Black Man

by Richard K. Morgan

The future isn’t what it used to be since Richard K. Morgan arrived on the scene. He unleashed Takeshi Kovacs–private eye, soldier of fortune, and all-purpose antihero–into the body-swapping, hard-boiled, urban jungle of tomorrow in Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies, winning the Philip K. Dick Award in the process. In Market Forces, he launched corporate gladiator Chris Faulkner into the brave new business of war-for-profit. Now, in Thirteen, Morgan radically reshapes and recharges science fiction yet again, with a new and unforgettable hero in Carl Marsalis: hybrid, hired gun, and a man without a country . . . or a planet.

Marsalis is one of a new breed. Literally. Genetically engineered by the U.S. government to embody the naked aggression and primal survival skills that centuries of civilization have erased from humankind, Thirteens were intended to be the ultimate military fighting force. The project was scuttled, however, when a fearful public branded the supersoldiers dangerous mutants, dooming the Thirteens to forced exile on Earth’s distant, desolate Mars colony. But Marsalis found a way to slip back–and into a lucrative living as a bounty hunter and hit man before a police sting landed him in prison–a fate worse than Mars, and much more dangerous.

Luckily, his “enhanced” life also seems to be a charmed one. A new chance at freedom beckons, courtesy of the government. All Marsalis has to do is use his superior skills to bring in another fugitive. But this one is no common criminal. He’s another Thirteen–one who’s already shanghaied a space shuttle, butchered its crew, and left a trail of bodies in his wake on a bloody cross-country spree. And like his pursuer, he was bred to fight to the death. Still, there’s no question Marsalis will take the job. Though it will draw him deep into violence, treachery, corruption, and painful confrontation with himself, anything is better than remaining a prisoner. The real question is: can he remain sane–and alive–long enough to succeed?


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Thriller, Audiobook, Mystery, Crime

790 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 17, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Richard K. Morgan (sometimes credited as Richard Morgan) is a science fiction and fantasy writer.

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Richard K. Morgan is kind of hot shit in the sci-fi world these days, but this book does not demonstrate why. At 550 pages, it's a ridiculously long thriller wrapped in a shroud of William Gibson-esque cyperpunk. Morgan has a lot of interesting ideas about human genetic modification in the future, and how it all ties into the political intrigue of the time, but his actual plot, at least in this book, is an overly complicated murder mystery that fails to pay off in any way whatsoever. The main character, a modified "thirteen" with incredible killing powers, is cool enough at first, but becomes quickly unlikable as he proceeds to slaughter human after human, both good and bad. The book is a stylized, tough, crime thriller in a sci-fi setting, which would have been cool had it had any likable characters, or a story that didn't completely bore me. Even at close to 600 pages Morgan can't find a way to explain what is going on until the last 50 pages, when major characters sit in a room and engage in agonizing dialog that serves no other function than revealing backstory. The rest of the book is spent watching the main character and his crime-bustin' allies wander from one part of the world to another, figuring out very little and occasionally participating in fairly cool action scenes. Morgan seems smart enough, but this book is incredibly, unnecessarily indulgent, with the most egregious example being the THREE-PAGE scene describing the Thirteen titty-humping his love interest in a back alley. I'm all for a good titty-hump, don't get me wrong, but a Hustler-style recap of one isn't a good way to legitimize a sci-fi novel that otherwise takes itself very, very seriously.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

6.0 stars. IMHO, second only to Market Forces as Morgan's best book and he is one of my favorite authors.

Winner: Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: British Science Fiction Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I made several discoveries here. First I discovered I'm deeply grateful that I got this from the library and didn't purchase it. Second I discovered that I probably won't be seeking out any other of Mr. Morgan's work.

Thirdly? I've discovered that the four letter "f" word that ends in k (f**k) is apparently Richard K. Morgan's favorite word in the entire English language. He uses it as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb... a participle...sometimes a dangling participle. It just depends on whether he uses the four letter word unadorned or maybe he changes it by adding an "s", or an "ed", or an "er" or maybe an "ing". Of course sometimes he just adds a second word such as "face" or "head" then it becomes a prefix. I'm not sure it was ever a suffix, but I wouldn't bet against it. Now while I give credit to Mr. Morgan for his versatility with the word in question I think he might profit from expanding his "use vocabulary". Just a thought.

There's also several other things about the book that bugged me...constantly. But rather than go into all my peeves pet and otherwise I'll simply mention how the plot and the story continues to get lost in all the political and other cometary that makes up the brave new world of the book. Every time I got involved in the novel it wandered off on some tangent.

I'm sure this is a book some will like as each of us has our own taste and I see good ratings for it. Still not something I could get into. The idea is a good one and the plot is an excellent idea. There were parts that drew me right in. The arrival of the ship the 13 stowed away on was very well done. It was horrific and set things in motion, but then we wandered off and got a few thousand more words on the world and what everyone thinks of everyone else before we actually get back to the plot.

No, not for me and it's turned me away from the writer's other work. Can't recommend except for you to see what you yourself think. To each.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Total testosterone read. Not that this is all bad, of course, because there's plenty going on in the story to try to buck the trend. Like the main character, an uber-alpha-male if there ever was one, thanks to his Thirteen status as an engineered lot designed to do all the things that a pansified world is now unable to do.

Of course, skip ahead a few years and everyone's regretting that decision, setting up all the thirteens for a witch-hunt, and what we have now is a noir fiction treat skipping back and forth between Mars and Earth.

I should mention I read Morgan's Thin Air before this one and it doesn't really matter which you start with. They're both in the same time-frame and setting set up, but different characters and plots (although both are quite noir).

I had a good time with this. It's longer than a usual mystery novel by a big stretch and we've got lots of twisty plots to unsnarl -- usually with a lot of ultraviolence -- and it is what it is. Sharp, snappy, full of overblown Jesusland ignorance, rich people getting away with nutty stuff, and police-ish procedural with a side order of romance. :) You know, NOIR. :)

I'm glad to have read this. It hit the spot. :)

[Andrei(Drusca) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelentă

[Mohammed Abdikhader Firdhiye · Rating 4 out of 5]

SF thrillers or just regular kind its hard to find someone who writes as good,hardcore noirish thrillers as Morgan. He stands out, his action scenes are better than most authors in the same fields. He writes about main characters like Carl Marslais who you could never in a million years call a hero and who is a violent, amoral noir protagonist. Still he makes seem him more human than you would expect. He doesnt write simple thriller stories where the good and bad guys are clear.

