Richard Morgan on IO9

One of my favourite authors and all round good eggs Richard Morgan, gives a fascinating interview over on SF site IO9. If you've read some of Richard's work before it won't surprise you to know that he touches on sensitive subjects like morality, race, religion and other areas of contention (Richard has a gift for being able to make comments on heavyweight subjects while still delivering high octane action), as when he refers to the reception of his attack on the rampant free market in Market Forces:

"The book was really written as a critique not so much of the systems but of the mindset of this kind of boorish American businessman asshole machismo. I didn't really think I was saying anything spectacularly unusual. I thought anybody who looked at would say, "Oh. Yeah, that's right." I ran into an awful lot of people for whom market forces are a kind of religious faith. I hate to caricature, but I do think American culture has a faith problem in the sense that there's much more of a willingness on that side of the Atlantic to take things on faith, and just accept stuff.and believe in something wholeheartedly.

In Europe people just seem to be a lot more cynical about these things, whatever it may be, if it's religion or politics or whatever. And yet it would appear there are a lot of people for whom free markets are tantamount to a kind of religious faith. And by writing the book I'd stomped on that as if I had written a viciously anti-Christian satire. That may be it, I don't know. It may be that it was a book in which it's hard to sympathize with everybody because the characters are all fairly unpleasant."