Yet at the same time, he resists the all too common temptation whereby this would slide into total cynicism. There is no line between criminal corruption, grand political manipulation, and totalitarian control they are all the same thing. There is nothing in this world besides rich people, and the corporations and governments they control, willing to go to any degree of destruction, torture, murder, and oppression in order to augment their profits. Here Morgan again pulls off an impressive and difficult feat: he is sufficiently clear-eyed not to gild the lilly to the slightest extent, but instead to present financial domination and corporate/governmental impositions without even the slightest hint of redemptiveness he wants to give us neoliberal capitalism in its full feral horror, even to rub our noses in it. All of Morgan’s sf novels have interesting takes on the way neoliberal economics and governance work, extrapolated into various futures. The women he meets have agency, and sometimes the sex is… just bad. For instance, Veil, the narrator and protagonist here, is emphatically not in the least misogynistic, even though this usually comes with the territory of ultra-violence and frequent sexual opportunities. Morgan pulls off a difficult feat in all his texts: he gives us a central character who is essentially an ultra-macho superman (due, in the sf novels, to different varieties of technological body enhancement, as well as character), yet combines this with a degree of sensitivity to social and political concerns that one would not usually expect in this subgenre.

Thin Air takes place in the same universe as Morgan’s last SF novel, THIRTEEN (US title it was originally called BLACK MAN in the UK), but it is not a sequel the two books are entirely independent from one another. That trilogy was pretty good, but I found it intrinsically less interesting than his science fiction work, so this new novel is a welcome return to form.

This book marks his return to science fiction after writing a fantasy trilogy. Richard K Morgan has long been one of my favorite science fiction writers. But I guess it is worth placing here as well anyway, considering how lame Goodreads is as a platform. I put this review up on Goodreads, as it is more slapdash and less coherent than what I usually post here, and a lot of things I should have said are missing (either I’m too lazy or too busy).

Richard k morgan books