HARD_SCI-FI takes on HIGH_FINANCE at the black edge of WALL_STREET... where capital emerges from human yearning and declares it MUST GO ON.

The ANALYST is a speculator in the ticker market, a picker of common stocks who makes a farcical bet and loses too much money... even the firm with the name on the door. The regular investors are no longer interested, so a new backer must be found - a continental gentleman named LEFEVRE.

Lefevre offers a generous salary, and full carry too. But his contract contains strange stipulations. Moreover, he insists on calling himself a quantitative, claiming he MANAGES HIS MONEY USING MATH ALONE. Lefevre's methods have already made him a fortune. What use could the analyst be to a man like him?

"Michael Lewis meets China Mieville" in this radical work of SCI_FINANCE - part econ-blog con-theory, part boiler-room gas.