Altered Carbon

Your body is not who you are. Source: Here

"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."

With the Netflix series upcoming this Friday, I thought I'd finally stop putting off this book like I've been doing for the past year or so and I can't believe I hadn't read it sooner. Even as someone who doesn't really read a lot of cyberpunk (the most I've delved into the genre was Neuromancer) I was thoroughly entertained with the world displayed in Altered Carbon and the noir-ish feel about it all.

Written by Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon is set in the twenty-fifth century, where technological advances have rendered death a mere inconvenience. Human consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve"), with murder referred to as Organic Damage. Those wealthy and powerful enough to sleeve themselves into new bodies are referred to as Meths, short for the long-lived Biblical figure Methuselah; everyone else is put "on stack" until a new sleeve becomes available.

Still with me? It's a fair amount to take in all at once, and the way Morgan handles it had me in doubt over this being his first published novel.The ease with which he introduces these new concepts and builds this strange new world had me impressed and eager to read. And the strength of the ideas alone is enough to make me recommend this book: how does humanity change when death is no longer the threat it was? What happens when those in power can no longer die? If people can sleeve into all sorts of new bodies, are racial/sexual divides as present? The possibilities of this world are endless.

The main storyline concerns protagonist Takeshi Kovacs, newly resleeved in a new body to investigate the murder of Laurens Bancroft, a Meth whose death has been dismissed by the police as suicide. The search takes Kovacs into the dark heart of Bay City to find out just why everyone around him seems to be so insistent on letting this case lie. Honestly, while I appreciate this story as the spine supporting Morgan's worldbuilding, I didn't really find myself invested in it as much as I'd have liked to, though maybe that's just personal preference talking.

A lot of comparisons have been made to Blade Runner, though I'd argue Altered Carbon sits rather at the other end of the spectrum. Both ask pertinent questions about what it means to be human, but where Blade Runner is cold and mechanical, Altered Carbon is sensual and electric, teeming with sensuality - the various virtual whorehouses will speak to that. And the sex scenes. Let's just say the number 69 remains pretty popular in the future. It's full of life in a way that Blade Runner isn't.

Not only that but there is action aplenty to keep you occupied. A stunning display of well-written violence should keep readers entertained whilst still mulling over the implications of the ideas presented. There's a good enough balance between the two that I didn't find the book overly indulgent in its descriptions of fight scenes, though there may be one or two scenes that some readers just will not click with - the virtual torture scene comes to mind.

On the whole I'm sort of kicking myself for not having read this one earlier. If you're a fan of cyberpunk, detective stories or just want some good action, Altered Carbon is the read for you.

Oh, and give the Netflix series some support this Friday: