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Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Richard K. Morgan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 13,942 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Takeshi Kovacs Novels

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN EXCITING SERIES FROM NETFLIX • The shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning in this “tour de force of genre-bending, a brilliantly realized exercise in science fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.

Book 1 of 3

Takeshi Kovacs Novels
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Del Rey
Publication date

2003
January 1
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2.0 MB
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“The human eye is a wonderful device,” I quoted from Poems and Other Prevarications absently. “With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.”
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Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done.
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“There are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic.”
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From the Publisher

Now an exciting series from Netflix. The shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Compelling . . . immensely entertaining . . . [Richard] Morgan’s writing is vivid and his plotting inventive.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Ferociously readable.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating trip . . . Pure high-octane science fiction mixes with the classic noir private-eye tale.”—Orlando Sentinel

“Gritty and vivid . . . looks as if we have another interstellar hero on our hands.”—USA Today

“This seamless marriage of hardcore cyberpunk and hard-boiled detective tale is an astonishing first novel.”—London Times

“An astonishing piece of work . . . A wonderful SF idea . . . Altered Carbon hits the floor running and then starts to accelerate. Intriguing and inventive in equal proportions and refuses to let go until the last page.”—Peter Hamilton

“An exciting sf/crime hybrid, with an intricate (but always plausible) plot, a powerful noir atmosphere, and enough explosive action to satisfy the most die-hard thriller fan.”—SF Site

“An exhilarating and glossy adventure . . . What makes Altered Carbon a winner is the quality of Morgan’s prose. For every piece of John Woo action there is a stunning piece of reflective description, a compelling sense of place, and abundant 24-karat witticisms.”—SFX Magazine

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Two hours before dawn I sat in the peeling kitchen and smoked one of Sarah's cigarettes, listening to the maelstrom and waiting. Millsport had long since put itself to bed, but out in the Reach currents were still snagging on the shoals, and the sound came ashore to prowl the empty streets. There was a fine mist drifting in from the whirlpool, falling on the city like sheets of muslin and fogging the kitchen windows.

Chemically alert, I inventoried the hardware on the scarred wooden table
for the fiftieth time that night. Sarah's Heckler and Koch shard pistol
glinted dully at me in the low light, the butt gaping open for its clip.
It was an assassin's weapon, compact and utterly silent. The magazines
lay next to it. She had wrapped insulating tape around each one to
distinguish the ammunition: green for sleep, black for the spider-venom
load. Most of the clips were black-wrapped. Sarah had used up a lot of
green on the security guards at Gemini Biosys last night.

My own contributions were less subtle: the big silver Smith & Wesson,
and the four remaining hallucinogen grenades. The thin crimson line
around each canister seemed to sparkle slightly, as if it was about to
detach itself from the metal casing and float up to join the curlicues
of smoke ribboning off my cigarette. Shift and slide of altered
significants, the side effect of the tetrameth I'd scored that afternoon
down at the wharf. I don't usually smoke when I'm straight, but for some
reason the tet always triggers the urge.

Against the distant roar of the maelstrom I heard it. The hurrying strop
of rotor blades on the fabric of the night.

I stubbed out the cigarette, mildly unimpressed with myself, and went
through to the bedroom. Sarah was sleeping, an assembly of low-frequency
sine curves beneath the single sheet. A raven sweep of hair covered her
face and one long-fingered hand trailed over the side of the bed. As I
stood looking at her the night outside split. One of Harlan's World's
orbital guardians test-firing into the Reach. Thunder from the concussed
sky rolled in to rattle the windows. The woman in the bed stirred and
swept the hair out of her eyes. The liquid crystal gaze found me and
locked on.

"What're you looking at?" Voice husky with the residue of sleep. I
smiled a little.

"Don't give me that shit. Tell me what you're looking at."

"Just looking. It's time to go."

She lifted her head and picked up the sound of the helicopter. The sleep
slid away from her face, and she sat up in bed.

"Where's the 'ware?"

It was a corps joke. I smiled the way you do when you see an old friend
and pointed to the case in the corner of the room.

"Get my gun for me."

"Yes, ma'am. Black or green?"

