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Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1)

4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 · rating details · 19,022 ratings · 1,220 reviews

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 do...more

Paperback, Gollancz Future Classics Edition, 470 pages

Published 2007 by Victor Gollancz (first published 2002)

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Apr 29, 2013 Megan Baxter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book took forever to read. This is not a remark on its readability or how much I enjoyed it - stuff just kept getting in the way. Books kept bumping it off the list of three books I was currently reading - once because a book came in from the library that had a long line of holds behind it, so I had to read it quickly, and once because it came around to being my turn to moderate a discussion in a group here on Goodreads, and I felt I should, you know, read the book I was moderating the disc...more This book took forever to read. This is not a remark on its readability or how much I enjoyed it - stuff just kept getting in the way. Books kept bumping it off the list of three books I was currently reading - once because a book came in from the library that had a long line of holds behind it, so I had to read it quickly, and once because it came around to being my turn to moderate a discussion in a group here on Goodreads, and I felt I should, you know, read the book I was moderating the discussion about.

So, through no fault of its own Altered Carbon languished in limbo there for a while.

But I'm finally done it, and yeah, that was a damn fine book.

It's science fiction noir, and Morgan has a nice touch of both noir phrasing and overly-complicated noir plotting. I really didn't see the intricacies of the story until they were laid out, but it never worried me. I enjoyed being plunged into the confusing world that Takeshi Kovacs wakes up in, with little more information than he had.

Takeshi Kovacs was arrested in a bust. The sentence? Being put "on stack" - to have his downloaded personality put on hold for a sentence of up to 100 years, while someone else gets to use his body to be "resleeved" - to get back corporeality after dying in an accident, or being released from a sentence of their own. Or just for kicks, for the rich, a spare body to wear to fashionable occasions.

Resleeving is the core of this novel, the ways in which it could be exploited, who might be doing the exploiting, the disorientation of waking up in a body you don't know, the ways you might trip over the body's former occupant.

Kovacs finds himself resleeved on another planet - Earth - his time and body bought and paid for by a local rich man who can't believe he committed suicide, and wants Kovacs to get to the bottom of it. Kovacs follows this trail of bodies, treasured, used, and discarded down dark alleys and into sleazy joints, negotiating his new body as he tries to negotiate an entirely foreign world.

The mystery is quite satisfying. But it is the world Morgan creates here, the ethical, religious, and practical considerations of a world where it is very hard for death to be final, and bodies can be disposable. Life is still valuable, but what carries it around might not be.

Crossposted at Smorgasbook (less)

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Feb 06, 2011 Simeon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

One of the best action sequences in modern scifi:

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 in...more One of the best action sequences in modern scifi:

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 hits, 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 and 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 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 & Wesson 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 maelstrom calling.

“I said don’t--”

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

Yes, you read that. The author slowed down time and described bullet trajectories. Fucking awesome is right.

While the relationship between movies and books has always been symbiotic, it was never balanced. Action scenes are a purely cinematic contribution, and the results here are spectacular. Paired with a protagonist like Kovacs, what can go wrong? Well, just about everything, actually. (less)

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Jan 04, 2013 Tfitoby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-as-night, sci-fi

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blurb: 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 m...more

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Jul 21, 2008 Sandi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: The Non-Squeamish

Shelves: sci-fi, 2008

Wow. It’s no wonder Richard K. Morgan became such a phenomenon in the science fiction world so quickly. His first novel, “Altered Carbon” is so well crafted that it bears no hints of being a first novel. His imagination and story telling is absolutely amazing. Although it is absolutely full of graphic violence and has a few X-rated sex scenes, every part is so well written, it all fits. This book should have completely offended me. I can’t stand gratuitous sex and violence. But, the way Morgan w...more Wow. It’s no wonder Richard K. Morgan became such a phenomenon in the science fiction world so quickly. His first novel, “Altered Carbon” is so well crafted that it bears no hints of being a first novel. His imagination and story telling is absolutely amazing. Although it is absolutely full of graphic violence and has a few X-rated sex scenes, every part is so well written, it all fits. This book should have completely offended me. I can’t stand gratuitous sex and violence. But, the way Morgan writes it, the sex and violence come off as being necessary to the story and the characters. I don’t think I’ve ever run across such plausible characters and actions. The plot is a standard noir detective thriller, but it’s so well done that the mystery remains a mystery until the very end.

One thing Morgan handles very well is his technology. He really goes into the various implications of a transhuman world where people can upload their thoughts, memories and personalities to different bodies (sleeves), depending on their ability to afford the costs. The truly rich can afford to live for hundreds of years, switching to young versions of themselves when their bodies get too old for their tastes. Poor people just get the consciousnesses (known as stacks) stored until someone is will to pay the price to get them reactivated in a new sleeve. The quality of one’s sleeve is an indication of their wealth. Without ever going into lecture mode, Morgan shows us how nearly every aspect of this transhuman society works.

