Product Description

One hundred years from now, and against all the odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached some sort of balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy . . . Genetically engineered alpha males, designed to fight the century's wars have no wars to fight and are surplus to requirements. And a man bred and designed to fight is a dangerous man to have around in peacetime. Many of them have left for Mars but now one has come back and killed everyone else on the shuttle he returned in. Only one man, a genengineered ex-soldier himself, can hunt him down and so begins a frenetic man-hunt and a battle survival. And a search for the truth about what was really done with the world's last soldiers. BLACK MAN is an unstoppable SF thriller but it is also a novel about predjudice, about the ramifications of playing with our genetic blue-print. It is about our capacity for violence but more worrying, our capacity for deceit and corruption. This is another landmark of modern SF from one of its most exciting and commercial authors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52623 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

DEATHRAY
'Richard Morgan writes pumped-up steroid fuelled cyber punk. This is an unashamedly male, rip-roaring boy's own thriller for the 21st century. If Andy McNab ate a year's worth of issues of New Scientist, this is the kind of stuff he might write afterwards. Black Man is kick-ass SF from the hard end of the spectrum.'

Review
"Since his ferocious debut novel Altered Carbon roared into town, Richard Morgan has been at the forefront of this breed of full-on, edgy science fiction, and his latest tech-noir thriller is also looking dangerously like his best yet. Smart, gripping, and downright indispensable- the search for the best sci-fi thriller of 2007 might just have come to an end..." (SFX )

'Richard Morgan writes pumped-up steroid fuelled cyber punk. This is an unashamedly male, rip-roaring boy's own thriller for the 21st century. If Andy McNab ate a year's worth of issues of New Scientist, this is the kind of stuff he might write afterwards. Black Man is kick-ass SF from the hard end of the spectrum.' (DEATHRAY )

"Brilliantly plotted and unremittingly violent." (Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN )

"BLACK MAN is exciting and extremely violent but is driven by passionate moral concerns." (Lisa Tuttle THE TIMES )

"Richard Morgan has produced a stunning book with this girtty tech-noir thriller. Exciting and thought-provoking, this is destined to be a science fiction classic." (ABERDEEN EVENING EXPRESS )

"There are some aspects of BLACK MAN which are strikingly effective. As always, he writes action well." (Anthony Brown STARBURST )

"He certainly knows how to write a cracking yarn. It grabs hold of you and won't let go." (Dave Golder BBC Focus )

"This is his best since Altered Carbon." (EDGE )

SFX
"Since his ferocious debut novel Altered Carbon roared into town, Richard Morgan has been at the forefront of this breed of full-on, edgy science fiction, and his latest tech-noir thriller is also looking dangerously like his best yet. Smart, gripping, and downright indispensable- the search for the best sci-fi thriller of 2007 might just have come to an end..."

Customer Reviews

Complaint
Why is there no mention on the Amazon page that this is THE SAME BOOK as BLack Man....
I'm just about to read what I thought was a follow up and find I've already read this....
It's a good book, but surely Amazon need to indicate this is a reprint with a different title...!!!

Spellbinding Post-Cyberpunk Novel From Richard K. Morgan That's Definitely His Best
In "Thirteen" acclaimed young British science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan has written one of the finest novels published not only this year, but among the best in recent memory in the realm of science fiction literature. Best known for his cyberpunk space operas devoted to his antihero Takeshi Kovacs in the novels "Altered Carbon", "Broken Angels" and "Woken Furies", Morgan returns once more to explore the nature of individuality and what it truly means to be human in his latest novel, adding to its spellbinding, compelling mix, a heavy dose of the gritty realism seen in his recent novel "Market Forces". Stylistically, Morgan's novel is his closest to those of William Gibson's early "Cyberspace" trilogy, and that is indeed high praise from me, since I have noted before Morgan's frequent expropriation of classic cyberpunk themes in his fiction, but also wondering whether he has used them effectively. In "Thirteen" he has most certainly breathed new life into "post-cyberpunk" literature, in a compelling tale that's as memorable as "Neuromancer" and "Count Zero" - Gibson's first two novels, which are still regarded as among the founding father of cyberpunk's very best. Furthermore he has crafted an antihero whom I regard as far more memorable than Takeshi Kovacs, Carl Marsalis, a soldier of fortune and bounty hunter who belongs to a unique, genetically-modified strain of humanity known as Thirteens. And, best of all, Morgan has written some of best realized, most vivid, descriptive prose, which demonstrates that he is truly a literary talent to be compared favorably alongside fellow British science fiction writer China Mieville, perhaps the finest science fiction writer currently working in Great Britain.

Morgan's "Thirteen" can be viewed as a classic crime noir novel in a futuristic setting, a fast-paced piece of detective fiction in which Marsalis and his partner, Sevgi Ertekin, a young Turkish-American ex-NYPD detective, are hot on the trail of another Thirteen - a genetic variant of humanity designed to become the ultimate warrior - who has escaped from the Pacific Ocean crash landing of an Earth-bound shuttle from Mars, causing wanton death and destruction in his wake. Soon, however, both Marsalis and Ertekin stumble upon a tangled, almost Byzantine, web of political and criminal intrigue that spans the Americas and distant Mars too. Morgan expertly handles the suspense, and then, unexpectedly, introduces new elements of the tale nearly midway through the novel, as though they are billiard balls spinning out of control on a pool table. Marsalis proves he's an excellent detective, as well as bounty hunter, in his own right, tracing fragile leads across North America and the Andes of South America, that will lead inexorably to one final bloody showdown between a Peruvian crime lord and his half-brother, another Thirteen. Along the way Marsalis will question not only his own relationship with Sevgi, but also his sanity, as his obsessive pursuit of the murderous Thirteen from Mars will take him to Turkey, as well as a few memorably violent visits to Peru (Readers familiar with Morgan's literary riffs emphasizing violence and gore may find the body count quite diminished, until the final hundred pages.). I found "Thirteen" impossible to put down, and a compelling piece of science fiction literature that should earn for Morgan not only ample critical and popular acclaim, but also, many of the finest prizes awarded to science fiction literature.

3 X C 3 L L 3 N T !!
This dark cyberpunk novel is another proof that RICHARD MORGAN is the cutting edge of the genre. In a not so distant future, Mars has been colonized and genetic altered humans have been created, used up and then discarded into the margins of society - with prejudice. Hunting down renegade Thirteens (augmented alpha-males that should only choose between exile to Mars or never leaving their reservation) is Carl Marsalis, another Thirteen with an agenda of his own.
In the backdrop of a dystopic yet all too human society several paradigm shifts away, this roller-coaster ride starts off with a bang and never slows down.

Ever since his first novel (ALTERED CARBON), Richard Morgan has conjured up a rich world full of images, sounds, scents and tastes that, although is science fiction, it never ceases to be recognizably and timelessly human. His imagination has given this future such depth that allows him to move effortlessly back and forth in time between books. I can only compare him to another titan of the genre : FRANK HERBERT of DUNE fame.

The Agricultural revolution domesticating humans? Highly probable. Together with the emergence of religious predisposition and reduced aggressiveness, the [implied] Social Selection favoring docile humans was a good way for societies to consolidate and thrive. As a NeuroBiologist I was very impressed to find his understanding of evolutionary NeuroSciences on the mark.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!