"Black. I trust these scumbags about as far as a clingfilm condom." In
the kitchen, I loaded up the shard pistol, cast a glance at my own
weapon and left it lying there. Instead I scooped up one of the H
grenades and took it back in my other hand. I paused in the doorway to
the bedroom and weighed the two pieces of hardware in each palm as if I
was trying to decide which was the heavier.

"A little something with your phallic substitute, ma'am?"

Sarah looked up from beneath the hanging sickle of black hair over her
fore-head. She was in the midst of pulling a pair of long woolen socks
up over the sheen of her thighs.

"Yours is the one with the long barrel, Tak."

"Size isn't--"

We both heard it at the same time. A metallic double clack from the
corridor outside. Our eyes met across the room, and for a quarter second
I saw my own shock mirrored there. Then I was tossing the loaded shard
gun to her. She put up one long-fingered hand and took it out of the air
just as the whole of the bed-room wall caved in in thunder. The blast
knocked me back into a corner and onto the floor.

They must have located us in the apartment with body-heat sensors, then
mined the whole wall with limpets. Taking no chances this time. The
commando who came through the ruined wall was stocky and insect-eyed in
full gas attack rig, hefting a snub-barreled Kalashnikov in gloved
hands.

Ears ringing, still on the floor, I flung the H grenade up at him. It
was un-fused, useless in any case against the gas mask, but he didn't
have time to identify the device as it spun at him. He batted it off the
breech of his Kalashnikov and stumbled back, eyes wide behind the glass
panels of the mask.

"Fire in the hole."

Sarah was down on the floor beside the bed, arms wrapped around her head
and sheltered from the blast. She heard the shout, and in the seconds
the bluff had bought us she popped up again, shard gun outflung. Beyond
the wall I could see figures huddled against the expected grenade blast.
I heard the mosquito whine of monomolecular splinters across the room as
she put three shots into the lead commando. They shredded invisibly
through the attack suit and into the flesh beneath. He made a noise like
someone straining to lift something heavy as the spider venom sank its
claws into his nervous system. I grinned and started to get up.

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 hit, 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 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 that 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 & Wes-son 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 mael-strom calling.

"I said don't--"

I closed my eyes and clawed the gun off the table.

CHAPTER ONE

Coming back from the dead can be rough.

In the Envoy Corps they teach you to let go before storage. Stick it in
neutral and float. It's the first lesson and the trainers drill it into
you from day one. Hard-eyed Virginia Vidaura, dancer's body poised
inside the shapeless corps coveralls as she paced in front of us in the
induction room. Don't worry about anything, she said, and you'll be
ready for it. A decade later, I met her again in a holding pen at the
New Kanagawa Justice Facility. She was going down for eighty to a
century; excessively armed robbery and organic damage. The last thing
she said to me when they walked her out of the cell was don't worry,
kid, they'll store it. Then she bent her head to light a cigarette, drew
the smoke hard into lungs she no longer gave a damn about, and set off
down the corridor as if to a tedious briefing. From the narrow angle of
vision afforded me by the cell gate, I watched the pride in that walk
and I whispered the words to myself like a mantra.

Don't worry, they'll store it. It was a superbly double-edged piece of
street wisdom. Bleak faith in the efficiency of the penal system, and a
clue to the elusive state of mind required to steer you past the rocks
of psychosis. Whatever you feel, whatever you're thinking, whatever you
are when they store you, that's what you'll be when you come out. With
states of high anxiety, that can be a problem. So you let go. Stick it
in neutral. Disengage and float.

If you have time.

I came thrashing up out of the tank, one hand plastered across my chest
searching for the wounds, the other clutching at a nonexistent weapon.
The weight hit me like a hammer, and I collapsed back into the flotation
gel. I flailed with my arms, caught one elbow painfully on the side of
the tank and gasped. Gobbets of gel poured into my mouth and down my
throat. I snapped my mouth shut and got a hold on the hatch coaming, but
the stuff was everywhere. In my eyes, burning my nose and throat, and
slippery under my fingers. The weight was forcing my grip on the hatch
loose, sitting on my chest like a high-g maneuver, pressing me down into
the gel. My body heaved violently in the confines of the tank. Flotation
gel? I was drowning.

