Book Club 10/07/06: Market Forces, File 1

[madnak]

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I really didn't think much of this. It came across as a 15 year-old boy's presentation of what the future might be like INCLUDING the relatinship between the husband and wife, but written by a slick and practised writer.

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Well, having never been married - or close to it - my view of marriage might not be too far off from the 15-year-old's. The writing does impress me, though.

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Plus I still really don't get why they use gladiatorial car battles as a promotional tool....

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Remember what Borodog was saying about bad premises? I think the death-matches are really meant as an over-the-top symbol of cutthroat corporatism. And I think it's also supposed to represent market competition (which is obviously different from Morgan's point of view than mine).

But that touches on what I most dislike about the book. The car battles are a cheesy action gimmick. Let's face it. And those kinds of gimmicks are great - I love them in other work. But the other authors of cyberpunk thrillers don't put on airs and try to make their works high-minded political commentaries. There are always references to politics, but they're always tongue-in-cheek and open to interpretation. And the author is always conscious of just how absurd they are.

I'm reminded of the pizza drivers at the beginning of Snow Crash who had to be action heroes in order to deliver pizza on time. Funny as [censored]. But can you imagine in Stephenson tried to insert a sob-story about the victims of the pizza industry?

These novels are supposed to be overblown fluff. And they're supposed to be illogically violent. It's like Dungeons and Dragons fantasy - the adventurers kill the orcs and move on to the next batch. They don't sit around afterward wondering about the morality of killing those orc bandits who probably just came from bad homes and needed a little support. They don't brood over their swords and axes and wonder what twist of fate brought them into such a savage lifestyle. They don't wonder about the orc families they've left fatherless.

Morgan takes something deliberately ridiculous and tries to make it serious, and he fails.