The Cold Commands [Cover Art]

It's not horrible, and that's really about all I can praise it for. As anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows, I started out in love with the Original US cover for The Dark Cold Commands. Then, when I saw the final product, I was a bit less enthused, to put it mildly. Someone had, it seemed, sprayed strobe-lighted mist all over my precious atmosphere. I was told in the comments of that very post, by James, that the UK cover art would not be an improvement. All the same, I had this tiny hope that I couldn't quite extinguish. Now that's quite crushed. I wonder what's the better buy: the failed or the generic?

Ah well, at least we get the better title back.

The Dark Commands...Again [Cover Art]

God damn it.

I mean, it's not AWFUL, but it has almost none of the atmosphere I initially loved. I guess the bluish glow is supposed to make it feel ethereal, but all it does is make me feel like someone should turn the lights down and think that everyone looks slightly transparent. Seeing as this is the US cover art, I suppose that one can hope the UK is not similarly afflicted.

Richard K. Morgan Doesn't Play Well With Others

I mean, play Gears Of War; those characters, you can’t imagine them doing anything besides running around shooting monsters.

This is certainly not the first time Morgan’s stirred up some controversy, but everything’s really coming together now. Morgan’s previous target was Tolkien, though I think that he made a few fair points (and, say what you will about the quality of the novel, The Steel Remains did address those points). This time around, it’s even harder to avoid thinking that Morgan’s just doing his best to rile people up.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the people reporting on this couldn’t possibly have slanted their articles more. I’m primarily referring to is this, which has really mastered the art of taking things out of context. Yes, Morgan did say:

Halo is full of these bullshit archetypal characters and there's no real emotional effect.

but it wasn’t an unprovoked assault. In fact, the question he was asked was:

Do you think getting that greater depth of character is made more difficult by the faceless nature of Nanosuit 2? Master Chief syndrome, you might call it.

It’s a question about deep characters in videogames and specifically asks whether Morgan thinks he can overcome what the interviewer thought was the problem with Halo’s characters. It would be a bit odd for Morgan to not discuss Halo’s storytelling merits at that point, would it not be? Morgan is saying that he doesn’t anticipate a problem, because he doesn’t think that was what was wrong with Halo. Not seeing the malice here, sorry.

The defense in the comments of both that article and the one here is frequently just as off base. What is being accomplished by spouting games like Mass Effect (which may not be the best choice to contend charges of archetypical writing)? Morgan is not saying that no games have good stories; he is a fan of Bioshock, for one. Other comments say that gameplay is more important than long cut scenes, though Morgan’s already answered that:

…a 20-minute cut-scene is embarrassing.

It seems like very, very few people commenting have actually read the whole interview. Either that or their minds simply shut down after the Halo comment, and they started looking for stuff to hate:

What is wrong with comic books BTW? Do writers who deal with a character like the Joker automatically suck as writers because it is "bullshit, man... that's comic book?" Tell that to Allan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison. Or Warren Ellis. Or Neil Gaiman. Or Brian Michael Bendis. Or Mark Millar.

I know, Morgan must really hate comic books.

Morgan is not saying that story triumphs over gameplay; he held up Bioshock as an example, a game with the best integration of the two concepts that I’ve ever played, not Heavy Rain. Morgan isn’t even insulting the games, just their stories, which makes comments like:

Halo games were always supposed to be light on story, heavy on environment: big weapons, awesome vehicles, wide-ranging and artistic tech, epic landscapes. That, to me, is Halo.

utterly pointless. No one is attacking smashing someone in the face with a speeding Ghost; they’re just saying that there isn’t all that much behind Halo’s story. And I can’t disagree with him there. Ignore the books for the moment; the discussion’s about the video game Halo. Are people really trying to tell me that Sergeant Johnson, characterized by being tough and chewing a cigar, is a deep character? Really?

Like last time, I can’t shake the feeling that Morgan’s setting out to infuriate as many people as he possibly can, but, also like last time, I can’t really deny any of his points. Unfortunately, the odds of my computer being able to run Crysis 2 are laughable, so I suppose I’ll never get to see if he lives up to his own hype.