Something i must really give Richard Morgan credit for is that he wrote about multicultural characters who doesnt look like him. Many modern SF i have read have future worlds where it seems most humans you see are white Americans, White europeans. That seems alien in todays western world where there are many people like me. He dealt with racial issues, religious issues that had to do with his main characters in European,American settings. The Black Man title wasnt just for fun.

In this novel the main characters were a black brit, a Turkish woman and there were South American indians, Chinese people etc. I respect writers like him more for creating SF worlds that is more diverse. I dont want to read about brown,yellow aliens more often than real humans.......

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't particularly enjoy the cyberpunk subgenre and I was worried when I saw that the book (the romanian edition, at least) has more than 800 pages. But this book it is not only with cybernetworks, virtual realities and so. No, it is gritty, violent, sad, has depth, characters, commentaries (about politics, about history, about media and so on), and everything you can ask from a good book. Although the pace it is quite slow sometimes and the author forgets that this is fiction, overall the reading it's absolutely delightful. More, here: https://fansf.wordpress.com/2015/10/2....

[Nick Imrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite being action-packed, thrillingly violent, well-plotted, somehow it dragged. It gets off to a slow start – with multiple chapters from different POV characters, some of whom we never meet again. And then when our real cast of heroic cops and mavericks are set up, they seem to spent all their time contradicting each other. What was meant to be territorial, alpha confrontation, often seemed to me to be time-wasting bickering. I'm sure the whole book would've been smaller by a third if they'd cut that shit out. Or perhaps because when they weren't dismissing each others hunches, they were discussing genetics and masculinity. It reminded me a bit of romance novels set in the work place – an awful lot of talking about feelings and not much getting the job done.

I'm not sure that I bought the 'gender and genetics' theme. The eponymous Variant Thirteens are human men, genetically modified to be as violent and selfish as our pre-civilisation ancestors, and are consequently feared by all and tightly regulated: living on reservations or registered. The hero, Carl, is a Variant Thirteen who has bought himself a little more freedom by taking a job hunting down other variants.

The characters talked about genetics and variants in such black-and-white terms – as if there were a sharp distinction between modern, feminised men, and ancient violent men. As if there were just the one gene for being emotionally repressed, enjoying violence, disdaining co-operation, rejecting bullshit. But surely all of us are capable of violence, and enjoying violence, in the right context? People are not easily divided into never-violent and perptually-violent.
The narrative occasionally reaches for a more nuanced understanding of genetics. The Variant Thirteens are brutally raised and trained to be killers, so there is some nurture in there too. And there are hints of free will: some thirteens are capable of love, start secret families, make long-term intelligent plans. Perhaps they're not all monsters? But the way the characters talk about it is so clunky.
There seems to be an assumption that the elimination of violence was achieved by crowds of conformist, civilised people hunting down the variant monsters with torches and pitchforks as if they were Frankensteins – and that's the only evolution that's ever taken place:

'Leaders are charismatic. Persuasive, imposing, charming, despite their forcefulness. Easy to follow. Sexually attractive to women.'
'What if they are women?'
'Come on, I'm talking about hunter-gatherer societies here.'
'I thought you were talking about now.'
'Hunter-gatherer society is now, in terms of human evolution. We haven't changed that much in the last fifty to a hundred-thousand years.'
'Apart from wiping out the thirteens.'
'Yep, that's not evolution. That's civilisation getting an early start.'

This is, uh, not my understanding of how evolution works. It can work very swiftly, when the selection pressure is strong enough, and it certainly isn't stopped by civilisation. If there's been a reduction in violence and selfishness, it's not because crowds of people were somehow capable of identifying and lynching the archaic violent men. It's because the slow process of the law has been weeding out the violent via the death penalty – and because hard-working co-operative people have better reproductive success.
Sexual selection isn't considered at all. Variant Thirteens are apparently catnip to all women, who cannot resist their programming:

His hands were on he shoulders, fingers hooked into her flesh, head jutting close, eyes locking into hers. They hadn't been this close since they fucked, and something deeply buried, some ancestor subroutine in her genes picked up on the proximity and sent the old, confused signals pulsing out.
It was the part of herself she most hated.

But if violent masculinity is no longer adaptive, then women who prefer violent men would have reduced reproductive success, and over time would be a smaller percentage of the population. It's also entirely plausible that violent tendencies could be peacefully bred out of the population over time (no lynching needed) if women who prefer nice guys have greater reproductive success. It doesn't make any sense for the love of the violent to be ubiquitous in females.

It seems like the philosophical questions about genes and gender get put aside so that the hero can be a big damn chick-magnet. Likewise, all the tedious moralising about how men are all so feminised now falls pretty flat in a world filled with violent criminals, violent cops, sex-traffickers, and our hero, who seems to be succeeding pretty well by kicking everyone in the head. The theoretically feminine civilisation gets set aside so we can all enjoy the good old-fashioned world of gritty noir novels where male violence triumphs.

I also felt like that the full implications of this prejudice against archaic men weren't considered. The Variant Thirteens have been declared non-human due to their terrifying natures. But, there's been a lot of debate over the centuries about who counts as 'human'. Thirteens are clearly human by our standards, so if ethics have shifted so severely that some humans can be legally declared not-human I'd expect to see a revival in all the old fashioned discriminations too – i.e. a big resurgence of legal racial, ethnic, and caste discrimination. But most of the racism – even in the evil Jesusland – is no more than the overuse of the world 'nigger' and some white supremacist prison gangs. The racial and sexual politics is mostly the same as ours now – without any consideration for how genetic engineering could change what race and sex are.

