China Mountain Zhang is an ABC: American Born Chinese. In near future Manhattan, such status is of reasonable benefit to an academically under-achieving engineering worker of potential, for China's socialist revolution has swept America, dominating it. The great Eastern republic is now the leading country on Earth. After being maneuvered into a blind date with his boss's daughter, Zhang loses his job and seeks his destiny. After spending time at an Arctic research station on Baffin Island Zhang eventually reaches China itself, where he studies to become an architectural engineer with an authentic touch of Zen. While at university Zhang must disguise his outlawed sexuality while striving to become the success he has never realized he could be, tutoring settlers on Mars in electronics via the internet as his nascent talent flowers.

Maureen F. McHugh's first novel confidently describes an intricate, convincing future society that breaks some of the cardinal rules of SF: there are no stunning revelations that change the world of the story and the plot is not propelled by action or ideas. Instead, China Mountain Zhang is a slice-of-life character study, something common in the mainstream but resoundingly scarce within genre SF. Although Zhang is an ordinary person rather than a superman, an above-average talent whose distinguishing characteristic is that of homosexuality, the reader soon begins to identify with him as McHugh employs seductive literary skills in bringing him to life. Within a few pages one is rooting for Zhang, his stoicism and perseverance compensating for the lack of heroics. While employing a number of the conventions of cyberpunk (human-computer interfaces, microlite kiteflyers as sports heroes and so on), this is a sterling example of the thoughtful humanist philosophy female writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin have brought to SF. The finest sinocentric future imagined by any writer in recent decades, McHugh's delicate yet sturdily constructed book, filled with filigree detail and unforgettable emotions, will be a revelation to dedicated SF fans and a surprise to general readers who mistakenly believe that science fiction cannot match the mainstream novel.

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