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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.)
You can purchase the Altered Carbon from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Well if we are to believe White Zombie, I'd say More Human Than Human:
If you can digitize and store, you can therefore copy. I wonder if the book goes into this possibility (or does it rule it out in some fashion, technical or otherwise). Also, it can also theoretically be "tweaked", and it would start to sound much like Blade Runner and fall into the, how do you know you are what you think you are category.
For my tastes though, such abilities are a bit too open ended (kinda like time travel), and its fine if it is just a portion (e.g. TT as a mode of transportation) vs central to the story.
A thought on futurist expectations and realities... a book just smacked down a movie. Bound and printed paper outstripped The Hulk on opening weekend for both. Between the proselytizing of digital media and ebooks (which appear to be failing) a sheaf of dead tree beat out the largest opening weekend grossing movie (not adjusted for inflation for .. er .. inflating hype purposes ;-) I think that's
a neat irony.
Did the butler do it? How about the Butler v5.021? A concept related to me back in astronomy (hence the space travel connection) was digitizing people and the prospect of making copies of them (religious ramifications sure to follow) How a person may fork and how they cope seems ripe for novel exploration
Last, no mention of Bladerunner and/or replicants?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There are few things as annoying as reading a book with a friggin' message, which is usually what I feel like I'm getting with a Micheal Crichton (watch out - genetics can be bad! Uh - oh - beware time travel in the wrong hands! Whoops!).
Now, I can deal with a theme, like what you get from watching a Miyazaki flick like "Spirited Away".
I've often felt that most technology (notice the word "most", not "all" - the jury is still out on the usefulness of gas chambers and "Boong-Ga Boong-Ga") is neither good or evil - it's all in how its used.
Like in this case. Is it wrong to download your personality into a computer or another body so you can live "forever"? Depends on the circumstances, and it looks like the author is letting humanity's response to it play out what's good and bad about it, and where it can be used and abused.
Anyway, sounds like an interesting book - I think I've seen it on PeanutPress.com, so maybe I'll have something else to read since I finished with Potter the day it came out
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's a twist on detective fiction. You're trying to solve a case--but you get extra chances. But every time around, the killer gets smarter, learns more about the victim...
Original or no, I might have to pick this one up. I need to read some new, good SF again. *sigh*
More questions the books raises:
1. If you can download your conscious into different bodies... how would you know if that gorgeous babe you're in bed with is really.... a babe? 2. Would it matter? 3. Would it finally be acceptable to ask your wife to get a new body for your birthday?
When people can buy new bodies and live for centuries, amassing power and wealth, how will that affect their humanity?
Well, for one thing, the people on Slashdot will bitch a lot about the 1000+ year copyright terms.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Gollancz also happens to be Pratchett's publisher. Seems to take an interest in some of the better fiction.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
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?
...etc...
:
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,
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
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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.
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
In the book the UN is much weaker than it would wish to appear, where the rich are considerably more powerful and influential and seemingly beyond the UN's grasp.
So if you're going to be naughty remember to be rich too.
http://www.computercrowsnest.com/sfnews/newsd0202. htm
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I flipped through this book in B&N recently, but thought it was too violent, which usually doesn't interest me. After reading your review, and a review at SF Site where the reviewer commented
"This is not usually my kind of book -- extreme violence and tough, wise-cracking detectives don't turn my crank. But Richard Morgan kept me reading. Some of the draw was sheer momentum -- the plot is complex, with much action and many marvelous twists -- but the real strength of Altered Carbon lies in the complex and subtle characterization, which takes Kovacs far beyond hard-boiled stereotypes."
I guess I'll have to give it a try...
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.
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....
