The Company Man

by Joe Clifford Faust

Andrew Birch's loyalty to Astradyne--the megacorporation replacing governments on Earth--is unfaltering until he realizes he has been used as a company pawn in a twisted plot and decides to strike back

Genres: Science Fiction

327 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Joe Clifford Faust is an American author best known for his seven science fiction novels primarily written during the 1980s and 1990s, including A Death of Honor, The Company Man, the Angel's Luck Trilogy (all published by Del Rey Books), and the satirical Pembroke Hall novels (published by Bantam Spectra). His novels are known for their tightly controlled plots and their sense of humor. Like many authors, he draws inspiration from previous and current occupations, including projectionist, record store clerk, radio announcer, sheriff's dispatcher, and advertising copywriter. He currently works in advertising, but keeps his hand in writing and through other creative projects such as occasional forays into cartooning and songwriting.

On February 16, 2011, Faust announced on his blog that he had created a publishing company called Thief Media as an organ to distribute his out-of-print novels in ebook formats. Releases are scheduled to begin in March 2011 with "A Death of Honor" and will include two previously unpublished novels, "The Mushroom Shift" and "Trust."

Reviews

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adequate dystopian thriller.

[Rogue-van (the Bookman) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Astradyne's leading snoop, Andrew Birch, was having a problem with jobs going awry. He had always been a faithful company man, but the company was not being faithful to him. What was going on? Corporate war had usually been on a very limited scale, so Birch hadn't been in much danger, but things were changing.

Faust's world controlled by companies instead of politicians or armies is a new twist. It's a new power game with agents like Birch faithful to a company instead of to a country or ethnic group. Trying to figure out the game and the players made this worth reading. (Profanity, Sexual situations. & Violence.)

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been waiting for the Kindle edition of this book for a long time. It finally came out, and I consumed it in record time. It was just as good as it was the first time I read it over two decades ago. Now that it is out again, you should too.