Oh yeah, Jesusland is another part of the story that didn't quite ring true for me. It was a neat idea. The story is set in a future where the USA has fallen apart into the Rim States, the Union, and the Confederate Republic, known as Jesusland. Jesusland is poorer and more restrictive than the Rim States – and it would've been interesting if that had been used as a chance to explore the costs and benefits of rejecting ruthless capitalism. But instead, Jesusland is poor because it's bigoted, racist, and Christian, and everyone who lives there is apparently a moron. One POV character is persuaded that an assassin is actually the Second Coming of Christ because he looks like a picture of Jesus in a comic book.
This is in contrast to the more generous and nuanced depiction of Islam in the character of Sevgi, who practises a moderate form of Islam and has earnest debates with her fellow Turks about feminist interpretations of Islam in its historical context. In his acknowledgements at the end of the book Morgan credits The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, Islam: A Short History; and The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith in his research for the character. In his research for Jesusland he credits the now famous Jesusland map meme created (according to Wikipedia) by one G. Webb on the message board yakyak.org. This disparity in respect and research really shows up in the novel, to its great detriment.

[Brainycat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genre: scifi / cyberpunk
Brainycat's 5 'B's:
boobs: 4 // blood 4 // bombs 2 // bondage 1 // blasphemy 4
Currently listening to: Alien Vampires: Harshlizer CD2

Richard K. Morgan has again established himself as one of my very mostest all time favorite authors. As a reader, I've often gone through endless numbers of book descriptions online, or browsed the shelves at bookstores, and felt like nobody is writing a book just for me. Sure, there's more 'good' or even 'great' books out there that I'd enjoy than I'll ever have time to read. But even when I'm reading a great book that I can really get into, I still have a nagging reservation, a slight cognitive disconnect between myself and the characters in the book: "What kind of idiot are they? Why didn't they do it the other way? This guy is a hopeless fool. They're are much easier ways to accomplish that goal."

Carl Marsalis, genetically modified (I'd say enhanced) and trained in soldiering since birth, did not inspire that sort of dissonance with me. I get this guy. I understand his mental processes. He has to explain himself over and over to the "normal" humans around him why he does the things he does, and each time I feel his frustration. The premise of the character is that he's a "variant 13", the result of manipulating the genome to express neural structures and personality traits advantageous to a hunter/gather society, but subsequently bred out in the intervening 20000 years of agricultural domestication and raised in an off-the-record creche remniscent of the movie Soldier.

Those who know me well will not be the least bit surprised to find me so attracted to Carl. I'm a big believer in the concept that we, as modern humans, have sold ourselves short. We've paid for our cushy lifestyles with domestication and the yoke of civilization, at the cost of the raw animal passion that sits at the bottom of our brainpans. Where once we fought for tribal dominance with cunning, strength and self-control, we now blithely hand the reigns of our tribe over to a succession of talking heads who make reassuring noises on cue - and in turn to the people who've inherited the keys to the graineries. Two professionals, one a highlevel bureaucrat who works with genemodified populations, the other a detective who runs across them in his work, talk about the nature of the Variant 13:

Though this is a software issue we’re talking about now, rather than a hardware problem. At least to the extent that you can make that distinction when it comes to brain chemistry. Anyway, look—by all the accounts I’ve read, the Project Lawman originators reckoned that variant thirteens would actually have been pretty damn successful in a hunter-gatherer context. Being big, tough, and violent is an unmitigated plus in those societies. You get more meat, you get more respect, you get more women. You breed more as a result. It’s only once humans settle down in agricultural communities that these guys start to be a serious problem. Why? Because they won’t fucking do as they’re told. They won’t work in the fields and bring in the harvest for some kleptocratic old bastard with a beard. That’s when they start to get bred out, because the rest of us, the wimps and conformists, band together under that self-same kleptocratic bastard’s paternal holy authority, and we go out with our torches and our farming implements, and we exterminate those poor fuckers.”

Where the other books I've read by Morgan play in the space between then and now, in the gap between what you remember, what other people remember and those intersections today, this book plays in the social space between people and their perceptions of each other in the here and now. This is not another "frozen caveman wakes up and hilarity ensues" story. This book takes the old joke "Stress is the feeling created when the mind overrides the body's desire the choke the shit out of some asshole who deserves it" and treats it with respect, thoughtfullness and integrity. Carl is not a neolithic, thoughtless killing machine. Like all of Richard's characters, he has depth and breadth that keep this character driven story moving along at a fast clip.

Nature versus nurture is the glaring subtext of this story. To this end, prejudice and bigotry play a big part in the dark future of "Thirteen". On one hand, there's the overt bigotry of "jesusland", secessionist southern states and their teaparty agenda writ large. In this context, Carl experiences bigotry because of the color of his skin. He experiences bigotry because of the years he spent on the Mars colony. He experiences legislated bigotry at the hands of various nation-states and corporate entities throughout Europe and both north and south america because of his geneprint.

Carl lifted fingertips to his face, brushed at his cheekbones. “You see this? When you’re a variant, people don’t look at this. They go right through the skin, and all they see is what’s written into your double helix.”
The Rim cop shrugged. “Perhaps you’d prefer them to stop at the skin. What I hear about the old days, we’re both the wrong color for that to be a better option. Would you really prefer it the way things were? A dose of good old-fashioned skin hate?”

At the best of times, he occupies a legal grey area; he's able to avoid incarceration or being sent back to Mars because he works as a bounty hunter, licensed to track and capture or kill other 13s who escape from their holding areas. The other characters in the story, each of which are extraordinarily well developed, also deal with their own prejudices towards Carl as well their own lives as the object of other people's prejudices.

As I've come to expect from Richard K. Morgan, non-white, non-male and non-straight characters are very well represented in this story. It is positively refreshing to see capital-s Speculative Fiction finally write stories that actually featrure the people who are likely to populate the world of the future. As these characters deal with their relationship to Carl, each other and themselves they each explore the difference between how they believe they should relate to Carl, the world and themselves, and ultimately have to discover for themselves where the line between limbic imperative and imprinted behavior lies. Carl has postcoital conversation with a colleague who inherited a geneset called "bonobo", designed to make women more overtly sexual:

“You know what it feels like, Marsalis? Constantly testing your actions against some theory of how you think you might be supposed to behave. Wondering, every day at work, every time you make a compromise, every time you back up one of your male colleagues on reflex, wondering whether that’s you or the gene code talking.” A sour smile in Carl’s direction. “Every time you fuck, the guy you chose to fuck with, even the way you fuck him, all the things you do, the things you want to do, the things you want done to you. You know what it feels like to question all of that, all the time?”
He nodded. “Of course I do. You just pretty much described where I live.”

