I didn’t finish Market Forces. To me felt like a bunch of crappy tropes barely tied together, but maybe I just didn’t “get it.”

I don’t care about high-performing dickheads in the future who are trying to out-kill each other literally in their BMWs. I don’t want to read about people like that.

I found the characters completely unrelatable and uninteresting to read about. The world doesn’t have a ton of depth, either.

The main character’s wife visits her dad, who is an older guy who forces her to read academic political literature out loud when she’s been fighting with her husband. I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be a sensible character, but he’s certainly not an empathetic one. Or barely a believable one.

Remember, she’s come to him after having a fight with her literal evil murderer husband, and she’s reading to her dad, as an adult. It was several paragraphs of her quoting it too.

“…So long as this is believed by the vast majority of the populace in the developed world, the contradictions identified by Marxism will remain hidden and each individual member of society will be left to resolve for themselves the vaguely felt tensions at an internal level. Any effort to externalize this unease will be disdained by the prevailing political climate as discredited socialist utopianism or simply, as was seen in chapter three, the politics of envy.’ ” She laid down the book. “Yeah, so what?”

Are you for fucking real, Richard K. Morgan? That’s literally all you could muster? Go on, give us nothing.

“That’s your problem, Carla.” Erik had not sat down while she was reading. He stood with his back to the heater and looked down at her as if she were one of his students.

Yeah wow how fun to read. Tell me about their cool BMWs and how how the journalist lady was again, I guess?

I didn't catch the "of the 21st Century" part at first and was ready to argue. I honestly preferred "The Peripheral" over "Pattern Recognition" if we're going with a Gibson book, but it's not my list.

I was trying to remember a cyberpunk book that i read in the 90's so i looked up: "best cyberpunk book" or something. Ready player one was high on tge liat so i gave up

Strong rec for Windup Girl. If you like that then I would also suggest The Nanotech Succession series by Linda Nagata

Thanks! I haven't read most of these.