Despite some despicable characters and an uneven plot, Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces is an entertaining read. In the book notes, Morgan freely admits that the book draws inspiration from Rollerball (I’m assuming the classic James Caan version) and Mad Max. Those elements are combined with a dark vision of executive privilege and immoral capitalism, but not with much actual extrapolated science. This is probably more rightly called speculative fiction than science fiction. Singularity fiends, hard sf geeks, and space opera lovers need not apply.
The main character, Chris Faulkner, is a fast rising executive in a world where promotion is metered through deadly road rage challenges. Competing executives run each other off the road to get ahead. Faulkner specializes in managing the resources for bloody geopolitical conflict to significant profit. The book starts just as he is joining the high flying London firm Shorn Associates. Think of Shorn as the extrapolation of Blackwater Worldwide. Faulkner has climbed from abject poverty, caused by a global cascading recession (sound familiar), to reach an elite class which is essentially above the law.
Needless to say mayhem ensues.
Market Forces chronicles the internal and external conflicts of Faulkner as he navigates the treacherous waters of becoming a player in Conflict Investment. His management and peers view him as a threat to be roadkilled. His best friend at Shorn is a brutal thug who’s having an affair with the sleazy media whore Faulkner lusts after. Faulkner’s wife thinks he’s becoming a monster. She plots for him to sell out the company even as their marriage falls apart. His ineffectual father-in-law thinks he’s a tool of capitalist excess and tyranny. His clients think he’s just another expensive suited gringo come to colonize their region.
Did I mention that Faulkner occasionally goes psychotic and ruthlessly murders people? As an example he actually brutally beats to death an elderly South American politico. Right in one of Shorn’s expensive meeting rooms!! With a baseball bat!! In front of senior management!! This doesn’t even take into account what happens to the poor lower class scum who get in his way. That’s just the breaks of privilege.
I’ve enjoyed Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels, especially Altered Carbon, but I’d been holding off on Market Forces. Reviews had deemed the book to be somewhat of a dropoff from Morgan’s earlier books, and I have to agree with that sentiment. At 464 trade paperback pages, I think might have been more effective with 100 to 120 less pages. The reduction would have forced Morgan to tighten up a few plot elements, drop a few thin characters, and not linger unnecessarily on some scenes.
Despite all of that, I was oddly compelled to complete Market Forces. This is a credit to Morgan’s plotting ability, born of his screenwriting background. Apparently Market Forces started off as a screenplay, was optioned for film rights, and progressed to a novel. Ultimately, I could find no redeeming features in any of the characters, yet I had to know, “What happens in the end?”.
My final verdict is that unless you really like Morgan, and are a completist, Market Forces is worth a library trip or bumming a copy from a friend. Don’t feel the need to rush out and read it though. It’s got enough interesting elements not to be a complete waste, but I could see folks getting a little peeved after putting down their hard earned money.