David Wingrove

British science fiction writer (born 1954)

David Wingrove (born 1 September 1954) is a British science fiction writer. He is well known as the author of the Chung Kuo novels. He is also the co author (with Rand and Robyn Miller) of the three Myst novels.

Wingrove worked in the banking industry for seven years until he became fed up with it. He then attended the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he read English and American Literature. He is married and, with his wife Susan, has four daughters: Jessica, Amy, Georgia, and Francesca.

Between 1972 and 1982 he wrote over 300 unpublished short stories and 15 novels. He started work on a new fictional project called A Perfect Art. Between 1984 and 1988, when it was first submitted, the title was changed twice, becoming first A Spring Day at the Edge of the World and then finally Chung Kuo, under which title it was sold to 18 publishers throughout the world. The Chung Kuo series ran to eight of nine planned volumes before the series was cancelled and the author had to prematurely finish the story in the eighth volume, which both he and readers found unsatisfying. In 2008, Nicolas Cheetham at Quercus Publishing bought the rights to the series and planned an ambitious reprinting and repackaging of the sequence, 'recasting' it as eighteen shorter novels (including a radically re written finale) and an all new prequel novel, provisionally entitled When China Comes. Quercus Publishing abandoned the project after Mr. Cheetham left, but Mr. Cheetham reacquired it for his new publishers, Corvus Atlantic, in 2009. The reissuing of the series was planned to run from September 2010 to May 2014, commencing with the prequel novel, now retitled Son of Heaven. However, this was followed by news of a delay to Spring 2011 and the addition of a second prequel novel, Daylight on Iron Mountain. Wingrove also has plans for further novels, including a first person character novel called Dawn in Stone City set in the Chung Kuo setting. He is also working on three novels, The Beast with Two Backs, Heaven's Bright Sun, and Roads to Moscow.