The Sword and Laser discussion
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Altered Carbon
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AC: I want to know how it ends ...
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Thurman wrote: "Most of the stuff Kovacks does doesn't seem relevant."That's one of the conventions of the hardboiled mysteries that this book is heavily influenced by. It's supposed to be really convoluted with all the plot threads only converging in the big showdown with the real villain at the end.
What you "figured out" about Bancroft is wrong, but if you want to skip the in-between, just read that last 40 or so pages for the climax and denouement.
One of my favorite stories about hardboiled fiction's tendency to be convoluted: while working on the script for the film adaptation of Chandler's The Big Sleep, screenwriter William Faulkner and director Howard Hawks could not decipher who had killed one of the minor characters in the story. Eventually, they threw their arms in the air and called Raymond Chandler to have him explain who had killed the guy. When Chandler got back to them, he said, "I have no idea."
The sad thing is, I was trying to remember how it ended and I realized not only could I not remember, I didn't care.This book had a lot of unnecessary stuff. It wandered too much. I don't remember the motives for any of the characters, any of the twists/turns.
Keith wrote: "One of my favorite stories about hardboiled fiction's tendency to be convoluted: while working on the script for the film adaptation of Chandler's The Big Sleep, screenwriter William Faulkner and d..."Brilliant.
Thats all the help. At least tell me who killed Bancroft and why. I want to Lem this book so bad!
Don't anybody tell him! I checked Wikipedia and it doesn't say whodunit...Mwahaha!Dude, skip to the end and read.
Thurman, I'm with you. I got about 1/3 of the way through and lemmed it. There were some interesting concepts, but the narrative was too wordy and too long. And I just stopped caring about Kovacs. The great "hard-boiled" authors of the past had a taut writing style. My copies of The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep were all less than 300 pages long. And they are hard to put down.
So help me out. How does it end? Spoil it as much as you can, I'm about 60% through. Where (view spoiler)[ Ortega and Kovacks have sex for the 1st time. (hide spoiler)] I figured out a long time ago that Bancroft killed himself because he didn't want to know something. So tie it all together for me so i can move on to something more enjoyable.
Thanks in advance for your help :)