Watching each character deal with these identity issues was the real crux of the book for me; it resonated deeply in my own experiences with alchoholism.

This is Science Fiction at it's absolute finest. It uses the latest information added to the corpus of knowledge we've accumulated, extrapolates the interesting bits, hurls it full force into geopolitics and wraps it all up in a thrilling story that had me staying up late and foregoing other obligations to read. I was utterly engrossed in this book. This book shows that Richard is continuing to develop himself as both a writer and a social critic (read "artist") even after the phenomenal achievement of the Takeshi Kovacs series. Earlier this year I said about Altered Carbon "...if you read only one scifi book this year, make sure it's Altered Carbon," but I'm going to have to rescind that statement. Thirteen is one of those Important Achievements that needs to be read by anyone who has an interest in the human condition, the ability of people to grow and change, and ultimately decide their own fates with whatever cards chance - and bioengineering - have handed them.

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two hundred pages in and great fun. This is intelligent science fiction, a look at social and cultural change and geopolitics, all interwoven with 21st century genetics and artificial intelligence. It would make a good movie, just the kind my husband would love, lots of action, great visuals and clever plotting. Why haven't I read Morgan before?

Well, I'm almost finished this and I have a problem. I think there are two books here. One is an intriguing proper sci-fi novel about an outsider negotiating a possible near-future. Like the best sci-fi, it considers how advances in the physical sciences (genetic modification, space exploration, virtual reality systems)would dovetail with social changes (repressive legislation, the political fracture of the US, a more powerful UN-type organisation etc) to shape our lives. And, like the best sci-fi, it's relevant to where we are now. It's not hard to see how we could get from here to there. I'd love to read that story. Morgan has laid its background, (sometimes clumsily, with characters giving each other lectures in history or sociology), but hasn't fleshed it out.

The second book is an action story with lots of posturing tough guys,and two-dimensional female characters, cool weapons systems and gratuitous sex. It reads like it's meant to be a comic (sorry, graphic novel) or a Hollywood screenplay. There's a huge body count, a photogenic cast, predictable villains, and it even ends with an opening for a sequel, or a spin-off story. That novel would be fun too, but would only need half the word count of Black Man. What we have instead is a not-too-thrilling thriller.

I feel disappointed. I would have preferred the sci-fi story, but I wish he had just written one or the other.

[Hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am kind of over Morgan. I loved Altered Carbon and liked the two others. This one is a tepid like. The story is fine, the near future tech is the biggest draw, in this case a modifying of genes to make different kinds of "humans".

There were some long drawn out tell not show parts and I wasn't really buying the motivations of the MC. Recommended for Morgan fans not really for anyone else.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars for me, despite what I admit is some good writing in places. The premise of this book is that we have killed off all the disruptive, aggressive “hunters” in society since we invented agriculture and became civilized. The “thirteens” are the results of the effort to reinvigorate our gene pool through genetic modification, developing a strain of feral soldiers and law enforcement not found in the societies of the near future. What a bunch of crap! Ya think UBL thought in those last few seconds left to him that those warriors storming up the stairs are just a bunch of “cudlips”, Morgan’s derogatory term for regular folks. Nothing about Thirteen stood out as surprising or earth-shattering, no moments when you could say that is a really cool concept. As others have pointed out, all the action takes place in the last 50 pages, everything before that is wandering around the globe almost aimlessly. None of the characters are remotely sympathetic or even interesting. And get real, the UN is a globally effective policing organization among the nations? Right.
There is one area where Morgan has his writing down to a sharp focus. One group is singled out for special attention. If you are a member of this group or even sympathetic with it, this book will not be an enjoyable reading experience. Like few I have ever run across, Morgan brings contempt dripping with disdain, condescension beyond scorn, hatred suffused with poison for this group. If you live in “flyover country” between the east and west coasts of the US, if you have any religious affinity but especially if you are Christian, if you are Republican or conservative, this author sneers at you. Everyone in “Jesusland” is stupid, irrational, gullible and/or criminal. Everyone outside “Jesusland” is wise, intelligent, etc. I don’t mind if someone lets current political views creep into the story line if it supports the plot. Both conservative and liberal authors do it but this guy Morgan has a special hatred for Americans in his targeted group. It didn’t support the story much because little action occurred there. But at every turn, he found a way to insult this targeted group just because he could.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 4 out of 5]

От миналото възкръсват чудовища: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/v...

В това бъдеще основната заплаха са генномодифицираните хора, срещу които има тежък обществен антагонизъм. Сред всички тях се отличават “тринайските” – ясно изявени алфа мъжкари, които уж са били избити преди двайсетина хиляди години от бавно цивилизоващите се хомо сапиенси. На всичкото отгоре са получили перфектното военно обучение и като цяло са супергерои, от които обикновените мъже настръхват, а жените не могат да им устоят. След като бива установено, че те са напълно неуправляеми, им се поставя избор – или да идат доброволно на Марс, или да бъдат изолирани в лагери. Което се получава с променлив успех.

Издателска къща БАРД
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/v...

[Велислав Върбанов · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Вариант 13“ е много добър футуристичен трилър на Ричард Морган! Действието в него е страшно напрегнато, както и са приятно съчетани вълнуващ крими сюжет с научнофантастични елементи... Като цяло книгата ми хареса, но не успя да ми въздейства чак колкото страхотната трилогия за Такеши Ковач.

Историята на модифицираните Тринайски е доста любопитна.Те са били генетично променени, за да бъдат използвани за военни цели, а след време са изолирани на Марс. Един от тези модифицирани мъже се завръща на Земята и започват да се случват страховити убийства, а пък друг от тях трябва да го разкрие и залови...

