Black Man (Gollancz S.F.) [Hardcover]

If you've read Richard Morgan's other sci-fi novels, especially those featuring Takeshi Kovacs, then you might think twice about picking up Black Man. It's set in a different scenario and Kovacs (a compelling and complicated character) is no where to be found. So the unfamiliar setting and the weird cover design (it almost seems deliberately constructed to distance this book from Morgan's established series) might sway you to put down Black Man and buy something else instead.
Mistake!
The world of Black Man is another brilliantly constructed, plausible near future. It's scarily close to ours, so many of the superstates are recognisable evolutions of the current political structure. America has fractured into a bible-belt 'JesusLand' and the Union. The major global superpower is the Rim (the Pacific Rim). The technology is based on extrapolations of what we have now -- evercrete replaces concrete, and coffee comes in instant-heat containers -- but the majority of the players are still humans. Just.
There's a colony growing on Mars, corporate influence corrupting the push into space, space-elevators lifting raw materials to and from the surface of earth into low orbit, and shuttle running on the long, long journey to and from Mars.

Into this situation come a set of believable characters; the augmented, hyped-up 'good' guy; the demobbed uber-soldier spawned by genetic experiment who shouldn't be on earth but is; the weary, chemical-assisted police woman. Their paths knit together as the plot progresses -- and Morgan nevers shies away from hot-blooded action and eye-raising plot twists. The only downside is the sheer volume of new stuff which is slung at the reader in the first couple of chapters; you have to get up to speed with a whole new universe pretty quickly. The political situation is slippery and take some getting used to, as do the fragmenting and re-forming factions of current societies. There's a lot of info to absorb so you feel like you're playing catch up until the plot really hots up.

Then the action is brutal and harsh, and the social comment is cutting. Black Man is set around 100 years ahead of us, and most of Morgan's insights apply to here and now. He sees a future when the 'feminisation' of society has led us to breed throwback warriors -- it's a bleak idea, that all our progress is what undoes us in the end.

So initially Black Man wasn't what I really wanted to read, because what I really wanted to read was another Kovaks novel. But Black Man grabbed and held my attention, and I rattled through it in three days (not bad, given its substantial length). More than that, I'd buy another book set in this scenario, so Morgan has plainly got it right...

This book is set about 100 years in the future, where the USA have imploded into three separate states; one Pacific facing, high tec and efficient, one liberal, internationalist in the north east and one seemingly sprung from today's Tea Party fundamentalists, with a touch of good ole racist red-neck thrown in for good measure. China is the world's super power and Europe has managed to bumble its way through to keeping the EU in one piece. Mankind has gone through some obviously troubling regional wars, where genetically bred soldiers were used in a failed attempt at supremacy. One of these genetic variants, a "13", is now globally illegal and can only legally live on Mars where there is an international colony involved in terraforming the red planet.

The protagonist, Carl Marsalis is one of these 13s, a mercenary hunting other rogue 13s living on earth. Worn out, he lands in jail in Jesusland, the poorest and most backward but biggest remnant of the old USA but is hauled out to solve a series of murders perpetrated by a rogue 13 who has stolen a spaceship from Mars, casually eating all the inhabitants on the way, and then crashing that craft into the sea near the Pacific Rim, the most modern of the successor states to the USA. Marsalis teams up with an ex-cop, Sevgi Eretkin to solve the murders and the rest of the book winds its way through a particularly gruesome plot and a heartbreaking, but poetic ending.

The novel was written at a time when the US had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, but when both wars were starting to unravel and when George Bush and his folksy, quasi-religious brand of American conservatism were almost universally reviled across the globe. The 2004 elections in the USA were under way and the polarisation of American society had really started to take off. China's formidable march forward to becoming a global power was already well under way and the cracks in Western society were showing. In my personal opinion, this novel should be read in that context, particularly as Carl Marsalis is literally a black man in all senses of the word, and Jesusland, the religious fundamentalist remnant of the USA is portrayed as being very racist, bigoted and ultra-conservative.

Morgan twists a lot of the plot around the roles that gender and race play in society and the inclusion of a Turkish woman as his partner and her personal family difficulties is an interesting ploy to show that there is more to the Muslim world than extremist fanatics. Indeed, the Muslim world is curiously absent in this novel. It's a pity, in a way, because the novel is very politcal on a certain level and a juxtaposition of the various societies would have been interesting. While, of course, no one knows what will become of the USA in the future, the failing economy, the political polarisation and the rise of China are constants which continue to this day. It would be interesting to see Richard Morgan's take on the current wave of popular revolution sweeping the middle east.

