Altered Carbon: Richard Morgan's Cyber-Punk Future “The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.” ― Richard K. Morgan, Altered CarbonIt takes something special for a book to keep me burning through the pages until 3 a.m. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is a helluva read. Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel, 2003Morgan is a wicked blend of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson. There is even a touch of Gene Roddenberry's various Star Trek series. But the beneficent Federation is replaced by a universe governed by the United Nations, a tough bunch, whose prime directive is to do what it takes to get what you want or think you need.Our protagonist/anti-hero--your choice, pushed to the forefront of the story is Takeshi Kovacs, raised off-world on Harlan's World, a colonized by the Japanese and East Europeans. Introduced to violence at a young age through gang participation, Kovacs is a natural for military service. And he is natural to become a U.N. Envoy, the best, and the most brutal in carrying out the U.N. "Protectorate's" directives.Set five hundred ,and counting, years in the future, science has mastered the art of defying the principle of you only go around this life once. No. You can grab all the gusto you'd like, time after time, through the development of Digital Human Forms called sleeves. Even the mind can be digitized and backed up in case something untoward occurs to your current self. The wealthier you are, the more of your selves you can keep in storage. Theoretically if you've got the money and the power, you could live forever. Those that choose to do so are called "Meths" by the younger and poorer citizens of Earth and the other off-world colonies.Now your first thought might be, why this is no dystopia. This is utopia!But there are a few problems with that. Imagine being married to the same person for three hundred years, and having all the money it takes to support the theory that variety is the spice of life. The preceding statement does not reflect the views or opinions of the reviewer. My wife reads these things. Got it? Enter Laurens Bancroft and his lovely wife Miriam. To say that they have become a bit jaded is more than a bit of understatement. Bancroft enjoys slumming in the myriad sex clubs available, from the lowest to the most exclusive. Miriam enjoys her own tête-à-têtes, but prefers much more tasteful surroundings.Bancroft is murdered, so he says, upon being re-sleeved in one of his copies. The Bay City Police Department rules it a suicide. Members of the department have little or no sympathy for Meths. They have better things to worry about.Consider this. Morgan writes: “You live that long, things start happening to you. You get too impressed with yourself. Ends up, you think you’re God. Suddenly the little people, thirty, maybe forty years old, well, they don’t really matter anymore. You’ve seen whole societies rise and fall, and you start to feel you’re standing outside it all, and none of it really matters to you. And maybe you’ll start snuffing those little people, just like picking daisies, if they get under your feet.” So it is that Bancroft hires Kovacs to investigate his murder. As he tells Kovacs, "If I had wanted to commit suicide I wouldn't be standing here talking to you." Maybe so. Maybe no.Not only do denizens of Morgan's world routinely resort to the F-Bomb in conversation, they enjoy engaging in the actual activity. Morgan includes enough gratuitous sex scenes to appeal to most prurient interests. Of course Miriam Bancroft seduces Kovacs not only through her perfect body but by the secretion of a sexually enhancing chemical from every pore of her body. Erectile dysfunction is NOT a problem in Morgan's world. Nor do Miriam and Kovacs end up in separate bath tubs. I've never understood that Cialis commercial anyway. Have you? Of course, Miriam would like to see Kovacs close the case, making her a prime suspect. But Morgan supplies us with a host of other likely suspects, whom I will not reveal for fear of disclosing too much of the plot.Let's just say this re-sleeving business is a huge money maker, along with virtual and actual prostitution a lucrative concern as well. There is little justice for those without money or power.Morgan intriguingly plots his novel around the question of when does science cross the line of morality and religion. Not every citizen wants to be re-sleeved, particularly those of the Catholic faith who see multiple lives as keeping them from the opportunity of ever getting to Heaven.At the heart of this twining and twisting plot is the question of Resolution No. 653, to be decided by the U.N. Protectorate. Can one opt out of being kept digitally stored and re-sleeved?Catholics have taken to having themselves tattooed with the equivalent of a do not resuscitate code. That proposition makes them likely targets for murder, especially when it comes to snuffing an unwilling prostitute.Winner of the 2003 Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel, Altered Carbon is an addictive page turner which should engage the lover of not only hard-boiled detective novels, but cyberpunk as well. If it's not on your to read shelf, add it.Now, just one thing about this Methuselah business...it would be nice to read forever.
One of the best action sequences in modern scifi:Sarah was turning her aim on the figures beyond the wall when the second commando of the night appeared braced in the kitchen doorway and hosed her away with his assault rifle.Still on my knees, I watched her die with chemical clarity. It all went so slowly it was like a video playback on frame advance. The commando kept his aim low, holding the Kalashnikov down against the hyper-rapid-fire recoil it was famous for. The bed went first, erupting into gouts of white goose down and ripped cloth, then Sarah, caught in the storm as she turned. I saw one leg turned to pulp below the knee, and then the body hits, bloody fistfuls of tissue torn out of her pale flanks as she fell through the curtain of fire.I reeled to my feet as the assault rifle stammered to a halt. Sarah had rolled over on her face, as if to hide the damage the shells had done to her, but I saw it all through veils of red anyway. I came out of the corner without conscious thought and the commando was too late to bring the Kalashnikov around. I slammed into him at waist height, blocked the gun, and knocked him back into the kitchen. The barrel of the rifle caught on the doorjamb, and he lost his grip. I heard the weapon clatter to the ground behind me as we hit the kitchen floor. With the speed and strength of the tetrameth, I scrambled astride him, batted aside one flailing arm, and seized his head in both hands. Then I smashed it against the tiles like a coconut.Under the mask, his eyes went suddenly unfocused. I lifted the head again and smashed it down again, feeling the skull give soggily with the impact. I ground down against the crunch, lifted and smashed again. There was a roaring in my ears like the maelstrom, and somewhere I could hear my own voice screaming obscenities. I was going for a fourth or fifth blow when something kicked me between the shoulder blades and splinters jumped magically out of the table leg in front of me. I felt the sting as two of them found homes in my face.For some reason the rage puddled abruptly out of me. I let go of the commando’s head and almost gently and was lifting one puzzled hand to the pain of the splinters in my cheek when I realized I had been shot, and that the bullet must have torn all the way through my chest and into the table leg. I looked down, dumbfounded, and saw the dark red stain inking its way out over my shirt. No doubt about it. An exit hole big enough to take a golf ball.With the realization came the pain. It felt as if someone had run a steel wool pipe cleaner briskly through my chest cavity. Almost thoughtfully, I reached up, found the hole, and plugged it with my two middle fingers. The fingertips scraped over the roughness of torn bone in the wound, and I felt something membranous throb against one of them. The bullet had missed my heart. I grunted and attempted to rise, but the grunt turned into a cough and I tasted blood on my tongue.“Don’t you move, motherfucker.”The yell came out of a young throat, badly distorted with shock. I hunched forward over my wound and looked back over my shoulder. Behind me in the doorway, a young man in a police uniform had both hands clasped around the pistol he had just shot me with. He was trembling visibly. I coughed again and turned back to the table.The Smith & Wesson was on eye level, gleaming silver, still where I had left it less than two minutes ago. Perhaps it was that, the scant shavings of time had been planed off since Sarah was alive and all was well, that drove me. Less than two minutes ago I could have picked up the gun; I’d even thought about it, so why not now? I gritted my teeth, pressed my fingers harder into the hole in my chest, and staggered upright. Blood spattered warmly against the back of my throat. I braced myself on the edge of the table with my free hand and looked back at the cop. I could feel my lips peeling back from the clenched teeth in something that was more a grin than a grimace.“Don’t make me do it, Kovacs.”I got myself a step closer to the table and leaned against it with my thighs, breath whistling through my teeth and bubbling in my throat. The Smith & Wesson gleamed like fool’s gold on the scarred wood. Out in the Reach power lashed down from an orbital and lit the kitchen in tones of blue. I could hear the maelstrom calling.“I said don’t--”I closed my eyes and clawed the gun off the table.Yes, you read that. The author slowed down time and described bullet trajectories. Fucking awesome is right.While the relationship between movies and books has always been symbiotic, it was never balanced. Action scenes are a purely cinematic contribution, and the results here are spectacular. Paired with a protagonist like Kovacs, what can go wrong? Well, just about everything, actually.
What do You think about Altered Carbon (2006)?
Folks have been recommending I read Richard Morgan for years. But I've got a to-read stack longer than my arm, and my reading time is rather precious. It's a big risk to try a longish book by an author I've never read before. In a nutshell. I loved it. About halfway through the book I looked it up online and saw that it won a bunch of awards. It deserves them. I don't read as much Sci-fi as I used to, but I'm no newbie. The world is unique and fresh. Good characters. Interesting mystery. Yeah. Good stuff. I'll be reading his other books shortly.
—Patrick
I desperately want to like this book more than I do. I picked it up for the first time well over a year ago, probably closer to 2 years ago. I set the book aside, for a variety of reasons, and came back to it 4 times before finally finishing. None of this bodes well for a final rating.I love the world Morgan created but I hate every one of his characters. A 4 star rating for the world. A 2 star rating for the characters. My experience with cyberpunk is limited, something which I would like to expand upon. This book is not a prime example of what I am looking for. The characters were forced, shallow, and stereotyped, which I find amusing considering Morgan tried so hard to avoid stereotypes. He tried so hard that he accomplished the opposite of what he wanted. As for loving the world in this book, what I really meant to say is that I loved the idea of being able to shift bodies, of near immortality, and the effect of such a scenario on society. Morgan's opinion of the effect of such technology on mankind is bleak, to say the least. The Envoys, their training and such, was interesting and full of potential which Morgan did not fully realize. I feel the same with the book in general. I can not help but compare this book to Snowcrash, considering my limited experience in the cyberpunk genre. Snowcrash was effortless while Altered Carbon was forced. Snowcrash was slick and cool. Carbon was the equivalent of someone trying to be who they are not, dressing up in clothes that are not their own and attempting to fit in. Carbon just did not click with me. Other readers will love this book, especially readers who do not need a strong connection to the characters. As a side note, I am tempted to rate even lower based on the terrible sex scenes. I could handle the torture over the sex.
—Kathryn
A fun and fast-paced thrill ride, almost impossible for me to put down. Picture a hard-boiled noir, the solitary, weary worldly detective, blunted emotional skills, stepping on toes as he investigates. Merge that plot and character with innovative science fiction–digitized personalities that can be downloaded into new bodies with the right reasons or enough cash, and the result is eminently readable.***********************Full review posted at:http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/0...ANDhttp://carols.booklikes.com/post/7738...-
—Carol.
