Market Forces
Richard Morgan
Del Rey, Mar 2005, $14.95, 464 pp., ISBN: 0345457749
reviewed by Harriet Klausner.

In the middle of the twenty-first century, the market place controls all aspects of life with no governmental redistribution of wealth to interfere. In this global economy the big money makers are those who peddle Conflict Investments; there is a large and continuous market for the selling of all types of arms to small insurgent bands at a phenomenal price while encouraging the guerilla bands to make war not love. Recently safety has become an issue for the affluent.

Chris Faulkner of Shorn Associates has become a successful salesman peddling arms and related equipment. The Brit enjoys his literally cut throat job especially the executive perks such as driving a car and killing other road hogs. However, he has recently made a mistake by allowing mercy to someone he defeated during a road rage skirmish. He vows to never again allow his conscience to get in the way of his lifestyle. His chance surfaces when the eternal South American coup d’etat may be out of control. Though wary and thinking back excessively to his ghetto roots, Chris plans to rectify this problem.

This gloom and doom future will not be one to worry about social security as no social or security seems to be the norm in Richard K. Morgan’s dark satirical spin of MARKET FORCES out of control. The story line paints a grim future in which to paraphrase Jessie Ventura as the wrestler not the governor that it is not whether you win or lose, but how well you cheat. Though Chris’ growing disaffection is not adequately explained, the Enron and Bush-Blair economics are taken to the extreme in this powerful condemnation of a systematic handout to the rich while everyone else pays the price.