Market Forces [Anglais] [Broché]

Richard Morgan, the award-winning author of Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, strikes out into new territory with Market Forces, leaving behind the farflung battlegrounds of Takeshi Kovacs for the not-so-distant future of corporate Earth. Here, Morgan extrapolates a world where commodities trading reaches a brutal pitch and the outcomes of banana republic uprisings are the new market. Now, on the road to success, the brokers of the new economy compete for status and promotions via road rage on the freeways of new London.

Morgan's conflicted protagonist, Chris Faulkner, is a comer known for one spectacular kill that shot him to the top of mid-range global capital firm. He parlays his reputation and skills as a driver into a job in the emerging field of "Conflict Investment" at the world's hottest and hardest firm. Soon he finds himself running with the big dogs and rises to the top of a brutal realm, but his ascent is quickly threatened by vicious senior partners, gold-digging suitors, fame, fair-weather friends, and his own nagging conscience.

Market Forces is at once an anti-globalization treatise and anime fantasy meets The Road Warrior. Morgan employs the graphic-novel imagery of his two previous novels to create a disturbingly brutal picture of slash-and-burn capitalism run amok. There are times when Faulker's moral quandries seem hollow in the face of his actions but this isn't Crime and Punishment. Enjoy the ride and "come back with blood on your wheels or don't come back at all." --Jeremy Pugh

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Morgan's brutal, provocative third novel (after Altered Carbon and Broken Angels) charts the moral re-education of executive Chris Faulkner, who joins notoriously successful Shorn Associates, which specializes in "conflict investment" - financing totalitarian regimes, as well as guerrilla movements, in developing countries that are never allowed to develop. Taking his theme from such well-known critics of Western capitalism as Noam Chomsky, Susan George and Michael Moore (all listed as sources), the author presents a bleak near-future that includes continuing job loss through NAFTA, the undermining of national economies like that of China and the creation of a permanent underclass. Faulkner and other company hotshots compete in highly dangerous, often fatal car races, which reflect the ruthlessness of their corporate careers. Faulkner's auto-mechanic wife, Carla, strives to humanize him, but he will have to kill a lot of people with his car, guns and, in the penultimate bloodbath, a baseball bat before seeing the error of his ways. While some may be put off by the graphic violence and the heavy-handed polemics, most readers will find Morgan's economic extrapolation convincing and compelling.
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In this bizarre tale of the near future, the world has devolved into a Mad Max horror show in which businessmen are required to kill their competition. Simon Vance could have taken this story line either too seriously or too lightly but instead performs the work with the perfect amount of flexibility to make the listener empathize with a cadre of corporate killers. And even root for them. Vance, a British actor, brings his stylish accent into play for descriptions of lovemaking, as well as play-by-play rundowns of vicious battles on the boulevards of Britain and its boardrooms, without making the novel drift into farce. There's nothing funny here, and that's good. M.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition CD .

The latest novel by one of science fiction's new crossover stars features Chris Faulkner, an up-and-coming commodities trader who finds that his new job entails a level of ruthlessness he is not sure he's prepared to embrace. The story is set in England in the not-too-distant future (2050, or thereabouts), but the author's England is unlike anything we have ever seen or imagined. In this rugged, cutthroat business environment, corporate rivals duke it out in duels on the open highway. Getting a promotion involves, quite literally, eliminating the competition, and our hero's particular kind of commodities trading involves betting on the outcomes of wars. It's not a particularly pleasant future, but Morgan paints it in broad strokes, drawing us into his future world and making it feel like a natural outgrowth of today's corporate chicanery. The novel might have been unremittingly bleak if it weren't for the moral center provided by Faulkner, who is a genuinely likable guy. Fans of Morgan's gritty, noirish brand of sf will flock to this one. David Pitt
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Wall Street meets Mad Max - Richard Morgan hits the mainstream with a blistering new future thriller. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.