Market Forces by Richard Morgan

All over the world, men and women still find causes worth killing and dying for. And who are we to argue with them? Have we lived in their circumstances? Have we felt what they feel? No. It is not our place to say if they are right or wrong. It is not for us to pass judgement or to interfere. At Shorn Conflict Investment, we are concerned with only two things. Will they win? And will it pay? As in all other spheres, Shorn will invest the capital it is entrusted with only where we are sure of good return. We do not judge. We do not moralise. We do not waste. Instead, we asses, we invest. And we prosper. That is what it means to be a part of Shorn Conflict Investment.

Richard Morgan's Market Forces is a terrible, terrible book. It tells a story about not too distant future where companies can legally invest in small wars and openly wage war and make profit of other people's misery. The main character in the book, Chris Faulkner has just taken a job with Shorn Conflict Investment and is trying to cope with both pressures of the new job as well as problems it's causing his personal life.

But the greatness (and horror) in this book for me wasn't in the big details and in the conflict investment (although the concept is all too realistic and scary). It was with the characters: when Dragon was comparing himself with Chris Faulkner, I thought he was over-romanticising the book. But the scary thing is - he is Chris Faulkner, and I am Carla, his wife. Especially in the beginning of the book I could see us in the characters so clearly it was truly hair raising - I can easily imagine that if situation had work-wise continued for longer we might as well ended up with how Chris and Carla do. (But in case you've read the book: don't be horrified and think that our relationship is just like that, it's not. It just hits very close to home, just like this whole book does.)

It would have been easy to overdo the book - it would have been easy to say that the execs work seven days a week, never take holidays and are married to their jobs. But the horror comes from the fact that these people try to have normal lives, try to have weekends and dream of holidays - they try to have relationships with their wives and children and fail miserably... just like normal people. But like Erik, Carla's father, says - the cause for the arguments is not in the relationship: "You think this is about a rift between you and Chris, and I'm telling you it's not, it's about a rift inside Chris." The only thing that was maybe slightly out of character were the gladiator-style car duels that executives used to win and lose business deals - maybe a bit far fetched - but everything else was spot on. It doesn't take too much imagination to imagine Britain like that in couple of decades - petrol is so expensive normal people can't afford it so they are trapped in slums - called zones - while rich executives have motorways all to themselves and can speed up and down the country in their battlewagons. We even used to live next to M11 which is where most of the important chases take place. (On a side note - although it's never said explicitly, I belive this book happens in the same universe than Morgan's Kovacs novels, only centuries earlier. There are lots of clues - especially Nemex guns and Mars expedition.)

If you people still haven't read any of Morgan's books I can't stress highly enough how good they are. This book is no exception. Pretty close to a perfect ten.

Posted by kolibri at 4 July 19:36, 2004