Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon
Just finished Altered Carbon. A sci-fi read, Morgan won the Philip K. Dick award, which is bestowed annually for "distinguished science fiction published in paperback original in the United States."
Morgan's underlying premise is pretty cool. Essentially, your soul can be captured in a "cortical stack," which is stored near the brain's base. When your body dies, if you can afford the payments, you can prearrange to have your stack transplanted into a new body (called a sleeve) upon death.
In the book, more affluent individuals typically acquire real human sleeves (typically from those people who couldn't afford payments to transplant their own cortical stack). In some cases, synthetic sleeves can be had, but the price is considerable.
Some religions, of course, wrestle with the question of whether re-sleeving is immoral, while courts sometimes resurrect a cortical stack only long enough to hear a murdered victim's testimony.
Folks suffer some strange sensations changing sleeves, both physically and emotionally. Laws, meanwhile, prohibit duplicating your stack and inserting it simultaneously into multiple sleeves.
Interesting stuff. I liked the concept, but the story line was somewhat predictable. And Morgan's writing sometimes appeared a little too forced, as if he were working a too hard to impress readers with vernacular and street jargon from 500 years in the future. At least it read that way to me.
That said, the concept remained strong enough to carry the book. I may well check out the sequel (Broken Angels).
Meanwhile, if you think the story's cool but don't want to invest the time in reading the book, wait for the movie. Morgan sold the rights to Warner Brothers. Smart man.
Morgan's underlying premise is pretty cool. Essentially, your soul can be captured in a "cortical stack," which is stored near the brain's base. When your body dies, if you can afford the payments, you can prearrange to have your stack transplanted into a new body (called a sleeve) upon death.
In the book, more affluent individuals typically acquire real human sleeves (typically from those people who couldn't afford payments to transplant their own cortical stack). In some cases, synthetic sleeves can be had, but the price is considerable.
Some religions, of course, wrestle with the question of whether re-sleeving is immoral, while courts sometimes resurrect a cortical stack only long enough to hear a murdered victim's testimony.
Folks suffer some strange sensations changing sleeves, both physically and emotionally. Laws, meanwhile, prohibit duplicating your stack and inserting it simultaneously into multiple sleeves.
Interesting stuff. I liked the concept, but the story line was somewhat predictable. And Morgan's writing sometimes appeared a little too forced, as if he were working a too hard to impress readers with vernacular and street jargon from 500 years in the future. At least it read that way to me.
That said, the concept remained strong enough to carry the book. I may well check out the sequel (Broken Angels).
Meanwhile, if you think the story's cool but don't want to invest the time in reading the book, wait for the movie. Morgan sold the rights to Warner Brothers. Smart man.
posted by Erik Eckel at 10:08 PM
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