To keep my conscience clear, I will state very strongly that this is at least R-rated material. A few scenes are X-rated. Some readers may be very turn-off by the brutality of “Altered Carbon.” It's also quite difficult to follow, with a lot of twists and turns in the plot. More than a few times, I found myself wondering where a certain character came from or how we found ourselves in a certain scene. If you can handle the violence, sex and complicated plot, it is an excellent read and well worth the time and effort.
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Feb 10, 2011 Dan Schwent rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, 2010

Takeshi Kovacs is killed on an another world and re-sleeved in Bay City in the body of a disgraced cop. His mission: find out who killed Laurens Bancroft, a Meth (short for Methusaleh) billionaire. Bancroft and is offering Kovacs his freedom as a reward. Only a lot of people don't want anyone to know why Bancroft killed himself. Can Kovacs get to the bottom of things before the demons in Bancroft's private life get him?

I bought this for a buck and it languished on my shelf for a couple years. Wa...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of detective fiction and fans of science fiction.

Shelves: sciencefiction

"Altered Carbon" is the first novel in Richard Morgan's "Takeshi Kovacs" series. It's a great book if you're a fan of the detective genre and science fiction. It hearkens back to the old hard-boiled Phillip Marlowe books by Raymond Chandler with a cyberpunk twist. It's very well done, intriguing, and a great read! 4 1/2 stars!

The Plot

In the world of Richard Morgan's future, a person can change bodies by downloading all of their memories from their old body and then uploading them to a new body....more

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Apr 13, 2012 Apatt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This book is legendary among cyberpunk fans, I do not really count myself among them as I have read too little from this sub-genre to qualify. However, it is very frequently recommended in the excellent PrintSF forum I frequent. A few years ago I went through a phase of reading crime fiction almost exclusively because I felt like a change from decades of reading sf/f. One of the best practitioners of crime fiction is Michael Connelly, whose most famous creation is detective Harry Bosch. If Mr. C...more This book is legendary among cyberpunk fans, I do not really count myself among them as I have read too little from this sub-genre to qualify. However, it is very frequently recommended in the excellent PrintSF forum I frequent. A few years ago I went through a phase of reading crime fiction almost exclusively because I felt like a change from decades of reading sf/f. One of the best practitioners of crime fiction is Michael Connelly, whose most famous creation is detective Harry Bosch. If Mr. Connelly had put Detective Bosch in space (and cyberspace) he may have ended up with something like Altered Carbon (if he is lucky).

Altered Carbon takes place in a universe where human personalities can be digitized and transfer to different bodies (called sleeves), artificial or natural but unoccupied. Takeshi Kovacs' consciousness was in storage when he suddenly finds himself in a stranger's body and tasked with solving a mystery for a millionaire whose life was recently restored from backup after he has apparently committed suicide. His backed up consciousness has no memory of this alleged suicide because it occurs after the backup was made and he insists that he is not the suicidal type.

The story is not difficult to get into due to its linear timeline and a single first-person narrative. It took me a while to warm up to the protagonist Kovacs because like most fictional hard boiled detectives he is pain in the nether regions until you get to know him. The other characters are interesting enough without leaving much of an impression, one exception being an AI character named after a legendary guitar hero.
Richard K. Morgan's prose seems more American than English, which surprised me a bit given that he is British, but the style goes with noir territory I suppose. The prose style is in the tradition of Raymond chandler / Dashiell Hammett. Visceral and lean with the occasional surprising passages of contemplative and even lyrical narration. The nature of "the self" and reality is thoughtfully ruminated upon.

I have read several reviews that mentioned that this book would make a great action film, one review even describes it as a Schwarzenegger film. This may well be the case if they cut out all the thoughtful elements and just concentrate on blowing shit up real good. I wonder how pleased the author would feel with that?

I would rate this novel at 4.6 stars, it does not quite reach the emotional core for me (though it is not far off), it falls just a little short in the poignancy department. Still, it is a fantastic sf book with plenty of food for thought and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone in search of an excellent sci-fi read.

Note: This book makes me question the "immortality by cloning" sf trope. The idea is understandable but somehow does not jibe with me. There is an interesting discussion of the idea here.