[Иван Величков · Rating 3 out of 5]

Още при първи прочит ми се стори, че е писана преди трилогията за Такеши Ковач. Сякаш е само тестов полигон за развитите там герои и вероятности. Останах много учуден, че е излязла след това. Сега вече съм сигурен, че е писана по-рано, но публикувана след успеха на "Супер командос" (този превод на книгата не мога да го преглътна, честно). Просто авторовия стил, дори толкова невзискателен за поджанра страда от изключително "класически" грешчици на прохождащия писател. (И все пак това е лично и непотвърдено мнение, ала другият вариант е авторът да регресира, което не е вярно поне според следващата му преведена книга). Трябва да пробвам фентъзитата му.
Иначе света си го бива, а криминалната сюжетна линия е топ. Като основа за последната му книга "Разреден въздух" ннаправо си е супер. Само дето тук действието се развива на земята и много нетипично за англичанин фокусът е почти изцяло върху Щатите.

ОК. Тринайските са подобрени генно хора от различни държавни военни програми. Целта е биа ясна, да се създаде оръжие. Това което са направили е модифицирани самци по образец от миналото на човечеството - теорията на Морган, че съвременните (в уклон на бъдещето където се развива действието, но и в сегашно време) мъже са социално кастрирани от инстинкт за оцеляване. ТОчно това им е силата на тринайските - връщане назад. Естествено, станали са ненужни и човечеството се опитва да ги смете под червения килим на Марс. Защо да не ги изтреби? - Прекалено скъпо.
Нашето момче е точно такава тринайска и се е позиционирал като ловец на себеподобни. Когато един кораб от Марс каца на земята с избит и изяден екипаж, става ясно, че друга 13 се е измъкнала. Започват и серия внимателно подбрани убийства, чиято следа води към Латинска Америка. Нещата бързо ще излязат извън контрол ловецът става жертва, а работодателите му гледат в съвсем неправилна посока за целта на убийствата.
И преди съм го казвал, подхванеш ли Морган много добре знаеш какво ще получиш - увлекателна екшън фантастика с дебела криминална нишка, герой мъжкар, голямо мазало и малко киберпънк за разкош. Всичко останало са дребни бонуси по пътя, но пък качествени. ДОри тук, където опитът не си е казал думата.

[fo jammi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Morgan doesn't conceal his source material, intellectual or stylistic. His acknowledgments at the beginning of the book are a great jumping off point for exploring some of the themes that "Thirteen" tackles, and there are plenty of them. Stylistically he weaves a noirish blend that owes a great deal to Dick, Gibson and Chandler, and echoes cinematic sources as well as literary. The last scenes evoke "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in the slant of the light and the quiet punctuated by brief, seething violence. Morgan is a skilled synthesist, and more than that as well. Every two or three chapters his writing catches fire and precipitates a paragraph or more of jewel-like prose. The plot pivots and curlicues with tight precision, vectoring off into enough ideas to fill three separate books. His command of the kinesthetic seizes your gut and hauls you into the center of the dangerous world that he illuminates. He maintains suspense to the final pages. Ultimately he delivers stinging and startling perspective on what our common humanity (and inhumanity) is really made of.

He bases the story on a classic motif - the outsider bounty hunter bringing a fellow outsider to justice, in this case a genetic variant throwback to pre-civilized humanity equipped with martial adaptations. The protagonist supposedly lacks the basic empathies that make our society possible, and exposes the fundamental brutality of that same society when he fails to be the monster he was designed to be. Enjoyable as a straight-up action novel, Morgan has programmed in subtle barbs that will twist and slice for years to come.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got 150 pgs in. The prose is clear and gripping but I'm not super grabbed because all the characters blurred too much. They're all vaguely angry for no reason because that's more tense or something. IDK. When I read the blurb on the back again I was like 'Oh this sounds quite interesting' but I'd already read through loads of the book's plot points and not realised, so, see ya!

Anyway! So this was published in 2007 and I guess they changed the title from the version I found in a charity shop because here's how the blurb of mine starts (and I can't find this blurb online :D)

"Carl Marsalis, is a traitor, a bringer of death, a genetic freak and an unwelcome reminder of all that is dark in the human psyche — he is, in every sense of the word, a Black Man."

WOW. What... what... what the fuck were they thinking?!

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A violent sci fi thriller, an enhanced super soldier on the hunt for another of his kind who is killing people. Good subject matter for a thriller, but too slow to sustain the tension or excitement. This is aimed at a certain audience - and I'm not a member. A high body count, lots of blood and gore flying, and random sex. I didn't mind the politics or philosophizing, since that was actually more interesting to me than the killing machine dudes, but this was just too long. People started repeating themselves, the same conversation would happen over and over, and scenes would go on for ages, sucking the last emotion out until it was dry as a bone.

[spikeINflorida · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Monsters, scapegoats. The words dropped off his tongue like cards he was dealing. His voice was suddenly jeering. Angels and Demons, heaven and hell, God, morality, law and language...it's all metaphor. Scaffolding to handle the areas where base reality won't cut it for you guys, where it's too cold for humans to live without something made up. We codify our hopes and fears and wants, and then build whole societies on that code. And then forget it ever was a code and treat it like fact. Act like the universe gives a shit about it. Go to war over it, string men and women up by the neck for it. Fire bomb trains and skyscrapers in the name of it."