Abruptly, there was a strong grip on my arm and I was hauled coughing
into an upright position. At about the same time I was working out there
were no wounds in my chest someone wiped a towel roughly across my face
and I could see. I decided to save that pleasure for later and
concentrated on getting the contents of the tank out of my nose and
throat. For about half a minute I stayed sitting, head down, coughing up
the gel and trying to work out why everything weighed so much.

"So much for training." It was a hard, male voice, the sort that
habitually hangs around justice facilities. "What did they teach you in
the Envoys anyway, Kovacs?"

That was when I had it. On Harlan's World, Kovacs is quite a common
name. Everyone knows how to pronounce it. This guy didn't. He was
speaking a stretched form of the Amanglic they use on the World, but
even allowing for that, he was mangling the name badly, and the ending
came out with a hard k instead of the Slavic ch.

And everything was too heavy.

The realization came through my fogged perceptions like a brick through
frosted plate glass.

Offworld.

Somewhere along the line, they'd taken Takeshi Kovacs (D.H.), and they'd
freighted him. And since Harlan's World was the only habitable biosphere
in the Glimmer system, that meant a stellar-range needlecast to--

Where?

I looked up. Harsh neon tubes set in a concrete roof. I was sitting in
the opened hatch of a dull metal cylinder, looking for all the world
like an ancient aviator who'd forgotten to dress before climbing aboard
his biplane. The cylinder was one of a row of about twenty backed up
against the wall, opposite a heavy steel door, which was closed. The was
chilly and the walls unpainted. Give them their due, on Harlan's World
at least the air resleeving rooms are decked out in pastel colors and
the attendants are pretty. After all you're supposed to have paid your
debt to society. The least they can do is give you a sunny start to your
new life.

Sunny wasn't in the vocabulary of the figure before me. About two meters
tall, he looked as if he'd made his living wrestling swamp panthers
before the present career opportunity presented itself. Musculature
bulged on his chest and arms like body armor, and the head above it had
hair cropped close to the skull, revealing a long scar like a lightning
strike down to the left ear. He was dressed in a loose black garment
with epaulettes and a diskette logo on the breast. His eyes matched the
garment and watched me with hardened calm. Having helped me sit up, he
had stepped back out of arm's reach, as per the manual. He'd been doing
this a long time.

I pressed one nostril closed and snorted tank gel out of the other.

"Want to tell me where I am? Itemize my rights, something like that?"

"Kovacs, right now you don't have any rights."

I looked up and saw that a grim smile had stitched itself across his
face. I shrugged and snorted the other nostril clean.

"Want to tell me where I am?"

He hesitated a moment, glanced up at the neon-barred roof as if to
ascertain the information for himself before he passed it on, and then
mirrored my shrug.

"Sure. Why not? You're in Bay City, pal. Bay City, Earth." The grimace
of a smile came back. "Home of the Human Race. Please enjoy your stay on
this most ancient of civilized worlds. Ta-dada-dah."

"Don't give up the day job," I told him soberly. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

From Publishers Weekly

This fast-paced, densely textured, impressive first novel is an intriguing hybrid of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Norman Spinrad's Deus X. In the 25th century, it's difficult to die a final death. Humans are issued a cortical stack, implanted into their bodies, into which consciousness is "digitized" and from which-unless the stack is hopelessly damaged-their consciousness can be downloaded ("resleeved") with its memory intact, into a new body. While the Vatican is trying to make resleeving (at least of Catholics) illegal, centuries-old aristocrat Laurens Bancroft brings Takeshi Kovacs (an Envoy, a specially trained soldier used to being resleeved and trained to soak up clues from new environments) to Earth, where Kovacs is resleeved into a cop's body to investigate Bancroft's first mysterious, stack-damaging death. To solve the case, Kovacs must destroy his former Envoy enemies; outwit Bancroft's seductive, wily wife; dabble in United Nations politics; trust an AI that projects itself in the form of Jimi Hendrix; and deal with his growing physical and emotional attachment to Kristin Ortega, the police lieutenant who used to love the body he's been given. Kovacs rockets from the seediest hellholes on Earth, through virtual reality torture, into several gory firefights, and on to some exotic sexual escapades. Morgan's 25th-century Earth is convincing, while the questions he poses about how much Self is tied to body chemistry and how the rich believe themselves above the law are especially timely.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

About the Author

Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award. Morgan sold the movie rights for Altered Carbon to Joel Silver and Warner Bros. He lives in Scotland.

