Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon (2002) is a hardboiled science fiction novel by Richard Morgan (his first). Set some five hundred years in the future in a universe in which the "United Nations Protectorate" oversees a number of planets settled by human beings, it features protagonist Takeshi Kovacs (the final "cs" is pronounced "ch"). Kovacs is a former United Nations Envoy and a native of Harlan's World (settled by the Japanese yakuza with Eastern European labor).

In the novel's quasi-cyberpunk and somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new "sleeves" (bodies). Most people have "stacks" implanted in their spinal columns that (so to speak) store their memories as they go along -- but most people cannot afford to get "resleeved" more than, at most, once. In consequence, most people can live indefinitely, but only the wealthy are in practice able to buy (or grow) bodies to inhabit. In what may be a deliberate echo of Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children and Time Enough for Love, the long-lived wealthy are called "Meths", for "Methuselahs". The very rich are also able to keep their minds in 'remote storage', with their stored backups being updated every so often - this ensures that even if their stack is destroyed, they can be re-sleeved.

One such Methuselah -- a rich man named Laurens Bancroft -- has apparently committed suicide, having vaporised his head and cortical stack with an energy weapon. Having been resleeved but having no access to the memories his former self stored during his final hours, he believes his "suicide" was actually a murder and hires Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his death.

Kovacs is an Envoy - a member of a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare. In the novel's universe, faster-than-light travel is only possible by transmitting the digitally stored mind via 'needlecast' across space into a new sleeve. Transmitting normal soldiers in this way will severely inhibit their effectiveness, since they will have to cope with finding themselves in a new body while fighting. To combat this, Envoy training emphasises the mental techniques necessary to survive in different bodies over physical strength (which is useless when the soldier is downloaded into a new body). The effectiveness of the Envoy Corps' mental training is such that Envoys are banned from holding governmental positions on most worlds.

Kovacs -- who is killed in the novel's prologue and stored in digital form -- is downloaded into a temporary sleeve formerly inhabited by Bay City policeman Elias Ryker and turned loose on the investigation. The plot unfolds through Kovacs's "hard-boiled" narrative. Kovacs eventually solves the mystery, but only after great personal suffering under which he is able to bear up only because of his Envoy training.

One of the novel's neatest pieces of characterization is the Hendrix Hotel, an automated hotel that upgraded to sentience and bought itself out from under corporate ownership. It is of course named for Jimi Hendrix, whose image makes a brief cameo appearance as the hotel's virtual-reality avatar.

The sequel, Broken Angels, is set in the same world and again features Takeshi Kovacs as narrator/protagonist, but it is not a direct continuation of Altered Carbon and can be read as a standalone work. It also provides some more of the backstory for Altered Carbon, especially as regards the process of extraterrestrial exploration and settlement.