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok, it had some interesting ideas about what it means to be human, and an especially bleak look at our possible future, but besides that the book was very predictable, even when it was throwing in big plot curve balls. For all the convoluted twist and turns the book is essentially an action / adventure story in the vein of something like the Penetrator. A big guy who women can't keep their hands off of goes around and kills all the bad guys that get in the way between him and his righteous aims. Throw in an arsenal of toys that make him invincible, but which are confusing in their placement (spoiler? I mean if you can have a foolproof bulletproof gene clothing (seen at the end of the novel) why not wear one all the time? And why don't the agents from the very rich COLIN group have them? And why don't the other Thirteen's (variant humans, that have been genetically predisposed towards alpha alpha male behavior and violence) have this Mesh thing that seems to make the main character a cross between Daredevil and Superman? Wouldn't others be able to get this stuff, what makes the main character so special? It felt too much like in the 1960's Adam West Batman movie when the shark is holding on to Batman's leg that he happens to have a big can of something called "Bat Shark Repellent" on his utility belt, something which in all of the Pow! and Bam! fights before and after is never there getting in his way.).
The author also got under my skin towards the end of the novel by seeming to take great joy in a couple of witty lines he thought up, so much that he threw them into the mix a couple of times. The lines were witty the first time, but when they entered into dialouge the second time it just irked me in that irrational way that I get irked. I guess he thought that they were jokey and witty enough to be 'things people in the future would say for laughs, or that is was some kind of idiom, but he introduces these lines for the first time way to late in the book for that to be thought of (there were a couple of them, the one I remember is "Like a Jesusland preacher with a choirboy")).
So anyway, the book is ok nothing really special.

[Neal Asher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable stuff, but perhaps far too heavy on the polemics for some. A couple of times I felt the urge to skip bits, especially some of the long conversations serving as vehicles for social commentary, but I didn’t skip because by then Mr Morgan had hooked me. Also, for someone who very definitely can illustrate the shades of grey in human existence, Morgan goes blind to them when writing about what seem to be his pet hates: religious fundamentalism and right wing politics. Taking a whole lump of America, labelling it ‘Jesusland’ full of ‘Republicans’, and dismissing it as a backward society is somewhat ironic, when his lead and insightful Thirteen is supposed to be more primitive still. I suggest a read-up on some Dawkins about closet Atheism in the Bible Belt. But then who am I to criticise that, my contrast setting is always at the top of the slide. And I have to add that naming a lethal virus ‘Falwell’ had me chuckling.

But though there’s so many pegs in this book to hang negative criticism on, these weren’t enough to drive me away and Morgan kept rescuing it with something like the Raymond Chandler maxim of walking a gunman in through the door. I just knew that shortly the characters would again pick up the plot, we’d be in for some more gritty violence, twists and betrayals. Yeah, that plot seemed to wander a bit, but the characters, the sheer story-telling ability and tight snappy prose kept me nailed. In the end you know you’ve enjoyed a book when, after reading the last line, you think, bugger, I’ve finished it.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Carl Marsalis seems like a lucky man. Thirty-odd years ago the US and UK created genetically modified soldiers, called "Thirteens", but when public horror shut the project down, the Thirteens were put into camps or shipped off to Mars. Carl is one of the few permitted to roam free--on the condition that he hunt down other Thirteens, who have left their reservations without permission. His latest mission is to stop Merrin, a Thirteen who tortured, ate, and mutilated the corpses of his fellow passengers on a flight from Mars.

Despite the thriller plot, the majority of this book was actually a slow slog for me. The characters (especially, but not only, Carl) communicate mostly in several-page rants whose main points seem to be how tough the speaker is, how hard they've had it, and how terribly unfair the world is. And it is a terrible world! Morgan is master at creating dystopias and the hard-bitten noir types who survive in them. But I can only read so many monologues per chapter, and each of the characters is so disheartened, jaded and unhappy that reading their thoughts was a drag. The other problem is that the first 400+ pages are just Carl and his various police and COLIN partners taking suborb flights all over the world to try to intimidate and threaten various underworld types (most of whom get monologues of their own). It seems very pointless. Now, all that time bumbling around does actually have a point, because all the while Morgan is dropping hints and clues to a worldwide conspiracy. In the final few chapters, all of it comes tumbling together into a beautiful solution that makes sense of everything, even bits I didn't realize had confused me before.

I really was impressed by the mystery/thriller writing--it's some of the best I've seen. But it couldn't make up for how unpleasant I found hyper-masculine Carl, nor how bored I was by the sentence fragments that make up the narration.

[Fatman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thirteen is fantastic and frustrating, like every other Richard K. Morgan novel I've read. Fantastic because of its brilliantly conceived and executed setting, believable futuristic concepts, full-blooded, compelling characters and gritty, in-your-face realism. Frustrating because of its unnecessarily overcomplicated plot (holy gambit pileup, Batman) and agonizing AYKB/"just between you and me" dialogues. Still very good. Could have been excellent.

[Alfred Haplo · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exoskeletal of a story supported by too cavernous a premise to stop it from collapsing upon itself. Richard Morgan’s Thirteen* carried big themes, which would have been more successfully executed had it a credible foundation. The weight of its ambition buckled the knees of its protagonist, Marsalis, a super-mercenary, whose legs were kicked out by inconsistencies.

Much rested on Marsalis to carry the show. Marsalis, along with his brethren, the “Thirteens” or “variants”, were genetically-engineered human composites bred for military missions that required them to be physiologically triggered for extreme aggression. The story lost no opportunity to convey, particularly in the story’s emotional segment, of Marsalis’ transformation from killer lab rat to someone resembling empathetic with the spiritual guidance of a “sensei”, whom we never meet.

I did not buy it, and frustratingly so, because the story pushed hard on the notion of nurture’s influence on nature. Marsalis’ internal motivation was just not developed or remorseful enough to overcome genetic coding and decades of training so unbelievably quickly. Put in a different way, if he could self-condition, why couldn't the other Thirteens? Why was Carl Marsalis so special? It was never explained. For that matter, what was in his gene pool, this being SF, such that he was a variant? It was never explained.

Bailed out from jail on a quid pro quo, the UN teamed with Marsalis to investigate a random murder spree. Apparently doomed by both nature and nurture to have no sense of humor or charisma, Marsalis was not a character to warm up to but no matter, he promised adrenaline surges in his intuitive pursuit of the murderer, another Thirteen. A point of disbelief for me was his rampant “Thirteen paranoia” employed to connect the dots or extract information, coincident after coincident, where previously the whole of UN and their artificial intelligence were unable to.