Todd McLaren was involved in radio for more than twenty years in cities on both coasts. He left broadcasting for a full-time career in voice-overs, where he has been heard on more than 5,000 TV and radio commercials, as well as TV promos, narrations for documentaries on such networks as A&E and the History Channel, and films. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

From Booklist

In a society in which death has been rendered practically obsolete, suicide and murder take on different significances. After a particularly brutal offing, former UN envoy Takeshi Kovacs finds himself "resleeved"--that is, his consciousness has been put in a new body--and hired as a private investigator by Laurens Bancroft, one of twenty-fifth-century society's old rich in Bay City (formerly San Francisco). Bancroft claims he was murdered, but the police say it was a suicide. After Kovacs gets hit at his hotel within hours of being resleeved, he sees the possibility that Bancroft was, in fact, murdered, and that someone wants to keep it very hush-hush. As he investigates, he uncovers a far-reaching conspiracy with ties to the most unsavory characters in his generally unsavory military and criminal past. This far-future hard-boiled detective story is a lovely virtual-reality romp distinguished by a conspiracy whose strands have the potential to generate several successful sequels, which is just what its publicity promises. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000FBFMZ2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; 1st edition (January 1, 2003)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 2003
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2037 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0345457684

Best Sellers Rank: #46,501 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #139 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #188 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #419 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)

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4.4 13,942 ratings

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Richard K. Morgan

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Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of The Dark Defiles, The Cold Commands, The Steel Remains, Black Man (published in the US as Thirteen), Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2003.

The movie rights to Altered Carbon were optioned by Joel Silver and Warner Bros on publication, and the book remained in feature film development until 2015. It is now being turned into a 10 episode Netflix series by Skydance Media. Market Forces, was also optioned to Warner Bros, before it was even published, and it won the John W. Campbell Award in 2005. Black Man won the Arthur C .Clarke Award in 2007 and is currently under movie option to Straight Up films. The Steel Remains won the Gaylactic Spectrum award in 2010, and its sequel, The Cold Commands, was listed in both Kirkus Reviews‘ and NPR’s best Science Fiction / Fantasy books of the Year. The concluding volume, The Dark Defiles, is out now!

Richard is a fluent Spanish speaker and has lived and worked in Madrid, Istanbul, Ankara, London and Glasgow, as well as travelling extensively in the Americas, Africa and Australia. He now lives back in Norfolk in the UK with his Spanish wife Virginia and son Daniel, about five miles away from where he grew up. A bit odd, that, but he’s dealing with it.

Photo by Roberta F. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Er Jwee Chiek 余瑞傑

A supreme masterpiece. A thrilling and unforgetable hardboiled science fiction

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2020

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Altered Carbon (AC) is a science fiction presented by author Richard Morgan in the hardboiled genre. With the protagonist narrating the story in the first voice, it was like reading a Raymond Chandler detective fiction with a science fiction spin to it.

It has familiar elements we would expect from hardboiled fictions, like gangsters, violence, torture, cops, whorehouses, low life, heroes, victims and selfless gallantry etc. Nevertheless, Morgan’s dystopian world has ageless core elements of humanity and virtues we are familiar with. Earth in the futuristic world of AC has also, the UN council and the rule of law governing it. People fear death and craved longevity beyond the normal lifespan and eternal youth. AC's humans, male and female, have insatiable lust for sex. A Christian religion forbidding the extension of life after the subject suffers permanent organic damage (death). A corrupted and class-divided society where the rich and powerful elites have more options at their disposals than the non-rich. In addition and not in the least is the basic human need to love and or loved by someone was played out by the major characters. Such familiarities helped me, a reader in the 21st century, connect with AC. Author Richard Morgan used uncanny intelligence, wittiness, humorous stereotypes, one-liner quips and sharp retorts in dialogues or narration by Takeshi, our hero, to convey AC's rich and the fascinating core theme of our intrepid hero would solve the whodunit mystery and unveiling the motives behind it. Exhibits of human vanity and the sad lives of the elites who have lived 300 centuries and beyond further enriched AC make the reader ponder about prospect of living forever may bring more pain than joy. Ultimately, the audience was not short-changed of a triumphant climax of the small people outsmarting and violently turning the tables on the rich and powerful immortal elites.
Language wise, there were neither long convoluted sentences nor heavy chapters with too many pages and certainly no redundancy. With the brevity of words and compactness of plot, the author conveyed his tale powerfully with colourful descriptions of the myriad of characters, which irresistibly tickled and amused me all the way.

Like most novels, especially sci-fi genre, the reader must learn new jargon for technology and acronyms. Thankfully, Kindle has the x-ray function, which is very useful for cross-checking unfamiliar terms, names and locations. The landscape of San Francisco Bay have evolved into a dystopian world of flying vehicles and blinding neon lights, holographic virtual reality of oversized humans, not unlike the world of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner. However, SF Bridge in red have survived and the frequent rain were helpful in linking readers to the beautiful wet and windy SF we know today.
Interestingly in AC, humans have already colonized many habitable planets light years away from mother earth. Interstellar travel light years apart was unimaginably easy and quick since it was possible to digitize the entire human psychic and soul for rapid transmission through space electronically. Very Star Trek like indeed. Back to reality, colonizing other habitable planets (if there are indeed others besides earth) cannot be more pressing today with the alarming deterioration of mother earth by the day. Even in the unlikely chance that we discover another habitable planet sometime in the future, and we have the technology to build a mother ship to take us there, the privileged rich and powerful, like in AC, will always be in front of the queue for a place in the mother ship.

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GregReviewsSciFi

Good book. Must read if you plan to watch the show.

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2017

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If you are a long time reader of my reviews, you will note I like to explain how I came to acquire and read the book. This review of Altered Carbon is no different.

I read many books, mostly fiction. Of the fiction 99% science fiction. A friend told me he was taking a break from non-fiction and reading Altered Carbon. Based on his interests I immediately assumed the book was about guns, spies, hunting, fishing or some other topic men more manly than I read. He said no this is a science fiction book transforming into a TV show by Netflix. After my initial shock of him knowing something Sci-Fi related I didn’t, I decided to order the book for my Kindle.

Altered Carbon is in the future. It is unclear when exactly, my best guess is 23 something. There are references in the book about dates and ages of people. However, I could not find any reference to the exact date. It bothers me a bit to be honest. When you read chapter one “Arrival” if I were Kovacs I would ask where am I and what is the date?

Who is Kovacs? Takeshi Kovacs is the protagonist of the story if such a thing exists in this book. He is a human born and raised in a colony world. Very simple character backstory of being poor having bad parents and joining a military-like organization to get his life together. The organization that he joins is interesting and adds to the story throughout the whole book.

Most good science fiction books have some future technology which is fun to read about and enhances the story (think light-saber or transporter). Altered Carbons “killer tech” is a device called the sleeve. The sleeve stores a person’s consciousness in a digital format. With the right equipment, consciousness can move from one sleeve to another. The sleeve offers everything from immortality to easy transportation in a digital format to other worlds. The only requirement is there is storage or another sleeve to be downloaded into on the other side.

This concept of a digital consciousness is not new. There are many books and movies which tackle the topic. I don’t recall any other book that used the concept of a sleeve. At least for me, the concept was unique and very cool.

Altered Carbon is probably best described as a futurist detective novel. Kovacs is brought to earth to solve a crime the police do not think happened. Without giving any spoilers pay close attention to the details. Almost every scene in the book is related to another scene, and the details are important. The book is not Hobbit or Game of Thrones complex however it does wear on you after awhile.

My one criticism is the book was a little complex and slow at times. I would bet Netflix will rewrite and reimage a few spots to avoid filler episodes. To underscore my point when I finished the book and reached back out to my friend he was about 50% complete and struggling to continue. My advice to him and you is to power through it. It will get better and worse and then finish strong.

Since Altered Carbon is becoming a show, I decided to look up the actors. What I found was a little shocking. There are a few characters not in the book mainly Poe, Captain Tanaka, and Okulov. These unknown characters seem to have starring roles with 6 or 7 episodes equal or exceeding Takeshi Kovacs. Very strange. Kristin Ortega is only granted four episodes. In my opinion, Ortega is the balance which makes the book good. I’ll reserve judgment on the actors chosen most of whom I have never heard of. I always struggle with books made into movies or shows because the actors never fit my visualization of the characters.