UPDATE

Morgan himself has come back to comment on the misrepresentation of his opinions:

...the gaming press has taken a series of freely expressed opinions from me, borrowed selectively for negative content, created misleading titles around said comments and so bolted together an image of me as some arrogant interloper who thinks my writing is superior to anybody else’s working in games.This process reached a head yesterday when Koku Gamer started openly misrepresenting my views on the game Uncharted 2 by substituting the views of another, entirely different person working at Crytek and claiming his opinions were mine. The good news is that the view they’ve claimed I expressed is so diametrically opposed to other well-reported comments I made about Uncharted 2 (in short, that it was superb), that Koku are just going to end up looking like the fuck-wit lying assholes they clearly are.

I guess that's the problem with twisting everything someone says; when you go too far, they can prove you're wrong and throw the whole thing in your face. Thumbs up for journalistic integrity?

The Dark Commands [Cover Art]

I’m generally staying away from cover art on here. It’s an interesting subject – at times – of course, but there seems to be little point when all I’d be doing for the most part is regurgitating what I learn at A Dribble of Ink. This is going to have to be a bit of an exception, though, because it’s just that foreboding. The Steel Remains had a great cover (or, at least, the UK/Subterranean editions did), but this one blows even that out of the water.

Or, on second thought, perhaps not. The cover’s as amazing as it was when I first saw it, but now there’s reasons to doubt its continued survival. On Westeros, Pat said: Got word from the folks at Del Rey not to pay attention to the Morgan cover, as it's only an early sketch. Now I’m torn between awe at the thought of that thing getting even better and terror at it being ruined. I suppose only time will tell…

UPDATE

New, ruined, cover art can be found here.

Richard K. Morgan - Market Forces

Conflict investment is the way forward…

Richard K. Morgan came to fame with his Takeshi Kovacs novels, gritty noir science fiction stories narrated by the titular antihero, featuring mind blowing action and an acute social conscience. Market Forces, the author’s first foray away from Kovacs, is at once Morgan’s best novel and his worst. His abilities to paint tragic, flawed characters are at their all time height, and yet other elements – world building, themes, etc – are occasionally so over the top that they shatter all immersion.

Market Forces takes us to the near future, where juggernaut corporations make their money by funding wars and dictatorships. It’s a brutal place, and Morgan doesn’t hesitate to make his views on capitalism clear, but believable (or, at least, this part is). The questions of ethnicity brought up aren’t quite as black and white as you might think, and Morgan makes us carefully consider just what our duty to our fellow man is.

Morgan’s novels have always been character driven, but in the past the hardboiled protagonist’s past and inner depth would only be revealed only as it interacted with the fast paced plot. Not so here. This is wholly Chris Faulkner’s story. The plot is loose as can be, essentially detailing Chris’s internal struggle as he tries to combine working for Shorn with maintaining some shred of human decency. Surprisingly enough, the few twists that the plot develops are mostly slight, unwelcome distractions from the crushing inevitability of the main storyline.

Chris Faulkner is not, and never was, a truly good man, and perhaps that’s what makes it so easy to sympathize with him. Some comparisons to John Grisham’s The Firm could undoubtedly be made, but Faulkner shows a degree of humanity a cut above the bestselling Mitch McDeere. Perhaps a part of that is, as I’ve said, his guilt. He is not, as Mitch was, almost blameless, but tempted to betray what he stands for. No. He’s an amateur suddenly thrust into the big leagues and horrified by the brutality of what he now sees, and yet his protests are never wholly stated. It’s occasionally hard to tell if what he despises is the practice, or the efficiency with which it’s carried out. Spending our time in Chris’s head, living through his interactions with those around him – from wife to competitor – it’s impossible to not be moved. The ending is, perhaps, predictable from the first few chapters, but that only adds to the poignancy of the journey.