Certainly, Thirteen was conceptually more philosophical than the typical SF fare, which I suspected was one (of many reasons?) why it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel in 2008. The story posited an environment where feminism had emasculated the male species, which in turn weakened the US through secession into three geopolitical regions, the ultra-conservative right-wing Republic aka “Jesusland”, the liberal Union and the powerfully wealthy Pacific Rim. Toppled as the global powerhouse, the US - through its United Nations agencies, now toed the line with the rest of the world. Religion too, was positioned as both regressive and progressive depending on which camp one identified with.

Superb ideas, all that, but they were mostly told through extraneous disquisition. Timeline-wise, Thirteen began after the fact, and so these rich, complex discourses were in essence, background information. Lots of it. What was done well as a result of the exposition was atmosphere and opportunities for rumination, which set the stage preemptively for Marsalis to navigate this new wave of thinking and to develop introspection. There were some moments of reflections that raised Thirteen above a guns-a-blazing SF novel.

Disappointingly, all that was squandered away for pedestrian bang, bang, bang. There was extreme armed violence, and there was graphic sex. Granted, this was true to noir-form, a hallmark of Morgan, but it was often counter-intuitive for this story predicated upon the world being a better place because of softer, more feminized approaches like tolerance and negotiations. But gosh dang all that talking and whatnot, there was nothing like exertions of masculine prowess and windpipe crushing to resolve matter expediently. The disconnect was too flawed to ignore.

The juxtaposition was borderline ridiculous. Feminism ruled, so the story said but it contradicted itself. One of the characters controlled her men with copious sex. Two others have hot spontaneous sex, which was every woman’s prerogative, yay, but Marsalis, the walking testosterone, only zeroed in on their physical attributes not their intelligence, personality or accomplishments. No females in Thirteen had positions of power, as a matter of fact. Pregnancy was a limitation, and taboo for the Thirteen. The wronged wife has revenge sex, and lived out a facade of happily married with the cheating spouse. Besides, since when was feminism gender-specific as the story seemed to imply? Oh, Morgan.

Just as grave was the insistence on stumbling with stereotypes and making definitive statements. The citizenry of “Jesusland” were racists, bigots, nativists and God-fearing zealots. South America was overrun by paramilitary, gang-like familias of Hispanic descent. The Chinese propagated human trafficking through illegal genetic laboratories. Autism was a template for artificial intelligence. And so forth. Most of it stated in black and white without inviting deeper questioning. Thirteen attempted to initiate intelligent discussions, but failed to carry a meaningful conversation with the reader.

If the disparate covers were indicative of anything, it was Thirteen's inability to pinpoint its own identity. One of the challenges, I thought, with Thirteen was that it just tried to be too much, such that inconsistencies and implausibility fell through the cracks everywhere. Whatever themes Morgan aimed for were discursive, and unimpactful, with a literary shotgun fired with pellets hitting everywhere but bullseye.

Thirteen started off very promising, with tight writing and genuinely tense moments, but was ultimately short on delivery. In it, I very much wanted affirmation of Morgan’s story-writing potential having read his popular Altered Carbon, which I enjoyed but still left wanting. Thirteen was set in a precursor world 100 years before Altered Carbon , so expect the technology to be less thrilling. Unfortunately, the technology in Thirteencontributed to conveniences but was not quite integral to story development.

Recommended for fans who enjoy the similarity in world-building and its loose tie-in to the other books (no one would miss the not so subtle allusions). The pacing was erratic, the plot incredulous and the conclusion out from the left field, but Thirteen was unique enough of an SF offering to read it once. 2.5 stars, rounded up.

(Updated 1/7/2021)

[* Altered Carbon, #1 of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. Thirteen (US) or Black Man (UK), #1 of the Thirteen series with book #2 to be released 2018]

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in August 2007.

On the assumption that any technology developed by the human race will be used in for short term gain without consideration of the consequences or of ethics, the outlook for genetic engineering is frightening. That is the basic premise of Black Man, Richard Morgan's latest novel (published in the US as Thirteen, presumably because the publishers there - Del Rey - don't want readers to assume that it is about racism). Richard Morgan envisages the production of three types of genetically modified human being: the hibernoids, considered ideal for space exploration because they hibernate; bonobos, submissive bimbos produced for the sex trade; and thirteens, sociopathic individuals expected to be super-soldiers. None of these groups performed as expected by their makers, and by the time in which Black Man is set, they are rarities, feared and hated by many. The thirteens are the most feared, with the result that they have been declared non-humans, not covered by human rights legislation. Most of them have emigrated to Mars to escape the restrictions placed on them on Earth.

Carl Marsalis is not just a thirteen, but a renegade: he hunts down other thirteens for the UN. However, when he is arrested in Miami, he is left to rot in a brutal Jesusland jail - Jesusland being the fundamentalist state that has seceded from the US - until his expertise is needed. A thirteen has escaped from indentured service on Mars, getting back onto a ship returning to earth. A glitch in the hacker code needed to override the normal cryogenics so that he could get on board means that this thirteen has been woken up only two weeks into the journey, surviving the remainder by brutally butchering the other passengers and eating their body parts. The shuttle crashes in the Pacific, and a killing spree begins. So Marsalis is freed from prison, and sets out, abrasively and violently, to track down the missing thirteen.

In many ways, Black Man is a maverick cop thriller with added science fiction elements. I can't really think of a way that the SF ideas really add anything to the story at all. In the Takeshi Kovacs novels, starting with Altered Carbon, the ideas are fascinating in themselves and a vital part of the plot and atmosphere of the novel. It seems that without Kovacs, Morgan has problems putting together anything beyond a science fiction inflected violent thriller; his other non-Kovacs novel, Market Forces has similar problems. Here, things are worse, because Marsalis is too much like Kovacs (minus a sense of humour), making it look as though Morgan is incapable of writing a range of characters.

My feeling is that publishing this novel as it is was a mistake. Morgan should have been encouraged to revise it, beefing up the science fiction content, improving the characterisation (particularly of the female characters) and reducing the violence. Genetic manipulation is obviously a topic that science fiction should be exploring at the moment, but this is not the novel to start a debate on how it should be handled.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carl Marsalis is not a lucky man. A genetic variant, the thirteenth result of humankind's tinkering with their own DNA, Carl is engineered to be the perfect soldier. He's cold, emotionless, able to shunt away knowledge of pain and avoid human concepts like community and dependence. He and his kind were very good at what they were designed for, a little too good according to the humans they supposedly protected. So, once peace again descended on this 22nd Century globe, the Thirteens were offered the option of either relocating to the foundering penal colony of Mars or spending the remnants of their lives in high-security prisons.

