Contracted by a billionaire to discover who murdered his last body, Kovacs is drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that stretches across known space and to the very top of society.įor a first-time SF writer to be so surely in command of narrative and technology, so brilliant at world-building, so able to write such readable and enjoyable SF adventure, is simply extraordinary. elite soldier turned private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death. Morgan.Set in a future in which interstellar travel and relative immortality is facilitated by transferring consciousnesses between bodies ('sleeves'), it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. So when ex-envoy, now-convict Takeshi Kovacs has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a nicotine-addicted ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer, he really shouldn¿t be surprised. Altered Carbon is a 2002 cyberpunk novel by the English writer Richard K. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course.īut some things never change. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.This must-read story is a confident, action-and-violence packed thriller, and future classic noir SF novel from a multi-award-winning author.įour hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful.

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 more than a minor blip on a screen.Įx-U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report.

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. The shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning in this “tour de force of genre-bending, a brilliantly realized exercise in science fiction.”- The New York Times Book Review.

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