Do I recommend reading the book? Yes.

Altered carbon is not the best book I’ve read but it is very good. Plus, it will be fun when Netflix changes it all and we can all complain about it.

Oh, and according to the Netflix trailer, the year is 2384...

Greg @ Kafflab

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Yash

What. A. Ride

Reviewed in India on November 9, 2021

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I was going to spend some time and craft this review, hoping I could correctly represent the brilliance of my experience. And then I realised - I'm too excited and whatever I write will never live up to Altered Carbon.

I haven't watched the show. And I'm not a massive sci-fi buff. I belong to the 7th circle of hell that holds all the people who've never watched Blade Runner. But ever since the hype of Cyberpunk 2077, I've had an urge for neon lights and urban dissolution.

If (in your mind) you want to create a world of night city corruption and holographic lust - read Altered Carbon.
If you want to live through the eyes of a man whose will has been conditioned through centuries of war, yet whose heart is relentlessly romantic- read Altered Carbon.
If you want to live as:
Max Payne
The Darkness
Johnny Silverhand
live as complete old testament vengeance,
read Altered Carbon.

I can tell you the same things you’d probably read on the back of the book.
Based in a future where new bodies (or sleeves) can be worn as easily as clothing, a former UN military envoy (Takeshi Kovacs) is nonconsensually sleeved on 25th century Earth, hired to investigate the murder of the vampirically old Laurens Bancroft.

But beyond that,
it's a story about the little guy proving we deserve better than the contemptuous disdain of the upper class.
It's a story about a world where good people have to do bad things for good endings.
It's a story with incredible dialogue, characters, themes, and narration.

This is a story that will turn you into a page-eater. You'll keep going and you'll have to mentally remind yourself to slow down, flip back, and just taste every line, every word, again.

There's no good way to close such an emotive review. So I'm going to let the book do it for me. The following quotes are just a taste of the raw power, that was within those unassuming 400+ pages:

1)
‘The personal, as everyone’s so f*****G fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, f**k them. Make it personal.’ - Quellcrist Falconer

2)
‘When they ask how I died, tell them: still angry.’
- Takeshi Kovacs

3)
Irene: Why? Why are you doing this?
Takeshi: ‘Because I want there to be something clean at the end of all this. Something I can feel good about.’

For a moment she went on staring at me. Then she closed the small gap between us and flung her arms around me with a cry that sent the nearest gulls wheeling up off the sand in alarm. I felt a trickle of tears smeared onto the side of my face, but she was laughing at the same time. I folded my arms round her in return and held her. And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea.

4)
Kristin: Go on thinking like that, nothing’ll ever change for you.
Takeshi: Kristin, nothing ever does change.

I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside.

You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves. You’ll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don’t get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they’ll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That’s the truth, Kristin. It’s been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago and from what I read in the history books, it’s never been any different. Better get used to it.

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Connor Kinsella

Mind-bending future fun

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2018

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Okay let’s get the big question out of the way: book or television series? Well I’m probably in the majority when I say: both. Do both, and don’t worry too much about which order. I took the ‘Netflix > Book’ option. Not for any reason other than ignorance. I watched the show, thoroughly enjoyed it and really enjoyed talking about it before I’d even realised it was based on a book.

But comparisons between the two are actually pretty meaningless. The main characters are the same. The general story arc is the same. And that’s about it. The TV show has plenty enough plot for a TV show but far too much for a book. The book has plenty enough going on for a book, but wouldn't sustain the vast epic Netflix pulled off so brilliantly. So it’s the same but different, but no less enjoyable for that.

This is a story (okay, the first of a trilogy of stories) where the big central idea is the extremely weird relationship between human cognition and physical form. Everyone’s entire mind backed up onto a sort of black box flight recorder. You can kill the body but one’s cortical stack may or may not be killed with it. You can end being stored for tens if not hundreds of years, or slipped into another body (‘sleeve’) to carry on as you were, albeit taking quite some time to recognise yourself in the mirror. And then there’s cloning, double-sleeving and backing up one’s stack onto a sort of orbiting DropBox for minds. Phew. But if the best sci-fi relied solely on mind-bending ideas we’d have classic stuff emerging from every time a few dopeheads got hold of some A-grade. What Morgan does is to draw a great cast of characters in and out of this future weirdness. In a society where humans can be sleeved in bodies of any gender, race, age or all points in-between there’s plenty of room to explore how this might work, and how it might not. There’s good people, bad people and lots of in-betweens.

