Altered Carbon: Netflix Altered Carbon book 1 - Softcover

Morgan, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575073225 ISBN 13: 9780575073227

Publisher: Gollancz, 2002

Synopsis

Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.
But some things never change. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he really shouldn¿t be surprised. Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.
For a first-time SF writer to be so surely in command of narrative and technology, so brilliant at world-building, so able to write such purely readable and enjoyable SF adventure I simply extraordinary.

About this title

Review:

Richard Morgan's debut SF thriller Altered Carbon isn't for the faint-hearted. Its noir private-eye investigation races through extreme violence, hideously imaginative torture and many high-tech firefights.

In 2411, death is not forever. Afterward, they can read your personality from an implanted "cortical stack" and upload you into a new body--at a price. Hero Kovacs has worn many bodies on different worlds as a former member of the UN Envoy Corps, programmed killers to a man. Now the incredibly rich Bancroft brings him to Earth to investigate a killing... of Bancroft himself, restored from his digital backup and rejecting the police theory of suicide.

Half the vice-lords of 25th-century San Francisco are soon chasing Kovacs with futuristic surveillance, drugs and weaponry. Virtual-reality interrogation means they can torture you to death, and then start again. There's a bleak slave trade in rented or confiscated bodies--and Kovacs finds his current borrowed face is all too well known to both police and underworld.

Ultraviolent set-pieces follow, sprinkled with philosophical asides such as this reflection on a stungun: "It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped around me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death."

There are some James-Bondian implausibilities, such as Kovacs's final confrontation with the villain he's sworn to kill: rather than shooting and leaving fast, he discusses the plot for 10 pages until... but that would be telling. This is high-tension SF action, hard to put down--though squeamish readers may shut their eyes rather frequently. --David Langford

Review:

'Brilliant. Unputdownable. And lots of similar blurb-writing clichés, only in this case all true. I loved it.' -- Adam Roberts

'Carbon-black noir with drive and wit, a tight plot and a back-story that leaves the reader wanting a sequel...' -- KEN MACLEOD

'Hits the floor running and then starts to accelerate. For a first novel it is an astonishing piece of work.' -- Peter F. Hamilton

About this edition

• Publisher: Gollancz
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0575073225
• ISBN 13: 9780575073227
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416