But overall, this is an excellent novel and in my opinion, Richard Morgan deserves a lot of credit for tackling a modern issue via SF in a very straightforward way, something that SF can be very good at if written with that purpose in mind. Technology is thankfully kept in the background in this novel, and is mainly used as a plot framework on which the novel builds.

Carl Marsalis is a variant Thirteen -- one of the genetically engineered subjects of a failed government/military program to create the deadliest of soldiers. He is now a hit man with a UN mandate to find and dispatch rogue Thirteens. The problem is that Carl has lost the will to kill. When a job takes a turn for the worse and he's arrested in Miami, Carl believes that he can now leave his troubled past behind him. Unbeknownst to him, what appears to be a mentally unstable Thirteen returns from Mars and crashes the ship he's on in the Pacific, only to reappear later and leave a trail of corpses in his wake for no apparent reason. Soon afterward, government officials show up to bail Carl out of jail. In exchange, they want his expertise to help them deal what those seemingly random murders. Unfortunately, it won't take long for him to realize that there is much more to this than meets the eye.

Morgan's writing style and his fine eye for details make the narrative leap off the pages. The author truly knows how to make the story come alive, and I found the imagery quite compelling.

The worldbuilding is interesting, though Morgan doesn't delve too much on how it all came to pass. The USA have imploded and the country has split into three separate States: the Pacific Rim, the North Atlantic Union, and the Republic, also known as Jesusland. China is now a superpower and the rest of the world appears hard-pressed to keep up with them. It is a fascinating backdrop, to be sure, and it's too bad Richard Morgan didn't spend a bit more time explaining how it all unfolded.

The characterizations are well-done, the dialogues gritty. The author knows how to keep the readers interested by allowing us to learn more about the characters by increments. The Carl Marsalis/Sevgi Ertekin tandem provides a nice balance between the Thirteen and the COLIN agent. The supporting cast is comprised of a good bunch of characters, including the Norton brothers and Carmen Ren.

The pace is great -- Black Man/Thirteen is a veritable page-turner! However, the storytelling is at times a bit uneven. Nothing that really takes anything away from the novel, mind you. But Morgan sometimes takes the "easy" route, and Marsalis' hunches prove to be on target, though they're coming from way out of left field. With such a absorbing and convoluted plot, I felt decidedly short-changed when that happened.

My only true complaint in what is an otherwise nearly flawless work of science fiction lies in Morgan's depiction of Jesusland. I am well aware that the southern States of the USA are a land of contradictions, not easily understood by outsiders. But to portray the majority of their inhabitants as God-fearing, Bible-waving, racist dumbasses is quite a stretch, in my humble opinion. As I mentioned, Richard Morgan's backdrop is an interesting extrapolation of a possible future for the United States of America. Yet his depiction of the Republic goes a bit too far -- as if there's not a single soul in those States with a single shred of common sense and judgement. I mean, when it comes to human rights, they have as much moral celirity as countries like Libya. Again, that's pushing the envelope a bit too far. Honestly, there is a lot more to those States and their citizens, and the differences between the north and the south are a bit more complex than that. Hence, although most people likely will not even notice this (it doesn't particularly have much of an impact on the tale), it made me grit my teeth on more than one occasion. I guess I'm just tired of what has become a somewhat Western European misconception about the southern States, namely that religious fundamentalism is the norm everywhere. Heck, not everyone born there is a traditionalist right-wing inbred hillbilly idiot! I figure it irked me to such an extent because everything else is so well-crafted that it appears that Morgan let his Leftist side take over for just that facet of his creation. As I said, this doesn't affect the overall quality of this novel, but it left something to be desired.

Black Man/Thirteen is a high-octane, action-packed and violent book. It is also an intelligent and thought-provoking thriller, one that will even satisfy readers from outside the genre.

Like Ian McDonald's Brasyl, Morgan's latest is a sure nomination for a Hugo Award. Moreover, despite its flaws, Black Man/Thirteen might well be the book of the year!:-) I commend this one to your attention, as it is one of the books to read in 2007.

Check out my blog: www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com