But it’s in Takeshi Kovacs that Richard Morgan has managed to create perhaps the best anti-hero I can remember since Tony Soprano. He’s part damaged scumbag, part guardian angel. He is certainly (I can say with only a slight degree of embarrassment) someone I’d really like to be. Super intelligent, virtually invincible, utterly fearless and with a PhD in street smart even on a planet he’s never visited before. As a 54-year old with greying hair and generous waistline I’d take all of that even without the killer one-liners and slightly skewed moral compass, which always seems to point in the right direction albeit with a few twists and turns along the way. He’s a very human human being.

The book also has a much fuller exploration (compared with the Netflix show) of a future universe where human beings have colonised the galaxy and have some incredibly sophisticated tech at their disposal, and yet often live in poverty and despair. It’s not quite a pan-galactic Christmas Carol but the themes are definitely there: the rich and powerful dumping all over the poor even in a far-future we might have hoped could be egalitarian and right-on. Not according to Altered carbon it ain’t.

Negative points? There are a few. The sex scenes are neither frequent not gratuitous and are fundamental to the plot. But they’re written in the style of the grubby porn stories schoolboys used to pore over at the back of the bus, and then only when the pictures had got either too boring or a bit er, stained. Yes, pre-internet readers did used to bookmark the sexy bits in Jackie Collins or Harold Robbins, but even way back in 2002 books as good as this simply didn't need squelchy porn-lite.

And while other reviewers were thrilled by the numerous fight scenes, it was all I could do not to imagine the 60’s Batman TV show. If you can’t remember that far back, then ‘KAPOW!’ and ‘BIFF!’ should refresh the memory. Then again I’m speaking as a Star Wars fan who Fast Forwards at the merest hint of a light sabre. But the various firefights and fist fights aren't entirely gratuitous and do serve a function in propelling the plot and showing the reader how tough a tough guy Kovacs really is.

So there we go. Is Altered Carbon a work of 5-star literary genius? No. Is it an enjoyably mind-bending read with great characters and an interesting plot? Absolutely. Might even make a good TV show one day.

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Atra

A justifiably award winning novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2015

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This is one of those books that I've been meaning to get around to reading for ages (having won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2003) and now that I've finished it I can't wait to read the second of Richard K. Morgan's trio of Takeshi Kovacs novels! Many people seem to link Neal Asher's Agent Cormac series with Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs, and I can sort of see why, but the quality of Moragn's prose and characterisation beats seven hells out of its contemporary (sorry Neal, I do still love the Cormac universe!)

Takeshi Kovacs is an arrogant sh*t. If you met him, you would most likely regret that day for the rest of your life (which might be terminally shortened henceforth.) He is violent, untrustworthy, impulsive, has very few - if any - morals and is utterly without any kind of personal boundaries. He is also a brilliantly realised and well written character, and it has been an absolute pleasure to read his POV. Kovacs (pronounced Koh-vach) does have his saving graces, he still retains a shred of human decency, a sense of justice and is not yet a complete psychopath. He can feel, love and care for other people, just not if they get in his way or commit a crime against him or somebody he cares for.

This novel is a fantastic debut by Morgan, in fact it is difficult to believe this is a first book. The plot is deep and well woven, and I was pleasantly surprised to find its ending, well, a surprise. Morgan doesn't hold back in terms of violence, language or sex. All three aspects are portrayed really quite explicitly, but, and perhaps most importantly, not gratuitously. If that's not your thing, or if you are easily offended, you might find some parts of the book uncomfortable. Thankfully, I very much like the explicit, and this book caters to my tastes very well indeed.

I won't go into any detail about the plot, the blurb on the back of the book is enough and I think expanding on it in a review spoils the read. Altered Carbon gets a full five stars from me, and makes it onto my favourites list. Awesome pie

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Pharmama

stimmig / nachdenklich machende Cyberpunk Detektivgeschichte

Reviewed in Germany on July 29, 2015

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Altered Carbon von Richard Morgan ist eine Cyberpunk Detektivgeschichte. Es geht um einen Selbstmord, der wahrscheinlich ein Mord ist … denn das Opfer glaubt nicht daran, dass er sich selbst umgebracht haben könnte … und holt deshalb den speziell ausgebildeten ehemaligen UN-Gesandten Takeshi Kovacs aus seiner elektronischen Verwahrung.

