ichard K. Morgan's first two novels, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, were riveting far-future cyber-noirs featuring a brutal yet principled antihero named Takeshi Kovacs. A third Kovacs book is in the works, but readers should take note that Market Forces isn't it ... though this near-future stand-alone does showcase the same deft world-building, sharp writing and down-and-dirty violence that distinguished its predecessors.
In Market Forces, current trends in privatization, globalization, concentration of wealth and the spread of the media-industrial-military-entertainment complex are extrapolated into a neocon wet dream of a world, in which good old-fashioned social Darwinism reigns supreme in the boardroom, in the bedroom and on the street. And the street is where all major business dealings, from promotions within a firm to account rivalries between firms, are ultimately decided, with armed individuals or teams driving souped-up cars against each other in duels to the death conducted under an elaborate code hammered out by lawyers yet frequently amended on the fly by innovative or desperate drivers. (Yes, Virginia, movie rights have already been optioned to Warner Brothers.)
Chris Faulkner is an up-and-comer in the Conflict Investment division of the powerhouse London-based firm Shorn Associates. Hired away from his former firm, Faulkner is eager to prove himself at Shorn, where ruthless initiative is prized and cold-blooded murder rewarded ... provided that profits follow. Faulkner is far from certain that he's suited to the corporate culture of his new employer, as exemplified by his hard-driving colleague Mike Bryant, whom Faulkner meets for the first time in the executive washroom, rinsing blood from his hands. But in a world where unemployment means a one-way ticket to the deadly slums of the cordoned zones—where Faulkner grew up, and from which he escaped as much by luck as by talent—the main chance has to be seized, no matter the cost.
It isn't long before the demands and dangers of his job, as well as the persistent advances of an ex-porn starlet now best-selling author and media personality, endanger Faulkner's marriage to Carla, a mechanic. His life, like a doomed car in a deathmatch, is spinning out of control. Sensing weakness, the corporate sharks begin to circle ...
Road Warrior meets Wall Street
Market Forces is a novel at odds with itself. It wants to be a dystopic satire in the tradition of 1984, yet it also wants to be a thriller as sleek and unstoppable as the cars driven by its characters. It is a vehicle for the very qualities it sets out to criticize, not unlike the novel it most comes to resemble, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. What's surprising is not that the book falls short of its somewhat conflicting aims, but that it comes as close as it does to realizing them.
Reading about Faulkner's career at Shorn Associates is like watching an Indy 500 pileup. Horrified yet mesmerized, we are unable to look away. And why should we? It's entertainment, reality TV. What isn't, these days?
Morgan does a good job of depicting Faulkner's gradual immersion in the violent culture of his new employer, which proves addictive as a drug, and he does an even better job of showing its corrosive effects on Faulkner's marriage. Despite everything, we keep rooting for Faulkner, for that bit of decency in him that sets him apart from Bryant and the other Zek-Tivs, as the corporate suits are derisively referred to in the cordoned zones. After all, with a bit of luck, a driver can jump from a crashing car and survive, even at the very last moment. But when the whole society is crashing, where is there to jump to? And perhaps survival is the worst fate of all.
Market Forces would be a better book if it were shorter, more streamlined. Subplots spill over their natural boundaries and cause the narrative to bog down. One in particular, involving a possible career change for Faulkner, should have been either more central or eliminated altogether. Faulkner's marital woes, so well handled initially, are drawn out to the point that they become wearisome and anticlimactic. But these are quibbles when set alongside Faulkner's transformation into ... well, that depends on one's point of view. Morgan has taken an inspired if cartoonish conceit, one that works both physically and metaphorically, and crafted a bleak and shiny future that feels more than merely plausible.
