Market Forces
by Richard K. Morgan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard K. MorganEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-03-01
ISBN: 0345457749
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Market Forces
Book Review: "Market Forces"--Impossible to Look Away
Summary: 5 Stars
Last year Richard Morgan won the Philip K. Dick award for his distant future opus on identity-crisis, "Altered Carbon." This year, "Market Forces" already has won a nomination for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke award--a well deserved accolade.
"Market Forces" is a brutal, turbo-charged thriller set in a not-too-distant future London. More than science fiction, it is a horror novel--the fear factor comes from the story's prophetic potential. The novel puts "Mad Max" on the road with J.G. Ballard, with signposts provided by Che Guevara.
Chris Faulkner, the protagonist-cum-antagonist of the novel, uses his reputation as a ruthless, corporate assassin to win a position with Shorn Associates, aptly named because they shear through their competition, leaving burning cars and bloody corpses behind as they win contracts for "Conflict Investment" in third world countries. But Faulkner is having a crisis of conscience-he has shown weakness by mercifully sparing the life of a competitor, and now needs to prove he has the brutality for the job. In intense gladiatorial car races, he must prove he's able to kill without remorse. In the words of his boss, there's no economic gain without blood on your hands. We follow Faulkner into an urban Heart of Darkness, where he is forced to chose between leaping from the financial tower or putting a bullet through a crippled competitor's head. And that is only the beginning of his plunge into the abyss.
Morgan has crafted a high-octane, politically challenging novel--a polemic on the greed and power of increasingly consolidated corporate entities, and the de-socialization of the individual within these structures. Forget the Constitution of the European Union, say goodbye to privacy and civil rights, offer a eulogy for the Rule of Law in this world where the only law is "Kill and Consolidate Capital." The corporate oligarchies dominate the political landscape, and the media is only a mouthpiece capitalizing on horror for the ratings war. The evening news is just another Corporate despot that has whored itself out to big money. With the recent political pressure on media over the Iraq conflict-this dynamic is all too familiar. There are clear parallels to the oft-missed message behind Bret Easton Ellis' novel, "American Psycho," where the sociopathic behaviors of corporations in the 1980's, the leverage buyouts and hostile takeovers that ruined tens of thousands of lives, were sandwiched between scenes of depraved, sexual-sadism and murder by a serial killer. The murder scenes in that novel were truth-revealing mirrors of the corporate mentality that dominated financial institutions. "Market Forces" is another house of mirrors, with brutal car races juxtaposed against arms manufacturers and financial institutions. It is a powerful indictment of corporate politics, and a criticism of globalization, which he decries as nothing more than neo-imperialism. Morgan cuts deep, asking us to examine the class stratification of the new world order, where more and more is owned by fewer and fewer. Like witnesses of a bloody car wreck, we cannot look away.
This is science fiction at it's finest hour--would that every student rabidly pursuing another MBA was required to read this novel before putting on the jack boots of the money army.
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