Tatsächlich wird der Hauptprotagonist (zu meiner nicht geringen Überraschung) schon im Prolog erschossen, nur um “kurz” darauf in einem anderen Körper wieder aufzuwachen … aber diese Verwirrung wirft einen direkt in die Realität einer zukünftigen Welt:

Eine Welt in der jeder Mensch einen Speicher in seinem Hirnstamm implantiert hat, der jegliche seiner Erfahrungen (und damit sein „ich“) aufzeichnet und den man herunterladen, über Millionen Kilometer zwischen Planeten verschicken kann, in andere Körper-„Hüllen“ laden oder auch für Jahre (oder Jahrhunderte) irgendwo in einem Speicher auf Eis legen kann. Wer genug Geld hat, kann mittels dieser Technologie praktisch ewig leben und das in jeweils neuen (geklonten, gezüchteten oder aufgemotzten) Körpern. Die meisten Menschen wählen jedoch – auch wenn sie via Versicherung genug Geld für einen weiteren Körper zusammengespart haben, weil sie jeweils das Altern bis zum Ende durchmachen müssen, diesen Weg nicht und lassen sich nach ein, zwei solchen Durchgängen in einem externen Speicher „ablegen“. Und nur noch gelegentlich für Familienzusammenkünfte zurückholen. Katholiken führen auch in der Zukunft nur ein Leben, da sie der Meinung sind, dass die Seele nicht so gespeichert werden kann und eine solche Wiederauferstehung deshalb Sünde ist.

Der „richtige Tod“ ist also nur mit der Zerstörung dieses Speichers im Hirnstamm möglich.

Dem Superreichen Bancroft, einem „Meth“ (Abkürzung für Methusalem), der schon über 350 Jahre auf der Erde ist, ist das fast wiederfahren … wenn er nicht einen automatischen Backup hätte. Nur fehlen ihm jetzt 48 Stunden und er will wissen, wer ihn umgebracht hat. Takeshi Kovacs wird aus seiner elektronischen Straf-Verwahrung wegen brutaler Gesetzesüberschreitungen von seinem Heimatplaneten Harlans World auf die ihm fremde Erde übertragen und für die Dauer des Auftrages Bancrofts Verantwortung unterstellt. Bei seiner Suche nach der Wahrheit hat er Hilfe von der Polizei,– speziell Kristin Ortega, zusätzlich kompliziert wird die Beziehung dadurch, dass Kovacs den nikotinsüchtigen Köper ihres Ex-Partners trägt, der momentan in elektronischer Verwahrung ist.

Auf der Suche nach der Wahrheit geht Kovacs nicht gerade zimperlich vor. Streckenweise ist das Buch nachgerade brutal – was sicherlich auch mit der dystopischen Umgebung zusammenhängt. Der Tod ist nicht mehr das, was er war. Das ändert einiges grundlegend. Ein Hotel, das eine künstliche Intelligenz ist, Folter in der virtuellen Welt, Low- und High-class Prostitution, Katholiken, die aufgrund ihrer Einstellung zu beliebten Mordopfern werden (die kommen nicht zurück um auszusagen) und mehr findet man in diesem Buch.

Das Buch ist durchweg spannend zu lesen und stimmig in der Wechselwirkung von Detektivarbeit und futuristischer Umwelt – ein Lesemuss für jeden SciFi Fan – der ein bisschen Gewalt nicht scheut.

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Juan Carlos Rito Manilla

Muy buena serie

Reviewed in Mexico on August 1, 2023

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Obviamente nada que ver con la serie pasa igual que en el libro y película de guerra mundial sin embargo aunque esta en ingles si dice las palabras sin censura una historia muy aparte se centra en los sleeves es lo que pude entender no me parece fantasioso me parece más un novela de detectives en realidad no me parece Cyberpunk me parece genial por el precio de $18.00mxn de ese entonces y porque toca temas taboo

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Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels Book 1) Kindle Edition

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