I just realised that I have not touched upon how virtual reality is cleverly used in the book as an interrogation tool, now I don't know where to discreetly fit it into the review!(less)

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May 12, 2013 Asher Turnaround rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

It's weird for me disliking a story so full of things I enjoy. Morgan goes out of his way to tackle compelling notions about life and morality at the intersection of technology in the distant future. He asks questions about the nature of what makes us human. He challenges the idea that memory and experience solely define us. The pages are practically bursting with genre favorites like: Cyborgs, gun-play, hovering vehicles, and bionically enhanced assassins. Assassins who can be transmitted from...more It's weird for me disliking a story so full of things I enjoy. Morgan goes out of his way to tackle compelling notions about life and morality at the intersection of technology in the distant future. He asks questions about the nature of what makes us human. He challenges the idea that memory and experience solely define us. The pages are practically bursting with genre favorites like: Cyborgs, gun-play, hovering vehicles, and bionically enhanced assassins. Assassins who can be transmitted from colonized world to colonized world in an instant, by the way. An army on the go that can be sleeved in flesh they’ve never worn to keep the peace. The story itself is set on earth a relic world, a shithole careening through space while humanity flourishes among the stars… I wanted to adore this book so much!

But wishing it doesn’t make it so, this book still sucks!

Written in the first person which is normally a turn off for me, Morgan is quick to exhibit exactly why I'm not a fan of this narrative style. From the unlikable inner longings of the main character, to the sex scenes that are more awkward and uncomfortable than lurid. Imagine having your mother overshare the details of your conception - it's like that. If this unfortunate pressing of the flesh happened only once in the story, I might have been able to overlook it…

It didn’t, so neither will I.

Morgan jumps from profoundly cool concepts, to silly tough guy posturing, but these scenes are equally poor in their execution. The main character is a tough guy, cussing and throwing his weight around, but it’s mostly caricature. Takeshi Kovachs comes off like an awkward teenager comes off like a punk, more content to simply fake it and hope no one takes notice, bullying his way from scene to scene through inertia alone.

Passable for a private dick in our distant past, but really, really stupid, for an intergalactic god stompingly badass member of the envoy core from the future.

There is a whole lot of intrigue in this book, and I still can’t put my finger on what it is all for. Nothing was really accomplished. Everyone is reprehensibly dirty and beyond pity or affection; their main purpose is as set dressing to prop up really cool concepts that are not integral to the narrative. Characters literally run around and around while their supporting cast - who are way cooler and decidedly more badass than Kovachs ever was by the way - drop like flies.

And in case I have undersold my dislike here, let me spell it out for you: This was a book that was as hard for me to get through as it was for me to like... and it had cyborgs!
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Oct 27, 2011 SubterraneanCatalyst ; I Will Always Read rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, amazing

I'd call this book a cyberpunk noir. I'm not going to bother summarizing the story since you've seen it in the book description and in all the other reviews.

I didn't know this was Morgan's first novel but now that I do, yes, of course I'm impressed. This was smartly written and tight. I thought it was the perfect marriage of introspection and action. It kept me guessing to the end which is rare for me.

Have to admit I think I enjoyed this book for my own fairly eccentric reasons:
- The Hendrix: I...more

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May 13, 2008 FicusFan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, re-read, science-fiction, read-2008, book-groups, read-5-08, cyber-punk, imortals

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
I first read this book back in 2004. I really loved it, and read the next book in the series, Broken Angels right away. I have re-read Altered Carbon for a RL book group and will go on and re-read Broken Angels too. My plan is to get up to speed on the story again so I can read the final book (for now ?) in the series, Woken Furies, for the first time. I got it from the UK back in 2005, but got side-tracked and never read it.

I loved the idea of 're-sleeving' hoping from one body to the next. Sev...more

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Mar 29, 2008 Kathy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, fiction

Hmmm...I can't remember why I picked up this book. I think I read about it on a friend's blog. I read most of it today and finished it off. But it was sort of painful at times -- the last 50 pages were sort of agony to read, but by that point, you just have to finish the damn thing.

Not spectacularly written, but hardly unusual for a book in this genre. It was interesting enough for me to plod through it, and at one point I enjoyed it briefly, but I thought it was full of logical flaws and jumps...more

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Mar 04, 2008 Steven Millar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. While not as grand in scope as the other two Kovacs novels (Broken Angels and Woken Furies) Altered Carbon serves as a perfect introduction to Morgans protagonist Takeshi Kovacs. Altered Carbon is a gritty fast paced sci-fi action/detective story set on a far future version of earth were death has became something of an inconvenience to those who can afford new bodies. Kovacs is contracted to investigate the death of Laurens Bancroft...more

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Jun 17, 2011 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Melissa by: Eric Torres