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I would agree that it is a quality piece of work, very impressive for a first novel. My only issue with the book is the sex scenes. Of course I haven't finished it yet, so perhaps the level of detail in the few sex scenes does ultimately serve some purpose - but right now they seem completely pointless. The 2 pages of porno-esque description each of the sex scenes has taken up feels to me like it does nothing for the plot or tell me anything about the characters, not that the scenes shouldn't be there at all, I'm no prude - its just there was no reason to get into it so graphically. A minor problem really, I chalk it up to an easy first-time author mistake, or perhaps a miscalculation of what gives quality SF broad appeal ;)
That said, the rest of the book is great. The main character is funny without being over the top, and his background is pretty well fleshed out so that he feels like a real character with the flaws and self-awareness lacking in so much SF. The book is well paced, and the plot is (so far) interesting and sufficiently hard to predict to keep me suprised. The setting and technology is very well done, although this is not Hard SF, so details on how things work aren't very in-depth (although the low level descriptions given are plausible, particularly coming from the main character as they are in keeping with his knowledge level). It is definitely a very cyberpunk inspired book, and reminds me a little of Gibson's Sprawl setting, and the writing style sometimes feels Gibson-esque. Not that its an imitation of Gibson, or any other of the great cyberpunk authors, the author definitely has his own voice and vision.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of mystery, SF/cyberpunk, or action and am definitely looking forward to picking up the next book when it finally comes out in the US . Speaking of which, anyone know why all the quality SF comes out in the EU first? Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, etc. Sure they are all euro authors, but so what? Why can't they be published simultaneously here? Another observation, anyone noticing the emergence of a new school of British/Scottish SF in the past few years? Almost all the new quality SF authors seem to be from the UK these days.
...and I *liked* Carbon.
If you want something really good in the way of a shared-universe saga, check out John Courtenay Grimwood's Ashraf Bey stories, starting with "Pashazade" - alternate universe where the world wars didn't happen, the Ottoman Empire and Napoleonic French squabble over a very cyberpunk version of Alexandria. Deeper, more realistic and much funnier than AC. Warning for Xenophobic Americans - lots of Arabic culturte here (seen through a critical and wry eye, though).
I, too, can't read the name "Kovacs" without thinking of Watchmen.
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).
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Always left out is the vastly underrated John Varley and his amazing first novel, The Ophuichi Hotline. One of the first of this style of "Clone Mysteries" it sets the stage for the rest of his "Eight Worlds" universe which explores many of the issues the review says Morgan only touches on.
I'm curious to know if anyone's ever read both their work, and could compare.
Starship Troopers was indeed pro-military, but that was "the soldiers try to do a good job", not "the soldiers are the solution to every problem". In that novel, you were only a full citizen, with voting rights, after you had performed government service (which might or might not have been military). During your service you had no vote. So the government, which told the military what to do, had no active military people in it.
Note also that the heroes of Starship Troopers were the soldiers, not the generals.
Heinlein could easily have structured that society differently if he really were a "very right-wing" person. He could also have made it so that only military service got you the vote, or that the future society required universal military service of all people (like some countries do even today).
And you may feel that the Bugs were a thinly-veiled device to stand in for Communism, but I don't think so. A military novel needs to show the soldiers fighting someone and the Bugs made an interesting enemy. Besides, they raised an important theme: even though all of Earth was united under a peaceful government, it was not possible to disband the military; any society must always be prepared to defend itself.
You ought to read Expanded Universe sometime. There is a short essay in there (I think it was actually an introduction to one of the pieces) where Heinlein discussed ways to improve the government of America. One of his suggestions was to give the vote only to women. Another was to try out the solution in Twain's "The Curious Republic of Gondour".
Heinlein was more a libertarian than right-wing.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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
Broken Angels is pretty different to Altered Carbon, there's a bit less characterisation and a bit more 'action'. The plot is alittle less twisted. I enjoyed it just as much to be honest, I found it harder to put down, but it's not a classic. I'm probably going to read Altered Carbon again in a few months, but I doubt I'll ever read Broken Angels again.
:)
Still can't wait for the next one. Getting 're-sleeved' means that Kovach can play a fairly different kind of role in subsequent installments, I hope that the author plays on this bit more (Kovach does kill an awful lot of people