Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

by Richard K. Morgan

book data

1,754 ratings, 4.13 average rating, 252 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		40%
4		37%
3		17%
2		2%
1		1%

edit

published

February 28th 2006 (first published 2001) by Del Rey

binding

Paperback, 544 pages

characters

Takeshi Kovacs

literary awards

Philip K. Dick Award (2003)

isbn

0345457692 (isbn13: 9780345457691)

description

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, ...more

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | compare prices…

new topic
discuss this book

topics	posts	views	last activity
SciFi and Fantasy...: * Introduce Yourself!	714	1235	1 day ago, 06:31AM
Beyond Reality: Other books by Richard K. Morgan	7	26	3 days ago, 12:05PM
Beyond Reality: The Steel Remains - finished spoilers	5	17	4 days ago, 04:54PM
The Next Best Boo...: Jason's 2009 Good (and not so good) Reads	19	181	22 days ago, 08:10PM

friend reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

lists with this book

Best science fiction books

828 books | 3061 voters

Best of Cyberpunk

29 books | 53 voters

More lists...

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,330)

sort: default (?) | date
filters: all | text-only

04/25/08

Sandi rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, sci-fi

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: The Non-Squeamish

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, t...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.
(less)

Like this review? yes (10 people liked it)

1 comment

05/04/08

FicusFan rated it:

(review of isbn 0345457684)

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

Read in May, 2008

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...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

03/29/08

Kathy rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, reviewed

Read in October, 2004

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 ...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

03/03/08

Steven Millar rated it:

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

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

02/27/08

Mark rated it:

bookshelves: sciencefiction

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Fans of detective fiction and fans of science fiction.

"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 o...more "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. This is done via a piece of biological macinery that every human posesses in their brainstems called a "stack". The bodies are called "sleeves" and range from cheap artificial robot-like bodies to biologically enhanced superhuman bodies.

Most people can afford to live only two lifetimes. After that, they spend eternity in a virtual storage device and are usually only downloaded into cheap artificial bodies for significant family events such as weddings, funerals, and births. Of course, rich people can afford to live many lifetimes and can change bodies as often as they wish; often travelling by transferring themselves to remote bodies set up in other places rather than via mass transportation. These rich people are called "Methuselahs" or "Meths" for short.

Takeshi Kovacs is an ex-envoy. An envoy is a kind of elite soldier who spends his term of service being downloaded into different bodies for the purpose of performing the same kind of operations a special forces commando performs in the present day.

Kovacs gets in trouble with the law on his home world of Harlan's World. As a result he is sentenced to being stored for a long, long time. However, before his sentence is up, Takeshi's information is transmitted to Earth and "sleeved" in a body. It turns out a "meth" named Laurens Bancroft killed himself and he, after his backup information is downloaded to a new sleeve, doesn't believe it was suicide. Therefore, he hires Kovacs to determine who murdered him, since the police seem to have concluded the investigation as a suicide and not a murder.

It all seems straightforward, but why is the police lieutenant in charge of the investigation, Kristin Ortega, giving him funny looks all the time? Why is he being followed and Who is following him? Does it have to do with him or the previous occupant of his "sleeve"?

After that, the story starts going full blast and we get all the nice twists and turns of any noir detective fiction: plenty of action, double crosses, and even a femme fatale or two.

The Good

There's plenty of goodness here. The first good thing it the character of Takeshi Kovacs. He embodies the perfect existential and pragmatic hero. This is in keeping with the tradition of private eye novels, so there's nothing really NEW here. However, it's all done very well. He does whatever it takes to get the job done. He also has a very distinct personal sense of justice, which is also in keeping with the traditional private eye.

Even though the protagonist is narrating the book, he doesn't lapse into vernacular to the point where you'd need some kind of glossary to follow what he's saying. Even though this novel takes place "on the street" in the future, there's just enough of a local patois to the language to give it character, but not so much that you don't understand what Kovacs or the people he encounters are saying.

The ancillary characters are well done when they appear often enough in the narrative to become characterized. Kristin Ortega, while being the "damsel in distress" for the book, is not characterized as helpless and insipid as most damsels in distress are. Most of the time, I wonder why someone would want to put their life on the line for an obviously helpless and stupid character, but I don't have to wonder that with Kovacs and Ortega. Most of the time, if he helps her out it's only because he's returning the favor for some help she gave him earlier in the novel. Laurens Bancroft and his wife are both intriguing characters, only because they are "meths". One wonders what the mindset of such a person would be, and Morgan fulfills this "need to know" very well. The fact that previous occupants of the physical bodies (or "sleeves") are themselves ancillary characters is absolutely brilliant to me.

If you're a fan of detective fiction, you'll know that the most important aspect of a detective novel is the plot. Without a plausible and well-executed plot progression, a detective novel becomes either bogged-down in minutiae or develops a plot that is so twisty and byzantine that it becomes impossible to follow without a chart. If anything, "Altered Carbon" errs on the side of over-complexity. However, it's not so overly complex that you can't follow what's going on; although you will probably find yourself saying "who is this person?" two or three times throughout your reading.

The Not-So-Good

The reason I subtracted half a star is that I went in expecting a cyberpunk novel and got more of a detective novel. I know it's probably unfair to penalize a novel because of my expectations but I firmly believe that expectations count when enjoying a novel. If a novel exceeds my expectations, I'll certainly award it a higher rating (and I've done so in the past).

I could be wrong, but what I like in a cyberpunk novel are the cool descriptions of what the future internet is like as well as cool descriptions of hacking into computers and Artificial Intelligences like a knight slaying a dragon. I didn't get that with this book.

