Runo Knows...Altered Carbon
I figured I should get through some of these...
Altered Carbon is Richard K. Morgan's first novel. It's the story of Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN Envoy who has been DHF-ed via needlecast back to Earth from Harlan's World in order to help a Meth discover why he committed suicide, though the Organic Damage division of the local police have flat-out declared it a suicide and that it doesn't matter, since he was backed up.
"Huh?" you may ask.
Altered Carbon takes place more than a few hundred years in the future. There are a couple of points about this future that are important:
1. Human consciousness can be digitized and placed in a "stack", located at the top of the spinal column. Your body is just a "sleeve". This is done to everyone of a certain age (just after childbirth, apparently) and means if you die, and your stack survives, you can be "re-sleeved". You can also be re-sleeved in a new body for other reasons - if you want a different one, for instance, for whatever reasons. You can also be go into computerized "virtuality" for various reasons (including being tortured).
2. The only form of faster-than-light interstellar travel is the "needlecast". Since a consciousness can be digitized, it's sent as Digitized Human Freight via needlecast when travelling between worlds (sometimes). The alternative is slow-boat, taking the years to cross space. That's how new worlds are colonized; humanity has a "map" of the worlds discovered from an alien civilization on Mars.
3. The Envoys are the ultimate special forces. They're trained to needlecast into a hot spot, go into bodies they've never seen before, and be fighting (or negotiating) extremely quickly.
Kovacs is no longer an Envoy. After a brutal firefight on Harlan's World, where he and his fellow criminal and lover Sarah have been captured by the authorities, he's hired by a "meth" - an extremely old, rich person - to discover why he, Laurens Bancroft, committed suicide with a blaster. As he's very rich, he had back-ups, and was restored from back-up.
Kovacs' investigation is hindered by Bancroft's acrinomious relationship with the police's Organic Damage division, and as he looks further in, finds Bancroft was dealing with a lot more than that.
The book is described as kind of a cyberpunk noir. It's very gritty, dirty, full of extremely graphic violence (including torture) and sex. The writing flows well, keeping it exciting (helped in that regard by the first person point of view) and by having Kovacs in a "fish out of water" area (i.e. on Earth, where he's never been) helps lay out the background for the universe. It's an engaging, fun novel - in my opinion, the best of the series so far.
Altered Carbon is Richard K. Morgan's first novel. It's the story of Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN Envoy who has been DHF-ed via needlecast back to Earth from Harlan's World in order to help a Meth discover why he committed suicide, though the Organic Damage division of the local police have flat-out declared it a suicide and that it doesn't matter, since he was backed up.
"Huh?" you may ask.
Altered Carbon takes place more than a few hundred years in the future. There are a couple of points about this future that are important:
1. Human consciousness can be digitized and placed in a "stack", located at the top of the spinal column. Your body is just a "sleeve". This is done to everyone of a certain age (just after childbirth, apparently) and means if you die, and your stack survives, you can be "re-sleeved". You can also be re-sleeved in a new body for other reasons - if you want a different one, for instance, for whatever reasons. You can also be go into computerized "virtuality" for various reasons (including being tortured).
2. The only form of faster-than-light interstellar travel is the "needlecast". Since a consciousness can be digitized, it's sent as Digitized Human Freight via needlecast when travelling between worlds (sometimes). The alternative is slow-boat, taking the years to cross space. That's how new worlds are colonized; humanity has a "map" of the worlds discovered from an alien civilization on Mars.
3. The Envoys are the ultimate special forces. They're trained to needlecast into a hot spot, go into bodies they've never seen before, and be fighting (or negotiating) extremely quickly.
Kovacs is no longer an Envoy. After a brutal firefight on Harlan's World, where he and his fellow criminal and lover Sarah have been captured by the authorities, he's hired by a "meth" - an extremely old, rich person - to discover why he, Laurens Bancroft, committed suicide with a blaster. As he's very rich, he had back-ups, and was restored from back-up.
Kovacs' investigation is hindered by Bancroft's acrinomious relationship with the police's Organic Damage division, and as he looks further in, finds Bancroft was dealing with a lot more than that.
The book is described as kind of a cyberpunk noir. It's very gritty, dirty, full of extremely graphic violence (including torture) and sex. The writing flows well, keeping it exciting (helped in that regard by the first person point of view) and by having Kovacs in a "fish out of water" area (i.e. on Earth, where he's never been) helps lay out the background for the universe. It's an engaging, fun novel - in my opinion, the best of the series so far.