Nice! In trying to describe this to a co-worker, I came up with "sci-fi whodunnit." Laurens Bancroft is 300 years old & has just committed suicide, or at least that's what the police think. However, Laurens Bancroft is alive again, because a human's consciousness is now stored in tiny "stacks" in the back of their neck, and if you die you can just be uploaded into a new body, or "sleeve." He's sure he was murdered, so he hires Takeshi Kavocs to prove this. Kovacs is an Envoy, which basically...more

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May 26, 2011 Lightreads rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery, science-fiction

I have a really hard time with bodyswap. I will suspend my disbelief for unicorns first, let’s put it that way. It’s just that it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking science or magic, it does not make sense. Assuming there actually was some incorporeal you that could be lifted out of your body and popped into someone else (which I don’t assume, but we’ll come back to that), if you got popped into someone else’s body, you would not be you anymore. Because the whole thing is a fallacy, and there...more I have a really hard time with bodyswap. I will suspend my disbelief for unicorns first, let’s put it that way. It’s just that it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking science or magic, it does not make sense. Assuming there actually was some incorporeal you that could be lifted out of your body and popped into someone else (which I don’t assume, but we’ll come back to that), if you got popped into someone else’s body, you would not be you anymore. Because the whole thing is a fallacy, and there isn’t an incorporeal you that can be moved, because you are your brain. The two are indistinguishable. Anatomy is identity. Well, the pattern of electrical currents running through that anatomy is identity, but you get my meaning. And you can’t just swap physical brains, either, because brains don’t work in isolation, and they aren’t always in charge – there’s the adrenal system and the endocrine system and let’s not even get started on the sex hormones. And all these things are part of the youness of identity, that emotional centerpoint that says this is me, and makes decisions and feels things and remembers things.* So even assuming someone could isolate that pattern of electrical currents and extract it, trying to run it on someone else’s brain would be like me trying to run my iPhone software on my Blackberry.

This book is kind of about that. It’s a far future scifi noir mystery about a criminal brought to earth and “resleeved” in another man’s body for *gestures* reasons and stuff, and then he solves crime. And the book is partly about the dislocation of that, the dysmorphia of rapid transitions, and the way the biology of the new body leaves a residue of emotion for the new occupant. Our protagonist doesn’t just pick up the body’s smoking habit, but he also has an instantaneous, literally chemical awareness of the body’s lover.

But Morgan falls short for me. He hasn’t quite thought this stuff through, though to be fair he was writing before some of the more recent work on body identity issues came out. He could have sold me this book with its twisty mystery hook if he’d sold me on the technology. But his technology is basically just running personalities in bodies like software on hardware, and I don’t think he quite gets his teeth into it. So to me, it’s just bodyswap, even though he’s come up with some cool and plausible psychological consequences. I acknowledge this would not be a problem for, um, pretty much everyone else I know. And it is a cool book.

Huh, you know, I have finally figured out why Gender Identity Disorder and Body Integrity Identity Disorder and the dysmorphias – all the ways people feel that they do not fit in their skin, that this body is not “me” – are so fascinating. It’s because they offer the single counterfactual voice to the mounting evidence that our bodies are our thinking. Even if it proves only that sometimes the brain and the endocrine system can be wired to different places on the gender spectrum, it speaks to the resilience of self. Whereas the rest of the scientific literature is a flood of data informing us that “self” is whatever the body damn well tells it to be.

I think this is what this tremendous article is getting at, if elliptically, somewhere in the discussion of how we construct identity around the things are bodies want as a biological tick, and how some mental disorders with biological roots also have...cultural memes to spread themselves. (Seriously, read that, you will not forget it for a long time). Identity is a property of meat. It's how we explain what the meat is doing -- how the guy in the anecdote from the article thought his porn obsession was just "part of him" until his brain chemistry was altered and it went away, and suddenly it felt like a copulsion, an alien outside thing. But we haven’t even begun to deal with the fact that for some people, the identity that arises from meat knows the meat is the wrong gender. How the hell does it do that?

*And we are actually very bad at knowing what is us, anyway – there is increasingly overwhelming evidence that our impression of choice and volition is largely false, because the thing we think of as me is just the clueless frontman for the real thinking we have no access to. (less)

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Apr 21, 2013 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: hard-boiled cyberpunks, resleeved U.N. commandos, Jimi Hendrix in a hard drive

Shelves: science-fiction, audiobook, crime, cyberpunk, noir, artificial-intelligence

This was pretty good contemporary cyberpunk. Morgan doesn't have William Gibson's way with words, but his characters are more interesting and his pacing and action scenes are much better.

There is the potential for a space opera here - the world of Altered Carbon is a far future in which humans have spread to the stars, and the protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, was born on another planet, but this story takes place entirely on Earth, in "Bay City" (what used to be San Francisco). That and all the Japa...more This was pretty good contemporary cyberpunk. Morgan doesn't have William Gibson's way with words, but his characters are more interesting and his pacing and action scenes are much better.

