Altered Carbon

tep-sdsc writes "Richard Morgan has a problem. His first novel, Altered Carbon, will be a tough act to follow. It is set in a future world that could rival Heinlein's Future History and Niven's Known Space. There's enough material here for a career, not just a (great) first novel." OK, so you know he likes it -- now read on for the rest of Tom's review. Altered Carbon author Richard Morgan pages 534 publisher Del Rey (US) rating Excellent reviewer Tom Perrine ISBN 0345457684 summary A future beyond death, through personality transplantation.

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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Comments

Decoupling mind and body

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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?

That subject is a recurrent question in the Culture series of SF novels by Ian M. Banks : in the Culture, people's mind states are regularly backed-up, people change bodies, can be "restored" in younger bodies after death, ...etc...

Banks portrays the Culture society as bored, its people always seeking thrills in ultra-dangerous activities, joining the Culture's secret services sections called Contact and Special Circumstances usually because it adds spice to life. He also describes people who voluntarily engage in dangerous activities without being backed-up, or let themselves grow old and die naturally, and generally describes quite well the choices those people make in a Culture where death, poverty and suffering are banished.

Read Banks, you'll be glad you did. Some Culture novels (not in order) :

Excession
The player of games
Consider Phlebas
Look to windward

Re:I assume it touches on Hacking

[LeoDV]

If minds have become data files that can be backed up, transferred and used, then it means they can also be broken into, edited and altered. So I wonder if the book goes into that possibility.

No it's not, but....

[stoolpigeon]

that doesn't mean he might not bring some new thoughts to the basic issues. This boils down to basic questions that were being asked much longer than 30 years ago.

It is also a common theme in other art forms where reality need not be considered- like film.

What is interesting to me is that all these formats cannot use the current situation as it limits the ability to play with what defines sentience. It seems always not too far off that humans will be able to 'bottle' their essence or some facsimile thereof. Yet it does not happen. Some of my favorite stuff to deal with these questions appears in Ghost in the Shell, and the Reality Dysfunction books.

For now we are stuck with humans being in the bodies they have for better or worse. I think much of the allure of these stories lies in the fact that many people are quite discontented with that- for many reasons. (mortality, obesity, weakness, etc.)

But all this rambling to tell you- yeah- there is nothing new under the sun.

Does it have Heinlein's extreme right-wing view?

[egg troll]

That's what I really disliked about Heinlein: He was very right-wing. Starship Troopers was basically a pro-military propaganda piece (if you read it next time, replace "communist" or "russian" with "bugs" and see how spooky it is.) While I certainly can't begrudge someone their viewpoint or say they can't write how they feel, I just couldn't enjoy Heinlein because of it.

But that's just my opinion....

Re:Does it have Heinlein's extreme right-wing view

[wytcld]

So let's ignore Citizen of the Galaxy and Stranger in a Strange Land and just focus on Starship Troopers with the idea that only a "right-wing" nut could be in favor of exterminating hive societies like Nazi Germany. We'll just ignore that the left-wing Ruskies were alongside us in that. We'll just rule out of bounds as politically incorrect the notion that nonhuman societies might only have a hive modality, and none of the redeming qualities the Germans, for instance, can show in other socio-historical phases.

We'll will, however, so as not to be entirely off-topic here, mention that Heinlein delt with the consequences of brain transfer to another body (in a late novel that's so marginally readable I can't remember the title - executive with rare blood type ends up in secretary's body, thus involving Heinlein in his normal - not right-wing I think - fantasizing about people who happen to be women but are every bit as brilliant and capable as his men).