io9
When the UK's Clarke Award announced its nominees, there was some comment about the number of quasi-literary novels on the short list, including Matthew de Abaitua's Red Men, Steven Hall's Raw Shark Texts and Sarah Hall's Carhullan Army. In the end, though, a fairly straightforward science fiction novel, Richard Morgan's future crime thriller Black Man (published in the U.S. as Thirteen), won this year's award.
Here's how Morgan described Black Man in an interview:
Black Man is set in the aftermath of a century of ill-advised and poorly regulated genetic experimentation, where an otherwise fairly successful global (and extra-global) community is struggling to come to terms with the legacy of the human damage done over the previous hundred years. I suppose you could draw a parallel with the way in which we now struggle with the human consequences of previous centuries of colonialism.[SF Awards Watch]Carl Marsalis, the black man of the title is one of a series of engineered humans, in his case engineered for combat, who have been modified not so much in any physical aspect as in the way they think and feel. It's a specialism based on designed aptitude, and the book aims to show, among other things, that the aptitudes required or desired by our society are often very frightening things.
In tone, Black Man is quite similar to my Kovacs novels, in that it's a fairly high velocity crime-and-conspiracy thriller with a noirish lack of obvious good or bad guys - but the book addresses issues that the Kovacs series could only ever really meet obliquely because of the sleeving technology. Simply put, in the Kovacs universe physicality and death are problems that can be sidestepped. In the world of Black Man, as in our own, they aren't. You have to meet them head on.
Comments
I found it extremely disappointing, but I suppose I am in the minority, given the award and notwithstanding Morgan's defensiveness about criticisms. I hate our current politics as much as the next man, but the "Jesusland" parts, especially, were just shooting whales in a thimble.
Bravo for Morgan (is he a Capt?)
It might be my low blood sugar, but what does the pic have to do with the story?
@Castle1914: That's the U.S> cover, where it's called Thirteen. The U.K. cover is super boring.
Oops missed that it was published in the US as Thirteen. I was also trying to figure out what Th*r Te*n meant.
Low blood sugar, really.
The Raw Shark Texts is probably one of the worst books I've read in years.
Just had to get that off my chest.
I'm in the middle of reading it now and while it is entertaining, I don't think that it's up to par with the Kovacs stories.
i enjoyed Thirteen, but i think everything has been downhill somewhat since Altered Carbon, with an uptick for Market Forces.
AC grabbed me by the lapels and made me its bitch*; MF wins by cleverly executed (if somewhat typical) societal satire. (Plus, it featured Saabs and Volvos, which plays well to this Cantabrigian, complete with elbow patches.)
(* not my first choice of metaphor, but "cleaned" up for the family audience)
I think I agree with the majority here in that I really liked "Altered Carbon" and thought that "Thirteen" (or "Black Man") was a decent contribution, but no where near AC. I've got to pick up the rest of the Kovacs series.
@Neil: I've been meaning to read Raw Shark Texts. I really liked Red Men and Carhullan Army, the other two "literary" books that made this year's shortlist. (I link to my reviews of them above.)
I really liked Altered Carbon. I've heard the same sort of "not as good as" reviews of Black Man. I liked the setting in A.C. I liked the obscene wealth and the floating whore house. All good times.
Ok, wait, i really liked the Raw Shark Texts. so there
I was very sorry to hear that he doesn't intend any more Kovacs novels. I found their stories building towards possibilities I wanted to read about, including: what really happened to the Martians? and will humans be able to sleeve into radically other bodies (or could Martians or others sleeve into human bodies?) If you haven't read Broken Angels or Woken Furies, you're in for a treat.
Comment on Shockingly, Science Fiction Book Wins SF Book Award I thought Broken Angels was a significantly better read that Altered Carbon and I liked Altered Carbon a lot. Woken Furies, was decent, but easily the weakest of the "trilogy". My biggest problem with the Kovacs books was Morgan's increasing use of hardcore porn scenes so that the personas of his body swapping characters can "just /feel/ something, damnit." And I will freely admit that, initially, I found these episodes a bit titilating. Eventually, though, I just skimmed these sections to get back to the major themes and plot. So, with all of that, is "Thirteen" basically a full on porn movie script or has Morgan reigned it back in a bit? I guess I'd like to know that before starting the read... Ghostwheel
Yes, I found 13 a harder read than his other novels, but rewarding for the effort. Morgan writes at great length in order to work through a lot of thoughts about prejudice, racism and of course the consequences of practical genetic modification (I mean as opposed to aesthetic genemods). Didn't anyone else appreciate the manner in which Marsalis and the rest were modified? Stripping away millennia of increasing neoteny to create a military atavism? A sort of mirror image of Zindell's Alaloi...
I guess I'm *not* in the majority, as I found Altered Carbon sort of trite and lacking any real substance. The only thing that genuinely interested me was the bit about the Martians. Does that get expanded upon in the later books? Because I totally dig Martians.
Morgan is the finest sf novelist writing today.
His work is, often, quite beyond the usual sf dreck, and therefore is deemed out of consideration for the usual awards and et ceteras.
There is no one else writing with the same imagination, except, maybe, Jeter.
@quetzilla: The Martian stuff does get elaborated on, in the second Kovacs novel and, to a lesser extent, the third, but the second and third novels are otherwise diminishingly satisfying, which for some reason seems, from his interviews, to give Morgan perverse pleasure.
Dissapointing but still just how these things are I guess. Really good books never win the awards they deserve anyway. Altered Carbon was a strong debut but Morgan´s following books have had a steady decline in quality and are really forgettable stuff so naturally he´s ripe for an award;) This doesn´t surprise me anymore. (Although I can´t stop getting provoked by the touchy-feely SPIN winning the 2005 Hugo in front of Accelerando.. That just chaps my ass.)
@yeschaton: I guess some writers just get sick of some of their characters and want to move on. Charles Stross has said he isn't going to write any more of his Post Singularity Escation (sp?) stories. Which is such a shame.
@Karl_Bryhn: The SF core culture has it's own standard that I don't even pretend to understand. At all. But Stross should have won. There is no way Accelerando couldn't have won. Go figure.
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