There is the potential for a space opera here - the world of Altered Carbon is a far future in which humans have spread to the stars, and the protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, was born on another planet, but this story takes place entirely on Earth, in "Bay City" (what used to be San Francisco). That and all the Japanese names and yakuza and such seem to be conscious nods to Gibson.

Kovacs is your basic badass ex-commando killing machine with a tortured past. He used to work for the "Envoy Corps"; in this far future, the U.N. is apparently the interplanetary government and it trains super-soldiers as "Envoys" to go do all the usual killing and pacifying for what turns out to be corporate interests and rich people. Same as it ever was. Kovacs gets disillusioned and turns rogue, and the book opens with a criminal enterprise he and his girlfriend are running going very badly. This is how we are introduced to the most interesting technology in this world: "resleeving." Basically, human minds can now be digitized and transferred ("sleeved") in new bodies. People convicted of crimes can be sentenced to virtual "storage" — your mind goes into a data bank for some period of time (potentially centuries) and in the meantime, someone else can buy the right to walk around in your body. Mix this with artificial intelligences and virtual worlds and you can see the possibilities for cons, grand schemes, and cunning plans are enormous.

Kovacs winds up on Earth, freed from his virtual sentence following his botched enterprise in the prologue, because a very rich "Methuselah" (someone who's been resleeved repeatedly for hundreds of years) wants him to do a job for him. Laurens Bancroft died, violently, a few days ago, and upon being resleeved from his backup storage, he of course has no memory of what happened after his last backup. The police say either he killed himself or his wife killed him. Bancroft refuses to believe either scenario, and wants Kovacs to find out who actually blew his head off and why.

This is where Altered Carbon crosses cyberpunk with a hard-boiled detective novel. Kovacs has to go looking for clues, and of course runs into all sorts of people with conflicting interests all of whom threaten him or bribe him to do what they want. The way in which he eventually uncovers what's really going on, gets caught up in an extensive web and snagged on multiple hooks and conflicting obligations, was quite skillfully plotted. He eventually unleashes bloody vengeance as is typical for this sort of story, and of course he runs up against multiple dangerous dames with whom he has a lot of graphically and sometimes laughably-described sex.

If you are fond of the "hard-boiled lone wolf bangs babes and carves a swath of bloody vengeance" genre, then Altered Carbon is the book for you. The whole digitized humans angle contains no ideas that haven't been floating around in cyberpunk for decades now, and certainly other cyberpunk novels have been written with a noir feel to them, but this is the best of the lot I have read recently.

There were some authorial indulgences (the sex scenes, the Jimi Hendrix AI-run hotel, and a whole lot of prostitutes) which are characteristic of a freshman SF novel (though I kind of liked the Hendrix). But overall, this paid tribute to its predecessors while not being wholly derivative, and I enjoyed it quite a lot, and wouldn't mind seeing a little more extra-solar SF next time.(less)

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Feb 08, 2012 Ilona Andrews added it · review of another edition

Violent, strange, compelling noir SF set in the distant future, where people can be downloaded into bodies, which they call sleeves. You can be male or female. Some - richer - people live for a very long time, and one of them hires the protagonist to investigate his murder. (He had a back up download, apparently.)

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Jan 29, 2009 Nancy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: waste-of-trees, abandoned, sf-fantasy, library-books

I abandoned it after about 100 or so pages. I liked the future setting and the advances in technology that change the concept of life and death. Unfortunately, it read like a script for an action movie. Some good ideas, but too much senseless action and violence ruined it for me.

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Nov 28, 2009 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed Morgan's futuristic, hard-boiled cyber-noir and its intriguing usage of sleeves, physical bodies that host the transferable consciousness and memories of an individual—if the latter has enough money to afford the intended flesh and blood repository and is not dissuaded from a lengthier life by Catholic religious scruples. Morgan's recently re-sleeved protagonist Takeshi Kovacs fits the private detective bill to a tee: trained in the ways of state-of-the-art conflict; tough, cunning and...more

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Jul 19, 2010 Lady Danielle aka The Book Huntress rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of hardboiled science fiction mysteries

Shelves: futuristic, science-fiction, not-for-the-faint-of-heart, owned-copy, sci-fi-group-read-july-2010, noir-crime-mystery, tough-as-nails-heroes, antihero, very-dark-read, asian-hero-or-heroine, soldier-or-military, character-multi-ethnic-heritage, detective-private-eye-sleuth