Morgan’s writing has always been so gritty and raw that you can’t possibly disbelieve a word of it, and it’s just so here. The novel’s hardest hitting moments all come when Morgan shows us the cruel reality of his – and our – world and doesn’t let us look away. This isn’t nice and pretty, and there are no easy solutions. One of the best scenes of the novel occurs in a slum. The Do Gooders (Vasvik, Erik) are speaking to the Corporate Tyrant (Chris), while, next door, a man beats his wife, and a child cries. The solution seems so obvious, when analyzing it like this, doesn’t it? But no, this isn’t an empty morality play. This is real. People do horrible things to each other in Morgan’s world, and the punishment is worse than the crime. The good can’t act, and those that can don’t care to.

Vasvik stared into the middle distance with no emotion than a cat.

Another shriek. A meaty thump. Chris stared around and coughed out a laugh.

“You guys are fucking hysterical, you know that. Erik, with your fucking writing, and the fucking ombudsman here. All you going to change the fucking world for the better.” Suddenly he was yelling himself. “Look at yourselves. You’re fucking paralyzed, all of you.”

Something hit the wall, big enough to be a body. Blows followed, regular, spaced. Chanting.

you cunt, like that? your cunt like that? you fucking like that cunt?

He was in motion, and it was like the Saab ride home all over again. Embodied purpose, unstoppable. He went out, along the tiny entry hall, out the front door, left along to the next door. He kicked it in. Cheap wood splintered in the frame, the door flew back. Slammed into the wall, rebounded. He kicked again and erupted into the space beyond, through the hall and into the living room.
…
Bang.

Unfortunately, it’s the incredible strength of Morgan’s realism that makes it such a pity when his brilliance is mixed with lukewarm satire. While on one hand we have a world falling apart, on the other we have corporate executives battling each other to death on the freeways. Yes, you read that right. The same corporate people that sponsor wars and control nations pretend they’re in Mad Max. On one hand, I understand what Morgan was trying to do here. If capitalism leaves all but the elite behind, crushing the dreams and life out of everyone else, what better personification of no-safety-net, ruthless, merciless capitalism could there be than a literal duel to the death? Unfortunately, it doesn’t come off this way as one reads. When Mike Bryant rams some hopeful newcomer off the road and into oblivion, I’m not thinking about the cruelties of an amoral capitalist society. I’m thinking about Burnout Paradise, and nothing better combats gritty, horrifying realism than the mental image of a slowly spinning crashed car, played out in slow motion before the respawn.

Furthermore, the class system in Morgan’s London surpasses believability. Yes, I understand that we’re supposed to believe that the gap between poor and rich has widened, that more and more of the world’s wealth is going into fewer hands, etc. Fine. But when you’ve got 97% of your population living in The Zones (think turbo slums, complete with near-total lawlessness and an unemployment rate to shame the Great Depression), I’m no longer so sure I can agree:

It was an abrupt transition. In the financial district, street lighting was a flood of halogen, chasing out shadows from every corner. Here the street lamps were isolated sentinels spilling a scant pool of radiance at their feet every twenty meters of darkened street. In some places, they were out, lamps either fused or smashed. Elsewhere they had been destroyed more unambiguously, rendered down to jagged concrete stumps still attached to their trunks by a riot of cables and metal bands.

Poverty’s one thing, but it becomes hard to believe when the divide essentially amounts to either being a corporate demigod with personal access to the rough worth of New Zealand, or living in a closet and making six cents a decade.

Market Forces is far from a flawless novel. In terms of world building and immersion, it often falls well behind his other works. And yet, I’m unsure that I’ve ever been as emotionally affected by a novel as I was by this one. Over the course of Market Forces, I felt Chris Faulkner’s elation, and I felt his devastation. By the ending, I was shaking with emotion. Yes, the large themes occasionally fall down the stairs – but they don’t matter. Everything they could ever have done and more is conveyed through the plight of a human being as sympathetic as any you’re likely to encounter. Recommended if you want to ruin your day in the best possible way.