Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1)

by Richard K. Morgan

“You come from another place,” Bancroft said broodingly. “A brash, young, colonial culture. You can have no concept of how the centuries of tradition have molded us here on Earth. The young of spirit, the adventurous, all left on the ships in droves. They were encouraged to leave. Those who stayed were the stolid, the obedient, the limited. I watched it happen, and at the time I was glad, because it made carving out an empire so much easier. Now I wonder if it was worth the price we paid. Culture fell in on itself, grappled after norms to live by, settled for the old and familiar. Rigid morality, rigid law. The U.N. declarations fossilized into global conformity. There was a—” He gestured. “—a sort of supracultural straitjacket, and with an inherent fear of what might be born from the colonies, the Protectorate arose while the ships were still in flight. When the first of them made planetfall, their stored peoples woke into a prepared tyranny.”