These days it's Carl's job to catch Thirteens that escape their captivity and are either trying to make it to Mars or just disappear into a jungle somewhere. It's not a job that Carl particularly enjoys, even when you're bred to have no attachment to blood ties it still feels like a Judas kiss to send so many of his same models back to prison, but such are the exigencies of life- you've got to do what you can to get by. It is this theme, among the many that Morgan tries on, that resonates after finishing the book, that humans are more than the genetic wiring we have within us. An unaltered human can be just as capable (if not more so) of treachery, deceit and the vilest barbarity as a lab-created human with a penchant for violence. The Thirteens are humankind's boogieman, the creature that goes bump in the night, yet again and again their savagery is trumped by that of the humans hunting them. There's a message there, but I'd rather Morgan beat you about the head with it rather than myself.

It's always refreshing to revisit Morgan's particularly dire futures, whether with Carl Marsalis or Takeshi Kovacs, the hero of Morgan's absolutely stellar Altered Carbon. While definitely skilled at depicting the grime and muck of a dirty street future, it is the politicking and intrigue of the upper crust here that grabs the reader's fancy. Negotiating the byzantines paths of power between the Colony bureacrats, the UN and the fractured former states of America (conveniently split into the Pacific Rim States, Jesusland and the Union) is a headache that nearly requires a line graph to understand, but which delightfully reinforces humanity's unceasing love of complexity and power structures.

At times the book comes across a little clunky, there are some leaps of logic that don't make sense and some characters are really just stock filler, but it's still fun and an appealing way to kill some time at the beach.

[Greg (adds 2 TBR list daily) Hersom · Rating 5 out of 5]

F*@%in' A, Thirteen is another awesome book by Richard K. Morgan!
Mr. Morgan is one of my top three favorite current authors and I can't rightfully say why I just now finally got around to reading Thirteen but it's more than worth the wait.

Genetically modified humans is nothing new to SCI-FI but I haven't ran across any where the building material came from the savage hunter/killers that had long since been bred out of the human race. Carl Maralis is the product of such genetic engineering called Variant Thirteen.
So what do you do when wolves break their chains and start slaughtering the sheep? You get a wolf to track down his renegade brothers.
If you prefer your SCI-FI in the vein of Blade Runner then you'll dig Thirteen. It's dark, gritty, and brutal, with insights of society and mankind that ring all too true.
Now I'm left trying to decide if I want to fork out the cash and jump into Market Forces, -the last of Morgan's novels I have yet to read- or take a break long enough to catch my breath first.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned circa p100: This kind of bloated, exposition-heavy, constantly shifting viewpoint, modern idiom seems to increasingly annoy me.

[Elena Linville-Abdo · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 80%

I'm sure there is a good story somewhere in there, but it's bogged down by clunky dialogue that goes nowhere and an extremely slow passing. I gave up when I realized that I didn't care to find out how this story ended.

The start of the story was very promising - we have Carl Marsalis hunting renegate variant thirteen on Earth, which gave me a bit of Blade Runner vibes. And then we have a crashed spaceship with a horror show inside it. There is a new thirteen on Earth with an unknown agenda, and Carl Marsalis is on a crash course with him.

I was on board and ready to enjoy this story, but then all action ground to a screeching halt as soon as Marsalis is released from Jesusland prison and agrees to help COLIN. And then we have pages upon pages of needless dialogue that is only there to info-dump on how the world works, what the different political states are, etc. Yes, it's interesting information IF it doesn't get in the way of the story.

Here it does. NOTHING happens for at least a hundred pages. The characters talk. The characters fuck. They talk some more. They travel to a different location and talk even more. Then they travel and talk again. And all those dialogues bring absolutely nothing to move the story forward. Even when Marsalis then explains (in another dialogue) what clues he managed to find in those previous dialogues, they are so obscure they feel like reaching.

I found myself yawning and skipping ahead. Talk talk talk... skip skip... more talk, skip skip. Oh look, an action sequence. Things are actually happening! The story is moving forward!... And we are back to more dialogues that lead nowhere.

I persisted to about 80% hoping that the pace would finally pick up, but then I realized that even if it did, I didn't care anymore. I was over the mystery of why Merrin was sent back to Earth and whether Marsalis would catch up with him. So I quit.

I think the only books I managed to finish by this author were the Takashi Kovatch series, and everything else I tried I bounced off. Oh well, I guess this is just not for me.

[Sandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Morgan at his best... which is not saying much. Gratuitous violence, unnecessary, unnecessarily graphic sex scenes, at least a hundred pages of preaching about the emasculation of the modern world and how we need a huge dose of testosterone to solve all of our problems. Especially us poor, stupid women who need a real man to come along and f*ck us to happiness (a. word. that. was. definitely. overused). There are a plethora of cuss words in the English language, not to mention culturally specific ones in other languages. It would be nice if the author could vary the usage based on the character, rather than highlight his own lack of imagination. And try completing a sentence, the periods did nothing for the flow of the conversation. The changes in POV during the first hundred pages were very jerky. It was difficult to follow who was talking and where we were. A stupid factoid - Van Horn is in West Texas, not north Texas. Don't use geography if you aren't going to get it right (there were others but I go through Van Horn regularly so that one just jumps out at me). I find it fascinating (not) that Christians can not become enlightened while Muslims can and the UN can acquire the political backbone to be able to police the world. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, and they all get way to many opportunities to declaim their idiotic monologues to all and sundry. Too little goes on for too long then they finally sit down and get the three people at fault to tell their tale (because we can't have figured out any of it as it is being spelled out for us in gruesome detail) and then Carl kills everyone in sight as he walks out into a blaze of glorious sunshine (an obvious movie moment). At this point, I have plowed through four of Morgan's novels but no more. I am only happy that I have not plunked down my own money for them. They are not worth it.