Burly Reading: MARKET FORCES by Richard K. Morgan

I got turned on to this novel by a pal of mine, Scott Phillips, who figured it was my kind of book.

I'd heard of Morgan before, and his "Takashi Kovacs" novels ALTERED CARBON and BROKEN ANGELS. The novels are apparently "science fiction," the kind Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison and Fred Saberhagan write, with plenty of psychology and literary deftness. I haven't gotten to the Kovacs books yet, but I fully intend to.

MARKET FORCES, a non-Kovacs novel and thus less "SF" than the Kovacs books, is set in on an Earth or Earth timeline alternate to that of Takashi Kovacs. This is plainly evident when FORCES protagonist Chris Faulkner is reading a novel by an unknown author, about a "luridly violent far-future...a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will...it all seemed very far-fetched."

Faulkner's world, in MARKET FORCES, concerns a future where global corporations dominate every aspect of life and vie for "primitive" footing among Third World wars and revolutions, all in order to layer profits for a wealthy upper class. There is no middle class in this London of tomorrow, only an underclass feeding on itself in the "Zones".

Chris Faulkner is a corporate warrior, literally, as public competitions between corporations involve personal turbocharged automotive duels between representatives. The duels are held at hundreds of miles per hour, and they are to the death.



Faulkner is a product of the Zones, and he's risen to a high-profile position at Shorn Associates, one of the top companies. The novel concerns his gradual moral disintegration, his inner conflicts between being human and squalid, or being corporate and successful. Faulkner is a man of rage looking for a cause to believe in, no matter how small. When he finds it, in the form of an aging Revoluntionary, Faulkner begins to set precedents of violent honor, in which his extremes can only further the hold of corporate power on the world.



MARKET FORCES is a fascinating book, dense with a lurid literaryness that I enjoy. Richard Morgan knows how people think and act under social pressure, and when he sends Chris Faulkner to shatter the binding spells of "civil" society, it's a writer revelling in being free of them. At least in fiction.

Though not a populist page-turner, MARKET FORCES drives forward with split-second decisiveness, leaving nothing and no one untouched by the grime of a future existence perhaps all too realistic. Richard Morgan is a strong burly writer with some chops, so check him out.

Images unrelated to MARKET FORCES, but appropriate, IMO!