Picked up at the Hole in the Wall Books used book store in Falls Church, VA.

From the cover:
Winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award,
the Lambda Literary Award,
the Locus Award for Best First Novel,
and a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.

With this groundbreaking novel, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. In its pages, we enter a postrevolution America, moving from the hyperurbanized eastern seaboard to the Arctic bleakness of Baffin Island; from the new Imperial City to an agricultural commune on Mars. The overlapping lives of cyberkite fliers, lonely colonists, illicit neural-pressball players, and organic engineers blend into a powerful, taut story of a young man's journey of discovery. This is a macroscopic world of microscopic intensity, one of the most brilliant visions of modern SF.

McHugh writes very real characters. Their life and the future they live in seems so real. Not a sanitized, utopian society. But a real future, a probable future, full of the dirt and smudges of real life. Her debut novel, China Mountain Zhang centers around the titular character as he, at first only, survives (as in he exists and keeps his head down) in a future version of New York where the USA has collapsed, taking with it many other countries, leaving only Canada and Australia as the sole capitalist societies and China as the new, single superpower. As the story progresses, we get snippets of other people's lives who come in contact with Zhang and we journey along with him as he finds himself and makes a path of his own choosing.

This novel is not your typical dystopian where the hero fights an unjust society and changes everything. This is about a man who works (mostly) within the system and carves out a place for himself while not garnering the attention of a government that would want someone like him dead or reformed. Where the characters in Never Let Me Go eventually accept their fate and knuckle-under, Zhang rails against the system in his own quiet way.

the living things live their whole lives in that narrow time when conditions are favorable, and all the rest of the time they wait.

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Starting book for the To the Stars: A Science Fiction Bookbox.

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I'm claiming this softcover from the SF bookbox.

Later: Fascinating novel, kind of a gritty/mundane science fiction, in which there are new technologies but they aren't so different from known ones that it feels futuristic or alien. And the effects of all this on society and on the individual characters we meet... are a lot like any other shift in politics or economy; people looking for jobs, trying to manage their personal lives without disrupting the status quo, moments of delight amid lots of slogging. The concept of a world where China is the ruling power was so believable that it was almost scary. Lots of little things impressed me: the "face-sculpting" technique for improving one's appearance, a common enough plot point in many dystopian novels but handled here in an intriguing/appalling way; the smart-cyber-kite fliers, where people can jack in to their sensations instead of (or as well as) watching them fly in person...

I left this book in this Little Free Library, with its wonderful view; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2019 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2019 Pride LGBTQ release challenge, for the gay title character. ***

*** Released for the 2019 Science Fiction release challenge. ***