Market Forces

Market Forces is a science fiction thriller by the British writer Richard Morgan, published in 2004. It is set in 2049, in a world where conflict has been opened up to the markets.

Chris Faulkner has fought his way out of the destitution of a London that has been left behind, and he has joined Shorn Associates as a junior executive in its Conflict Investment division. The business model is simple: find a little war, choose which side is likely to win and fund it, in exchange for a share of whatever the winner takes. The company's executives do their negotiating on the road in armoured vehicles, settle disputes by force and operate under a code that allows them to think of themselves as warriors rather than salesmen. Faulkner is successful and becoming famous for it, and the novel follows his rise inside a firm where promotion is literally a matter of survival. He is also a man with a private side that his wife is trying to salvage and an ambitious television reporter is trying to expose.

Morgan writes fast, cynical science fiction about corporate power, and the future in this book is close enough to the present for the satire to land.