiculous to contemplate a decade or so back, but seeing what the right and its supporters are prepared to believe, accept and do has been a real eye opener since 2016.
The end to all great Empires is inevitable, I just thought it would take a few more centuries for the US, but now I'm not so sure. 😕
I worry for this world we are leaving our children 😕
Left wing totalitarian regimes or right wing totalitarian regimes. Makes very little difference which one you get.
Re: “I worry for this world we are leaving our children 😕”It’s time young people start to think about what kind of world they want to leave to Willie Nelson and Keith Richard.
Mod
It’s time young people start to think about what kind of world they want to leave to Willie Nelson and Keith Richard."
If Betty White could die, then these 2 are way over due 😜
I believe Keith Richards is already dead. He just hasn't realised it yet. 😉
I suppose the rest is spoilery so for the email crowd...
(view spoiler)[
Is it a dystopia? Certainly parts of that fit. The rampant gay-bashing, the idea that being discovered to be gay in Chinese controlled areas is a death sentence, fits any dystopia I can come up with. The economic environment is worse than any depression the US has had.
Cautionary tale? At the time the book was written an emergent China was considered plausible. Thirty years later it's come around again. What kind of rulers would they be? "A whole lot worse than anything the US can come up with on its own" comes to mind.
Be careful what you wish for? Then, as now, a fair segment of the population wishes for socialism or outright Communism. If you get it, then what? Struggle sessions, starvation, mass death, economic repression, they're all in the book. All plausible outcomes of Chinese policies.
I found the worldbuilding exceptional and also a little too close to possible. May we please skip this world. Okay, except for the Mars colony, I'll take that and even volunteer to go to the South Pole for water mining. (hide spoiler)]