Highly Recommended Reading: Black Man by Richard Morgan

Filed by: Darren Turpin on March 7, 2007 at 14:10
Filed under: Books

I finished the latest novel from British writer Richard Morgan at about 11.30 last night. To say it was a gripping finalé would be understating things by just a tad; I've been absolutely hooked by this book since I started reading it a couple of weeks ago; if I'd had an uninterrupted slice of reading time then I reckon I would have finished it inside of a single sitting, no problem.

Black Man is set in the same milieu - as far as I can tell - as Morgan's various Takeshi Kovacs novels, albeit a good few centuries earlier; about a hundred years into our own future, in fact. Much of our own society is still recognisably extant in Morgan's vision of the future, but there are the three major changes that drive a great deal of the novel's back-story.

The first is that Mars has been colonised - and successfully atmospherically terraformed - by the Western Nations Colony Initiative (COLIN), a supra-governmental corporation with almost unlimited powers of jurisdiction and action. The second is the break-up of the United States of America into three areas: the UN-dominated North-Eastern states, the secessionist Pacific Rim, and the hard-core, ultra-conservative south and bible-belt, or 'Jesusland'.

And the third major change is that genetic engineering has been advanced to the stage where, for a number of years before the period in which the novel is set, governments and corporations have been experimenting with creating a number of human variants; such as the pliant, submissive, male-fantasy 'bonobo' sex-specials, and the regressive, aggressive, lone-wolf uber-warriors; the 'variant thirteens'.

Protagonist Carl Marsalis - the eponymous 'Black Man' - is one such 'thirteen'. Exiled to Mars along with a large number of his brethren, he won the return-ticket lottery and came back to Earth, where he was granted special dispensation as long as he agreeing to work as a bounty hunter for the UNGLA, tracking down rogue thirteens for execution or internment in the tracts; wilderness buffer zones on the fringes of civilised society.

At the start of the book he runs into some trouble with the authorities down in Jesusland, and it takes some COLIN influence to set him free, providing of course that he helps them out with some trouble they're having with a rogue thirteen who's made an unorthodox return from Mars of his own, and who has embarked on a seemingly-random killing spree across the North American continent since splashing down off the Rim States coast.

And that's pretty much where the first 150 pages or so takes us. From there the novel develops into a captivating mix of the sort of adrenaline-fuelled, high-octane action action sequences we've come to expect from Morgan - an author who's shown time and time again that he's never keen on pulling his punches - and some intense, detailed and incredibly effective characterisation.

One of the central premises of the book is that, in this future society, racism - on the basis of skin-colour, at least - has finally become a thing of the past just about everywhere, with the notable exception of the still-benighted and culturally retarded Jesusland territories, of course.

Instead, a new xenophobia has arisen that's based on genetic make-up: the bonobo's are despised as much as they are desired, and the world lives in abject terror of the thirteens. Their anti-social, hunter-gatherer, seemingly conscience-less genetic make-up means they are perfect killers, but at the same time their base-level inability to respect and obey the laws and strictures of civilised authority, or to follow any order that conflicts too highly with their own deeply-inbred instinct for survival, renders them far too dangerous to employ as soldiers; hence their extradition to Mars; hence the potential for panic should the rogue become public knowledge; hence the need to call in Carl Marsalis to finish him as quickly as possible.

Marsalis' ongoing investigation, in the company of COLIN operatives Sergi Ertekin and Tom Norton - both of whom have key roles to play in the unfolding of the Black Man's story - is a study in nature vs nurture, as Marsalis' instincts lead him in one direction, while his COLIN partners' civilised sciences and socially refined behavioural models suggest entirely different avenues of approach. It's a study that mirrors the conflict within Marsalis, as he constantly battles to keep his violent tendencies in check, partly because he has to in order to operate in human society, partly because he doesn't want to hand the victory in the battle for his soul to the scientists and governments that created him as a weapon and then discarded him when public opinion turned against such a weapon's use.

And throughout the novel we're given a great deal of insight into the past histories and psychological make-up of all the main characters, plus the supporting cast with whom they come into contact, and even the villains of the piece. These tend to take the form of - sometimes lengthy - anecdotal interludes which, whilst at times they may make you wish the author would hurry up and get on with the next gun battle or Tanindo fight sequence, are ultimately highly rewarding.

The result of all this character exposition and background detail is a novel whose themes go far deeper than those of the standard secret agent / near-future sf thriller. Morgan paints an entirely convincing and well-structured portrait of the world a century hence; one that takes on added significance in terms of his own over-arcing narrative if it does indeed demonstrate the building blocks of Takeshi Kovacs' environment (I'm sending over a few questions for a UKSFBN piece in a moment. I'll ask him...)

He also peoples that world with characters with whom you can't help but strike up a sense of empathy, whatever their genetic background. Even a stone-cold killer like Marsalis is portrayed as ultimately human (albeit throughout holding himself to be an entirely different species from the mass herd of 'socially feminised' humanity that surrounds him) with concerns and motivations that go back to the very roots of evolved civilisation. You can understand him, identify with him, even as he murders and massacres his way through an existence that the vast majority of us will never experience for ourselves.

And after all, isn't that the whole point of good fiction, whatever the variant?

Very highly recommended indeed.

Filed on: March 7, 2007
Filed under: Books
Tagged With: recommended-reading | Richard-Morgan

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2 Responses to 'Highly Recommended Reading: Black Man by Richard Morgan'

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Joe on March 15th, 2007 11:05 pm

It was a superb piece of writing - as usual for Richard - really good to see him back in the saddle again. Some of the themes are not new to his work - the idea of the soldier conditioned to commit what would normally be unthinkable, violent acts by the same authorities who then blame them for violent tendencies after they have no further use for them is one which has come up with Kovacs. That said I thought doing it via the mechanism of deliberate genetic manipulation and conditioning was a very nice touch and the idea of the uber-violent essentially being genetic throwbacks to earlier evolution is one that probably chimes with anyone who has seen cro-magnon like neds and chavs causing trouble in the streets.

And you are bang on with the pacing and action - as ever Richard really delivered on those score and, once more, I thought he delivered big action scenes which, while offering that vicarious thrill of fictional violence, also carry moral messages which sink in after the thrill of the action has past. He must be one of the best around for being able to deliver action and thrills with intelligence and morality. I think Richard is just getting better and the move away from his established Kovacs books has worked very well. But then we knew there was something special about his books right from the get go back on the old TAO site with Altered Carbon, didn't we? Fairly set our book senses tingling.

I'm a damned happy reader right now - Black Man just finished, ripping through the heavy duty action of Ken's Execution Channel, new Jim Butcher Dresden novel on the way, sequel to Lies of Locke Lamora this summer and new Banksie and Stross waiting to be read - shaping up to be a good book year, mi amigo, and it is only March.

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