June 16, 2005

Market Forces, Richard K. Morgan

I think this is an expansion of a Harlan Ellison story from the '70s or thereabouts. In the Ellison story, lethal driving was a matter of personal duelling, with race/class undertones; in Market Forces it is the approved field of competition for salarymen (and salarywomen). There's room for commentary on how all the violence flows downhill into poorer countries, while the money flows back up, but it's really a story about one man near the top of the system.

The protagonist starts as the most moral company man, but is seduced into the popular justifications; seduced largely by his own skill at winning, though his competitors and bosses try all the other seductions too. It's a violent novel, and gloomy, and is probably meant to become a movie, which I won't be tempted to see.

ISBN: 0345457749

So wrote clew in SF&F.
And thus wrote others:
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