The year is 2196. After more than a century of peace and stability, Chung Kuo - the great Empire of Ice controlled by seven ruling kings, the T'ang - has finally been shaken. Lwo Kang, Minister of the Edict - the legal instrument that prevents change - has been assassinated; blown away while in the imperial solarium.

The stunning debut of a new storyteller takes place with a vast epic tale of passions and conflicts, of tyranny and the struggle for freedom in a startling and fascinating alternative world--a future when the Chinese rule the Earth.

A City Under Threat The year is 2207. Currents of unrest and tides of innovation threaten to overwhelm Chung Kuo's stability. And some threats are beyond the immense City's control. When a lethal epidemic strikes the Seven's chief supporters, Li Yuan acts ruthlessly to wipe out the disease. But his actions incur far more fatal consequences for the rule of the Seven. A Ruthless Response While the Seven splinters, Kwibesi, the detention camp for terrorists, continues to establish order. However, rebellion is brutally contained inside the camp and a growing sense of injustice stirs in its guard, Kao Chen, who begins to question his sense of duty. The Seven are divided amongst themselves, and around them allegiances are shifting.

In 2215, a disturbance ripples through space as a ship passes invisibly onward to its destiny. In it is the rebel DeVore, a master of stealth and subterfuge, thought dead by his enemies, but very much alive - and getting ready to bring a terrifying flotilla against the T'ang, the dictators of Earth. On Mars, another rebel, the long-exiled Hans Ebert, meets with a lost African tribe, the Osu, to reveal his audacious plan - to take them home. And on Earth, the mega-cities of the T'ang begin to crumble as war ripples across the planet. It is a time of change, of endings, of beginnings. It is an era when the last of the T'angs, Li Yuan, will make a terrifying alliance...when chaos will strike in the form of human-looking androids programmed to kill...and when Emily Ascher, a woman dedicated to liberty for all the billions the T'ang have kept in chains, will see her vision blossom, though its color will be bloodred and blurred by tears...

The first instalment in the epic 20-volume series, Chung Kuo: a science fiction masterpiece standing alongside Herbert's Dune and Asimov's Foundation The year is 2065, two decades after the great economic collapse that destroyed Western civilization. With its power broken and its cities ruined, life in the West continues in scattered communities. In rural Dorset Jake Reed lives with his 14-year-old son and memories of the great collapse. Back in '43, Jake was a rich, young futures broker, immersed in the datascape of the world's financial markets. He saw what was coming - and who was behind it. Forewarned, he was one of the few to escape the fall. For 22 years he has lived in fear of the future, and finally it is coming - quite literally - across the plain towards him. Chinese airships are in the skies and a strange, glacial structure has begun to dominate the horizon. Jake finds himself forcibly incorporated into the ever-expanding 'World of Levels' a global city of some 34 billion souls, where social status is reflected by how far above the ground you live. Here, under the rule of the mighty Tsao Ch'un, a resurgent China is seeking to abolish the past and bring about world peace through rigidly enforced order. But a civil war looms, and Jake will find himself at the heart of the struggle for the future.

CHANGE IS ON THE AIR: The generals of the Middle Kingdom await the decision of the emperor. The campaign to secure the border from China to Iraq has reached a strange impasse. Two blood enemies - Arabs & Jews - have united against their common cause. But with the lives of thousands at his whim, the exalted Tsao Ch'un, the Son of Heaven, cannot decide. Destroy the Middle East in one blinding flash? Or take another path? BUT THE WAY IS UNCLEAR: In the court of Tsao Ch'un, men of power have become smiling lackeys, whose graces conceal their fear, or their ambition. A man that can be trusted absolutely is a rare thing. And so, with his family held hostage by the empire, General Jiang Lei finds himself appointed to a special task: the orchestration of the last great war against the West. The total dominion of America. WAR APPROACHES: But life in the world of levels continues. No hint of war, or want, or discontent can infiltrate the oppressive, ordered society that replaces the world Jake Reed once knew. Since the first airships rolled over the horizon, nothing has been the same. His new life means new thinking, new customs, a new way of behaving, & with his every move scrutinized, Jake can only serve the bureaucracy of new China. But he is not the only citizen who feels discontent with the anodyne new order.