With my sinus allergies kicking my butt, I don't have the energy to write a really long review, so I'll keep it simple. I thought this was an excellent book, though not really a comfortable book. I don't think this book is for everyone. The language is very coarse, to be honest. Liberal use of the worst word for women in written language is employed. It starts with a 'c' and ends with a 't', and I think you can fill in the blanks. I winced just about every time. Despite this, and the fact that t...more With my sinus allergies kicking my butt, I don't have the energy to write a really long review, so I'll keep it simple. I thought this was an excellent book, though not really a comfortable book. I don't think this book is for everyone. The language is very coarse, to be honest. Liberal use of the worst word for women in written language is employed. It starts with a 'c' and ends with a 't', and I think you can fill in the blanks. I winced just about every time. Despite this, and the fact that this story deals with prostitution and horrible abuse of women in a disturbingly intimate manner, I don't feel that Mr. Morgan showed misogynistic tendencies in his writing. In fact, some of the most strongest, most three-dimensional characters in this story were women, and each one was different. I particularly liked Ortega, and her relationship with Kovacs. Trepp was interesting, as well. Miriam was somewhat standard noir fair. You know, the bodacious vixen who also happens to be the wife of the victim, who seduces the PI? Yeah, that's in this book.

This book was fairly violent, although not quite what I'd call gratuitous. Not gratuitous in the sense that the whole book wasn't violent. But, yeah, there are some pretty in your face scenes. Let's just say I would be looking away on quite a few scenes if this was a movie. There's a fair amount of sex, too. I thought it was tasteful and well-written, despite all the nasty inferences to particularly 'icky' sexual practices. That was all off-scene, thankfully.

The worldbuilding was very good. The whole concept of sleeving (changing bodies), and stacking (digital storage of consciousness) was a bit disturbing for me. They have figured out the key to immortality in the 25th century, and that immortality is not a pretty one, at least to me. Bascially, if you have enough money, you can have your consciousness continually transferred to different bodies as the old ones wear out, or your present body is prematurely damaged. Let's just hope you do have the dough to spring for a new body. If not, well, I guess you get to hang out in a digital storage bank, for eternity. Yikes. I did like the tech, some aspects that made it clear this was a future setting, but not so much that I got bored. I did have some issues getting used to the vocabulary; but I soon fell into the stream of things.

This book gave me some things to think about. My feelings about what gives a person her or his identity. Is the soul what they are storing, or is it merely the consciousness? What happens to the soul? How can you be unique if you can download your consciousness into more than one body at a time? Mr. Morgan doesn't try to answer these questions, so I'm still pondering it, left to draw my own conclusions. In this future world of Earth, the Catholics definitely don't agree with digital storage of consciousness, and they fight it. Unfortunately, that makes Catholics a particular target for people who don't have respect for human life.

That was another theme this book touched on. There are some people (powerful ones) who don't seem to value human life; since, well, you can just buy a new body when the old one is not working anymore. And people who are not worth anything in society, they are simply disposable. One of the major bad guys comes right out and says this. It made me think that even today, when we don't get replacement bodies, people have the same attitude. Life isn't sacred, if the person isn't worth anything in the material sense. Kind of sad to see that things haven't changed.

Kovacs was a protagonist that had layers. He was a ruthless killer. But, he was also a principled man, who had limits to what he would and wouldn't do. A man who cared about people, capable of loving and being loved. But, also a man who could kill remorselessly and does. He doesn't seem to have an issue with sleeping with another man's wife, but he doesn't like prostitution. Using drugs is not something he's against, either (I hate drugs, so I didn't really care for that). He's in over his head, several times. He gets hurt, badly. So, even though he's clearly a very dangerous man, he's not invulnerable. You really don't know if he'll make it through some of the sticky situations he ends up in. You see this crazy world through his eyes, and it's not pretty.

One thing that surprised me, was that the environment wasn't screwed up. I had expected that this would be an issue in the far future. But, not so much. I guess, with all the bad stuff that was going on, why throw in environmental catastrophes?

To sum up things: This was a very good read. I'd like to read more stories with Takeshi Kovacs, and more of Mr. Morgan's writing.(less)

13 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2011 Kathryn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, cyberpunk, mystery, crime, dystopian, artificial-intelligence

I desperately want to like this book more than I do. I picked it up for the first time well over a year ago, probably closer to 2 years ago. I set the book aside, for a variety of reasons, and came back to it 4 times before finally finishing. None of this bodes well for a final rating.

I love the world Morgan created but I hate every one of his characters. A 4 star rating for the world. A 2 star rating for the characters.

