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Altered Carbon
It would be easy to describe this book as "cyberpunk meets noir," but that would be a disservice to the reader, the author and the book.
Although this book is set in a future that is seems to be heavily influenced by the punk movement, with computers, hackers, weapons, and leather, this is no superficial, cartoon world setting for a quick romp through cyberspace. There is a depth and texture here that promises, and delivers, as a setting for a novel that could end up as influential as Vinge's True Names, or Stephenson's Snow Crash or Spillane's Mike Hammer.
The main technological trapping of this setting is the ability to digitize, store and transport human consciousness. Peoples' consciousnesses can, and are, digitized and loaded out of and into their bodies on a regular basis. The state uses this to punish criminals by storing their minds "in the stack" (digital prison) and the wealthy and powerful can have themselves "backed up" like yesterday's spreadsheets. Interstellar travel is via "digitized human freight." Human bodies ("sleeves") can be rented, bought and sold, to provide containers for these digitized minds. And this is just the background.
This is also a hardboiled detective thriller, easily the equal to Chandler or Hammett in both plot and characterization. There is a complex plot, the de rigueur dames and guns, but also some important themes that are surprising for the genre. The plot is never formulaic, with a depth and enough unexpected twists and turns to keep the reader guessing well into the last chapter.
The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is no simple hardboiled detective; he's a cashiered UN "Envoy," qualified to do anything from holding a beach head or planning a military invasion, to taking over a government from within. People with this training are barred from public office and high government positions on most settled worlds. And Kovacs has been offered a job he can't refuse by one of the richest men in twenty planets: "Kovacs, find out who killed me."
On a deeper level, this novel asks some real hard questions, that get to the heart of what it means to be human. If you can digitize, back up and restore people, what is the meaning of death? Is the "soul" digitized, or just your memories? Does it matter? When bodies can be rented and exchanged, just what is "identity"? When people can buy new bodies and live for centuries, amassing power and wealth, how will that affect their humanity? Will they become more than human, or less? How will this effect human society? These issues are all raised subtly, this is no sermonizing sociology text masquerading as a novel.
But Morgan's novel remains at its heart a well-crafted detective story. No matter how corrupt the society, no matter how powerful the rich, in the end, justice comes from the smoking barrel of a hired gun, working for some fast cash, plus expenses. This books tries, and succeeds, on so many levels, that can only hope that this will be just the first novel from this new author. Somewhere, Chandler and Hammett are saying, "Ya' done good, kid. Now kiss the dame and get outta here."
(As I was finishing this review, I discovered that Morgan's second novel, Broken Angels, which continues Kovacs exploits, has just been published by Gollancz in the UK. I'll gladly pay international shipping to get my hands on this second book as soon as possible.)
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He means 'punk as in cyberpunk.
I've just finished Altered Carbon and would highly recommend it. However Morgan's second book is already out (in the UK): Broken Angels. I've already got mine imported from the UK... I guess the reviewer is a whole book behind.
Anyways, have a look at Amazon.co.uk
Pohl's ten or Heechee novels deal with digitized consciousness. One alien race keeps them in a pouch on the body as instant advisors- sort of like Dune's Other Memory. In other Pohl novels humans get digitized into the computer and find an alternative digital universe, not unlike the Matrix. Digitized humans can live at electronic speeds, or much faster than in the flesh.
Copying is very much illegal, but is an integral plot point. The rich & powerful & kinky use it to good effect.
But it's not central to the story: it's a detective story. I think you'd enjoy it.
Well, considering Richard Morgan is British, I am fairly sure you can find his book in your favourite local WHSmiths or even the sequel
Kiln People has similar background and is also a very engaging book about privacy, what it is to be human, and intellectual property rights. Brin does an excellent job a putting in humor as well.
While I have not read Morgan's Altered Carbon I know that I will because of the fun I had reading Kiln People and thinking about the philosophical questions present in Kiln People.
While on the topic one of the reasons that I enjoy's Brin's work so much is that he does a superb job of creating a believeable society and political structure given an amazing scientific advancement and its supporting technology or if something in physics was altered a little. Read the Practice Effect for an example of the latter.
Cheers and thanks for the review. I now have something else to read since I finished Harry Potter 5 so quickly.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
I just ordered it from amazon.ca
http://www.computercrowsnest.com/sfnews/newsd0202. htm
and It's worth your time.
Getting beyond the thumbnail film-noir meets cyberpunk, the book does cover some interesting questions.
Backing up humans is covered, but so is religious opposition to the process. Copying humans is likewise considered, as is modifying the flesh in unusual ways ( picture a very hot chick. now picture a very hot chick who secretes XTC when she's turned on. ) and some of the more usual ones ( installing the consiousness of a male in a female body ).
But dont think this is some preachy isnt-the-future-cool diatribe. Its complex plot is, as others have said, worthy of Dashel or Hammet with a similar man-against-system feel.
Overall, it gave me the same feel that Neuromancer gave me when I read it; a future darkly lit in a form that stands outside traditional genres.
A Human Right
I agree -- Altered Carbon is an amazing book. I couldn't put it down and read it in two sittings.
So when I heard that Broken Angels was out, I bought it ASAP (it's been available for a while here in Canada). you cannot imagine my disappointment at this classic textbook example of sophomore jinx! As much as I loved the first book, I hated the second and it took all I could muster to even finish it. Whereas the first book was tight, focused, gripping and exciting, the second is the exact opposite; slow, plodding and irretrievably dull.
Hopefully he'll find his muse again in future installments.
Or, should the site get /.'d, the relavent bit is:
A Human Right
David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself" is an excellent and amusing SF time-travel novel in which the protagonist really does go fuck himself. Repeatedly. Bisexually. Woohoo!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
That was 'I Will Fear No Evil', not one of Heinlein's better novels (Nothing he wrote from the mid-70's on was all that good. In fact, I'd ted to somewhat avoid everything he wrote after about 1970)
Heinlein was what would now be called a NeoCon, but was then called a Liberal. He was an individualist, and very strong in those views, although he wasn't averse to the benefits of Socialism, he just believed in individuals, rather than groups (Especially ethnic ones, Manny's reaction to racism in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is typical for Heinlein.)
And Starship Troopers was about Individual Responsibility and the why's and wherefore's of Civic Virtue, not rampant militarism, the Military was just the setting he chose, for good reason, to show the conversion of a spoiled rich kid into a responsible individual. John Ringo and David Weber do much the same with Roger in the 'March To' series, although Roger starts off as a much less worthwhile individual than Juan Rico, who's a nice, if spoiled, kid.
Do not mix up the movie (Which was apparently an intentional mockery of the book, demonstarting that veerhoeven couldn't see what Heinlein was talking about) with the Book, for ST.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
There's a short story by Heinlein called All You Zombies, in which the main character is his own mother, father, child, lover, recruiter, bartender, etc. He fucks himself, gives birth to himself, seduces himself, and basically everyone important in his life is him.