Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Jul 29, 2010 Jamie Collins rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, noir-crime

3.5 stars. This was a fun read, and the writing is quite good, especially for a first novel. It's a sci-fi hard-boiled detective story, set a few hundred years in the future where a person can store his consciousness in a "stack" in his skull, which can be downloaded into a new body as the need arises - and if he has the credit for it.

The idea of a portable consciousness isn't new, but the implications of it are handled well in this story. The world building is interesting, and I really liked th ...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Harold Ogle rated it liked it

Shelves: torture, sf, cyberpunk, detective, pa-library

A cyberpunk detective story, Altered Carbon is very much a future look at what would happen in the world of Voice of the Whirlwind two or three centuries down the line. I suspect that Morgan read Williams' great novel and thought "What would happen with that technology down the line?"

So he's come up with a good novel of his own, extending the ideas of "clone insurance." Essentially, one of the promises of cyberpunk is artificial intelligence and sentience, perfected to the level of being indisti A cyberpunk detective story, Altered Carbon is very much a future look at what would happen in the world of Voice of the Whirlwind two or three centuries down the line. I suspect that Morgan read Williams' great novel and thought "What would happen with that technology down the line?"

So he's come up with a good novel of his own, extending the ideas of "clone insurance." Essentially, one of the promises of cyberpunk is artificial intelligence and sentience, perfected to the level of being indistinguishable from a human (sort of a hyper-version of the Turing test). Assuming that level of software sophistication, why not then also assume that the human mind itself can be mapped to software? Walter Jon Williams then extended that further, by imagining that that software could then be interchangeable between bodies. It leads to a simulated immortality, as memory and ego of a person doesn't have to die with the body...they are just moved to a new one. In Altered Carbon, Morgan imagines an interesting case where interstellar travel is no faster than what the Theory of Relativity allows, but interstellar communication somehow happens instantaneously. That means that people can travel from one world to another, as long as they have bodies to receive their software (memory/ego) at the receiving end (in that, it's a bit like Piers Anthony's Cluster series, too). Using that technology, the human rulers (here called the Protectorate) have created a force of elite warrior soldiers who are shuttled from body to body in order to enforce the Protectorate's will throughout the far-flung reaches of the human empire. These are called the Envoy.

Our protagonist, Polish-Japanese Takeshi Kovacs, is an ex-street urchin and gang member who went on to become an Envoy soldier and was then discharged from the service. Takeshi now works as a mercenary, doing various odd jobs throughout the galaxy that require his specialized skills. In Altered Carbon (*), Takeshi is hired as a detective to figure out why a wealthy industrialist on Earth was killed. Appropriately enough for a detective novel, Takeshi is never once referred to by his given name. Even his most trusted confidantes and intimates always, always refer to him as "Kovacs." It's Dashiell Hammett in space! Except...not really in space, as all the action takes place on Earth. But he came from space, and he could go back!

Really, the detective and cyberpunk genres should intersect more often, as they have so much in common. Wise-cracking femme fatales? Check. Frequent intoxication? Check. Waking up in strange places without any memory of how you got there? Yup. Gangsters, thugs, corruption, politics, torture, and a trail of dead bodies? Yeah, the list of set dressings for the two genres pretty much completely overlap. They're perfect for each other! Cyberpunk usually involves some kind of complicated heist or swindle, whereas detective novels are usually about uncovering some kind of complicated heist or swindle, so if anything, it's surprising that not every cyberpunk story is a detective story.

I liked Altered Carbon a great deal, despite its frequent exposure to base motives and even worse behaviors (torture features pretty prominently). I'll probably read more of the "Kovacs novels." Just with a bit of a break to insert some levity and light into my reading experience.

* - Can I just say that Altered Carbon is one of the worst book titles I've ever encountered? It somehow manages to both sound like an organic chemistry textbook and at the same time be completely forgettable. Many, many times while reading this book I would start to tell someone about what I was reading, and then be completely unable to remember the absolutely lame title. Seriously. That happened at least a dozen times. And that could happen so many times because the title of a book apparently has a pretty profound impact on how I read it, which surprises me. I enjoyed this book, every time I read from it, but then I'd put it down and not pick it up for days and days, because of the title. I'm surprised and dismayed to realize this about myself, but this suggests that if the title doesn't grab me, the book is going to have a hard time maintaining my attention, even if I otherwise enjoy the book! Ugh. ...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Lasairfiona rated it really liked it

Shelves: iown

Great book. This is a great detective novel where a guy is trying to solve something and gets in way deeper than he expected. There is some really disturbing imagery in here so be warned.

It's funny though, I was just talking to a person who wasn't a fan of sci fi. I asked them why? Sci fi has many of the same plots that "regular" fiction does it is just a different setting. Of course, sci fi is uniquely situated to deal with issues that could not possibly come up in a regular fiction book, in th ...more

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Dec 24, 2016 emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: cw-body-horror, adventure-action-survival, sci-fi, mystery-and-crime, sci-fi-tech-robots-ai, 2016, cw-copaganda

This has been on my list for awhile, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. It's a cyberpunk mystery in the vein of Neuromancer - good futuristic worldbuilding, a good twisty whodunit, lots of fun with tech and the virtual space. There's a weird tension between the (frankly awesome) number of female characters, and the (frankly gross) objectifying way the narrator looks at / thinks about some of them - I couldn't decide if it was meant to be an icky tendency of the character's, or if the autho ...more

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Jan 16, 2008 Joshua rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-and-fantasy

I had high hopes for this novel, hearing all the buzz it was receiving for winning the Philip K Dick award for best novel in 2003. While it was a good enough quasi-cyberpunk novel, it wasn't told exceptionally well. This being Richard Morgan's first novel, there were some plot inconstancies and dragging, but for a first novel these are to be expected.
Altered Carbon is set in a futuristic world where "real" death has all but been erased allowing people to copy their minds and transport them int ...more

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Jun 18, 2009 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

Altered Carbon is a detective story set in the future. I keep trying to come up with ways to describe it, but it's not working out. Let's just say the future is quite different and the people who run the universe are quite uncaring and maybe crazy. ...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Bryan457 rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, action-adventure, crime-mystery-detective, antihero, immortals, artificial-intelligence

An excellent blend of Cyberpunk, detective and action. The in-depth exploration of the whole concept of re-sleeving will keep me thinking about this book for a long time.

In keeping with most cyberpunk that I have read, the story was very dark with some pretty graphic sex and violence. It was grim enough to keep it from being a truly enjoyable book for me.

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