My experience with cyberpunk is limited, something which I would like to ex...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Lily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: open-minded sci-fi fans

Recommended to Lily by: DrBonesandwich

I really debated over what rating to give this book. Three seemed too low, 4 seems a bit high. Overall, it's a good read. A little lacking in emotional draw, but it makes up for that in interesting details and a few nods to philosophy.

I could go all feminist on this novel, too. Basically, Morgan has a pretty obvious power complex. If a woman is powerful in this novel, she is psychotic.

Also, all women are inexplicably drawn to the main character, Takeshi, who begins as a pathetic, stupid anti-her...more I really debated over what rating to give this book. Three seemed too low, 4 seems a bit high. Overall, it's a good read. A little lacking in emotional draw, but it makes up for that in interesting details and a few nods to philosophy.

I could go all feminist on this novel, too. Basically, Morgan has a pretty obvious power complex. If a woman is powerful in this novel, she is psychotic.

Also, all women are inexplicably drawn to the main character, Takeshi, who begins as a pathetic, stupid anti-hero, pushed by hormones and drug use as much as by all the fancy military training he supposedly had.

But looking past these flaws, the book actually gets pretty good. Takeshi's character development is particularly striking. Morgan uses the anti-hero-with-a-dramatic-past thing to the max, while at the same time not falsifying the character with too many obvious conclusions or patched-up loose ends.

What really makes the story sparkle, though, is the world.

Morgan has invented an incredibly detailed future, where humans have colonized several worlds, learned to download their personalities onto hardware and stick them in new bodies. Space, time, the soul, the body all lose or change meaning. Death is practically conquered, but not in an impossible way. Morgan intelligently takes into account economics, side-effects, and the human psyche in portraying his new science.

The techno-garble was a bit difficult to get through at first. Although Morgan may not explain every word he uses outright, you soon get drawn into the police-thriller element enough that being able to decipher the purpose of every gadget isn't necessary.

And all in all, his rich invented vocabulary and incredibly well-thought-out universe give a perfect setting for the carnage.

Normally, I'm not a big one for action, especially not in book form. Nothing's quite as boring as reading about blood and hacked up limbs. But Morgan's violence stays interesting because of the depth of detail behind it, and the questions it raises about the meaning of a human life or a bodily death (after all, in "Altered Carbon"'s world, it's easy enough to place your personality hardware into a new body).

Basically, Morgan has invented a cool world and some cool new technology, and fleshed it out with all the elaborate elements of human society -- philosophy, art, language, economics, material goods, everything. The story itself is a bit stale and hard to follow (way too many characters with rapidly and occasionally illogically shifting alliances), and the main character is annoyingly ineffective for the first third of the book, but it's well worth reading for a change of pace, some sex, some violence, and a little philosophical mind bending.(less)

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May 27, 2008 Jason Kelley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Beginning of the winter I bought a deep stack of science fiction books to get me through the tough times. Altered Carbon was the last of those books to be read. And Holy crap, the best was saved for last! It has everything. Bitchin science concepts, cool tech, ruthless and thoughtful characters, gripping action scenes, and strangely erotic sex sessions. I really like the way that Morgan writes. Two particular examples of his skills are his ability to transition smoothly from a characters intern...more

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May 12, 2012 Mathieu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Un roman cyberpunk diablement efficace.

On y suit l'enquête de Takeshi Kovacs, un ancien membre des forces spéciales galactiques chargé d'élucider un meurtre déguisé en suicide. Le petit plus de cet univers, c'est que la science a permis de rendre virtuellement immortel une large part de la population. Grâce à des systèmes de puces corticales et de ré-enveloppement, un individu peut changer de peau (voire d'apparence) dés que son enveloppe précédente marque des signes de fatigue.

Et c'est là tout...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: scifi fans, mystery buffs

Recommended to Jennifer by: Jamie

Shelves: scifi, thriller

I was inclined to dislike this book from the beginning- I do read some fairly violent work on occasion, but the prologue to this volume bothered me more than I expected. Things do calm down (or at least get explained) later on, and once I became familiar with the general premise and the rationale for the violence, it grew on me.

Essentially Takeshi Kovacs exists in a world where people's minds are consolidated into a "stack" that can be transplanted from one body (or sleeve) to the next. It was a...more

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May 10, 2007 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ultra violent and ultra sexual (I know what you're thinking. "Patrick, that's usually 5 star material for you"), these are interesting takes on the hard boiled detective novel. They're set in the distant, distant future and humans have transferrable storage devices installed into their spinal columns called "stacks" that constantly backup their memories and personality. So essentially, no one can really die. You usually just get a new body. Of course, like with computers, hard drives can be wipe...more

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Aug 16, 2010 KristenR rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, mystery-thriller, kindle

Altered Carbon certainly starts off with a bang.

