NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN EXCITING NEW SERIES FROM NETFLIX • 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 ReviewIn the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, … eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. 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.
Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. 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.
Praise for Altered Carbon
“Compelling . . . immensely entertaining . . . [Richard] Morgan’s writing is vivid and his plotting inventive.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A fascinating trip . . . Pure high-octane science fiction mixes with the classic noir private-eye tale.”—Orlando Sentinel
“Gritty and vivid . . . looks as if we have another interstellar hero on our hands.”—USA Today
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An entertaining sci-fi novel with sociological undertones.
Every phrase, carefully planned. One step back from poetry, but it flows like the Nile. An absolute delight to read.
Noir cyberpunk at its greatest by a master in sci-fi!
SCI-FI NOIR: Philip Marlow meets Philip K Dick. The Netflix series is great, but the book is so much richer in atmosphere and attitude.
I read this so I could get a better understanding of the television show. I think the TV show is better, but the book wasn’t so bad.
LOVE the Altered Carbon series. Some of the most original scifi I have ever read… the UN is scary, their agents’ consciousness shunted throughout the galaxy, and a world where, if you’ve got the dough, you never need to die. And at its core, a good, old-fashioned whodunit mystery. Excellent.
P.S. Where they stuck to the book, the Netflix series …
As a huge fan of Richard K. Morgan, I’ve been told I should have started with Altered Carbon and moved onto his other works but I actually am reading his Takeshi Kovacs series toward the end. As the old saying goes, I may have saved the best for last. I am a huge cyberpunk fan but it’s a genre which has been receding since the Nineties. Part of …
As someone who loves cyberpunk and detective fiction this was the perfect blend. It truly reminded me of blade runner with so much more scifi which is very cool. It was fun read, and the main character kovacs was a character I could get behind because he was such a badass.
Richard Morgan’s prose is rich and visceral, and the world, story, and characters are compelling.
At its core, Altered Carbon is a hard-boiled detective story in a beautifully realized sci-fi setting. Beyond that, it deals with many philosophical questions like the effects of immortality on beings who were never meant to live so long, the moral implications of trading bodies, and the endless arguments about the existence and treatment of a …
A weak plot, unnecessary violence and a poorly thought-out universe combine to make this book a big disappointment.
Outstanding update of the gritty film noir genre. Unexpected consequences of technological innovation.
A thought-provoking look at consciousness downloading.
A hard-boiled detective story in which the protagonist dies in the prologue, but then goes on to investigate the suicide of a man that’s still alive. Weird? No, post-human! In this book, the human body is a commodity, a merchandise not different from a car or a cellphone, and almost as disposable — if you have the money.
This was my first …
A classic Sci-fi masterpiece
Unfortunately I saw the Netflix series before reading this. The series (in my opinion) was true to the story but did make changes that improved the story line. That being said, the book was excellent overall and I would highly recommend reading it. Especially if you haven’t seen the Netflix series.
I read this when it first came out and was instantly hooked. I read the other 2 Takeshi Kovacs books as soon as they were published. Amazing stuff. Unfortunately, Richard Morgan decided at that time to walk away from Kovacs, and I was unable to get into his other books.
When I read this book years ago, LONG before the tv series debut, it became my favorite sci-fi novel of all time. I bought a signed copy…that was how much I loved it. It is dark, violent, twisted – and I loved the sci-fi, eroding human culture premise upon which it was built. This was as dystopian as I wanted to consider. I devoured every …
You can save a persons mind matrix on some storage medium but years later when you “download” this matrix into a new blank brain you have not transfered consciousness. You have duplicated (to a degree) the person you got the matrix from. It’s called cloning, coping, making an identical twin. When you die so does your consciousness. These …
This book took a little time to get into but once I figured out what the deal was I was hooked. Your real self or soul is contained in a group of small discs located in your c-spine and can be transferred from one body, or sleeve, to another. Everyone’s wish is to move the stack to a younger sleeve when they get old or die in some way. But does it …