Thirteen: Previously published as BLACK MAN

Richard Morgan

Sep 2008 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

Action packed, thought provoking and thoroughly enjoyable read. Keeps you thinking and trying to keep up with the action. Worth reading.

A slow start snowballing in to a frentic crescendo based in a surprisingly believable future. Fantastic in the best way possible.

This book was recommended to me by the book store owner when I told him I loved Neuromancer by Gibson. Loved it.

About the author

Richard Morgan was, until his writing career took off, a tutor at Strathclyde University in the English Language Teaching division. He has travelled widely and lived in Spain and Istanbul. He is a fluent Spanish speaker. Winner of the Athur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell and Philip K. Dick Awards his books are published around the world. He lives in Norwich with his family.