The sci-fi premise of downloadable personalities was great and Morgan held my attention in this future noir story with a cinematic descriptive style and vengeful murderous rampages.

At first I found the protagonist an odd choice for a detective, and the mystery was a bit convoluted. I disliked that certain characters and plotlines semed to come out of nowhere - there were several times I had to flip back to see if a particular character had been in...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Wow - I read this quite awhile ago, and it's the kind of book that sticks with you! A combination of hard-boiled PI mystery and hard-core science fiction, Altered Carbon is a great adrenaline ride. Brain hijacking, crazy drugs, amazing adventures and incredible inventions turn the slightly-distant future into an entirely new reality. Sort of reminded me a little of Snow Crash or some of William Gibson's better work.

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Dec 27, 2008 Tony Gleeson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Morgan, a member of the Glasgow group of up-and-coming speculative authors, is an interesting writer, absorbing and reflecting lots of contemporary styles (most obviously William Gibson) and classic ones (if you read carefully you'll pick up Chandler among others), and he tells an interesting story with equally interesting characters and ideas. The only problem I had with this, the first tale of Takeshi Kovacs (pronounced "ko-vatch")was a fairly high level of gratuitous cruelty... I could have g...more

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Dec 21, 2008 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended, sf

This novel was recommended to me a while back by LJ user cafiorello, and Cathy, I must now thank you profusely for that recommendation. This was a kickass novel.

Very gritty, almost brutal, with crosses and double-crosses all throughout its complex plot, Altered Carbon is a very violent sort of book set in an intriguing future where humanity has invented technology capable of storing your entire consciousness in a "stack"--and therefore rendering the physical body nothing more than a sleeve which...more This novel was recommended to me a while back by LJ user cafiorello, and Cathy, I must now thank you profusely for that recommendation. This was a kickass novel.

Very gritty, almost brutal, with crosses and double-crosses all throughout its complex plot, Altered Carbon is a very violent sort of book set in an intriguing future where humanity has invented technology capable of storing your entire consciousness in a "stack"--and therefore rendering the physical body nothing more than a sleeve which can be changed. For most of humanity, this is a luxury they're lucky to afford once. For the rich and powerful, though, body sleeves can be changed as readily as their clothes. And for these people, death has been rendered effectively meaningless. For Takeshi Kovacs, former member of a paramilitary force called the Envoys and now a criminal sentenced to spend over a hundred years "on stack", waking up in a new sleeve comes with a hefty price: he has to find out why Laurens Bancroft, one of the most powerful men on Earth, was murdered. The police think he committed suicide. Bancroft, whose consciousness has been brought right back out of remote backup and installed in a fresh new sleeve, swears otherwise. He hires Kovacs to get to the bottom of it, and pretty much right of the gate, Kovacs starts cutting a swath through Bay City on his way to the truth.

I'm impressed as hell with Morgan as a writer--because while I never found Kovacs particularly admirable (certainly the man is damn near a psychopath himself and has a long and bloody history which comes back to haunt him at salient points in the plot), I still nevertheless was sucked into rooting for him as he got closer and closer to the truth. Furthermore, I damn near wanted to cheer that Morgan, even as he had his characters throw out random bits of slang dialogue in the course of their conversations, never once went out of his way to try to clue in the reader as to what these terms were supposed to mean. He does the reader the courtesy of assuming that she will be smart enough to figure it out. And I love that.

And the whole concept of moving a person's entire consciousness around between bodies was highly intriguing, too. Morgan does an excellent job of laying out how this has changed society, not only socially but in terms of religion as well. As a fan of the new BSG, though, I had to giggle and giggle at the very first chapter where he wakes up in his new body--because anybody who's seen the Season 2 BSG episode "Downloaded" will find the tank in which he wakes up very familiar. ;) "ZOMG HE'S A CYLON" kept going through my head through much of the book.

Highly recommended for a hard SF read. Four stars!(less)

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Jun 17, 2013 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, post-ai, favorites

Holy crap. I demolished this book. Picked it up to keep me entertained whilst camping in case of rain. Ended up reading it constantly on the train and whenever I could snatch a spare minute with it.

I don't think I've read anything like this before. It reads like a detective/crime/action book with extra complications thanks to being set after the world has perfected mind upload and so on used it to produce clones, synthetic humans, enhanced neurochemistry, a substitute for teleportation and most...more

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About Richard K. Morgan

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Richard K. Morgan (sometimes credited as Richard Morgan) is a science fiction writer.

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Quotes from Altered Carbon

“The personal, as everyone’s so fucking 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 from under it 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 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, fuck them. Make it personal.” — 68 people liked it

“The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.” — 23 people liked it

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Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs #1)

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