Also, I was very interested in the philosophical and moral implications of being able to change bodies or even download ones mind into multiple bodies at once. I didn't get ENOUGH of that in this book. Just to be clear: Morgan DOES address this in his novel. I just felt the subject deserved more discussion.

As I said before, most of the ancillary characters are well done. However, there are some that, I felt, were either unnecessary or could have been merged into another character. If a novel has a ton of characters in it, then you start needing a "dramitis personae" page at the front or back of the novel, which just seems like lazy writing to me. I think, if you're going to include a character in a novel, you should write it so that it is distinctive enough to recognize in the narrative. Again, I could be wrong about this. It's just my opinion.

Conclusion

4 1/2 stars out of 5 is still a really high score. If you're a fan of detective fiction then you may like it even more than I did. There's certainly a lot here to like and I see no reason for any fans of science fiction or detective fiction to not read this novel. It's a good read!(less)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

add a comment

07/13/08

Lily rated it:

Read in July, 2008

recommended to Lily by: DrBonesandwich
recommends it for: open-minded sci-fi fans

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 a...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)

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

05/27/08

Jason rated it:

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 character...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

05/16/08

Jennifer rated it:

bookshelves: scifi, thriller

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Jennifer by: Jamie
recommends it for: scifi fans, mystery buffs

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...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

05/10/07

Patrick rated it:

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, har...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

08/12/07

Malcolm rated it:

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: SF Noir fans

This is the first book by this author I've read, and I was very impressed. It's basically noir, very dark and rather brutal noir at that, but set in a very futuristic timeframe where people can "resleeve" into other bodies, sometimes their own, sometimes clones, and sometimes into ones that have been vacated by others.

If you like the movie "Chinatown", and have a reasonably strong stomach, I'd highly recommend this. The main character is engaging and sympathetic...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

12/27/08

Tony Gleeson rated it:

Read in January, 2007

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 c...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/21/08

Angela rated it:

bookshelves: recommended, sf

Read in June, 2007

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 mo...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)

Like this review? yes

add a comment

04/15/09

Jeremy Matters rated it:

(review of isbn 0345457684)

bookshelves: good-stuff

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2009

recommends it for: Sci-Fi Fans

Richard K. Morgan's first Takeshi Kovacs novel is a smart, gritty, and entirely engrossing view of a future where "sleeving" technology (the ability to capture human consciousness in a device called a "stack" and insert it into a new body) has so radically changed human society that every single aspect of daily life is affected.

The depth of Morgan's creative well seems infinite as we are launched through every stratum of human existence, from the very real to the ...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

05/26/09

Seamus Bradley rated it:

(review of isbn 0575081120)

Read in January, 2009

I bought a couple of these "Gollancz SF" collection because I'm a sucker for a series and these had interesting covers. It was because Revelation Space was one of this series that it caught my eye. But none of the others I've read from the series has lived up to Reynold's masterpiece.

This book is OK. The "sleeving" idea - that people's minds can be backed up and their bodies rehoused - is clever and its implications for society and people's ideas about mortality a...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

02/27/09

Chris "Stu" rated it:

bookshelves: 2009

Read in February, 2009

Richard K. Morgan creates a universe with a half dozen great ideas, any one of which would be sufficient to flesh out a decent sized sci fi book. He packs them all in, along with some action and philosophy for the cheap and expensive seats.

Humanity has spread across the universe. Planets are a long way away, so travel between them takes awhile, but communication can be done more or less instantly.

Human consciousness can be downloaded, stored, moved from body to body. Clon...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/13/08

Nick rated it:

bookshelves: crime-fiction-noir, science-fiction

Read in December, 2008

This novel fits loosely into the same genre as the film version of Bladerunner, in that it's both a hard science fiction novel and a noir crime novel. In this story, the basic McGuffin is that people can be digitally downloaded, and transferred to a new body. The process isn't free, but it's cheap enough to be widely used. More expensive related technologies involve things like cloned bodies. So, someone with sufficient wealth can live for a VERY long time, replacing bodies as they wear out. You...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

09/15/07

Judd rated it:

Read in September, 2007

Harsh violence, graphic sex, a gripping science fiction world with quasi-immortals, memories downloaded into bodies called sleeves and a nifty vision of future earth.

I dig.

If Dashiell Hammet and William Gibson got into a knife fight in a dark alley, with only one knife between them while it rained, the winner would get up and write a book like this.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

08/15/07

Stefanie rated it:

bookshelves: favorites

loved this book. also one of my absolute favorites. part of it is the whole anti-hero-ness of Takeshi Kovacs, part of it is simply the world that Morgan has created, and the last part would have to be his very quick, snappy writing style. bottom line: if you are any kind of sci-fi fan, you must read Richard K. Morgan.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

add a comment

01/20/09

Joshuachild rated it:

Read in December, 2008

This is a fantastic future where when you die you can be re-sleeved into a new body with memory intact. Your "soul" is trapped inside a "Cortical Stack" inside your upper spinal cord inside one of the vertebrae.

This story is definitely a "noir" in that it is a mystery science fiction where the main character narrates much throughout the novel. I highly recommend this for anybody who loves sci-fi. A warning to others who don't want to read something so gra...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

12/14/08

Kevan rated it:

bookshelves: science-fiction

Read in January, 2000

I picked this book up at the airport on a flight to Bangkok. I was really quite tired an gave up reading it.
I decided it was a pile of confusing nonsense and shelved it.

A year or so later I was in the book shop and was browsing the Science Fiction section. I started reading this SF novel and thought it was rather good but also strangely familiar.

The book in both cases was, of course, Altered Carbon.

I have since re-read it and the other two Taki Kovacs no...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 116 117 next »

recent status updates | recommend it | blog it

combine
other editions (20)

More editions...

quotes from this book

"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." More quotes...