Martin reviewed Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
None
5 stars
One of my favorites of all time. I am currently re-reading this for the second or maybe third time.
Library binding
English language
Published Jan. 1, 2005 by Tantor Media.
Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)
4 stars
(209 reviews)
It's the twenty-fifth century, and advances in technology have redefined life itself. A person's consciousness can now be stored in the brain and downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve"), making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Onetime U.N. Envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Resleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco), 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. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning.
Chris reviewed Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
None
4 stars
I wasn’t too thrilled by it, though it does take a similar idea to Kil’n People and take it further. Bodies are treated as disposable including the original (the idea of ‘sleeves’ and the word itself felt creepy), and doesn’t really address the question of whether the individual is just the driver of a flesh machine, or is body and soul; whether the Epicureans might have been onto something with the idea that the soul is distributed through the body (‘atomism’). I thought Morgan backed away at critical moments: for example having realised that one effect of ‘resleeving’ would be that someone could be tortured to death repeatedly (what about the potential, also, for repetitive suicides?), he sleeves his protagonist in a woman’s body to do it, and despite some right-on posturing about how ‘women are the race’, this is probably because he doesn’t want to imagine himself being tortured …
I wasn’t too thrilled by it, though it does take a similar idea to Kil’n People and take it further. Bodies are treated as disposable including the original (the idea of ‘sleeves’ and the word itself felt creepy), and doesn’t really address the question of whether the individual is just the driver of a flesh machine, or is body and soul; whether the Epicureans might have been onto something with the idea that the soul is distributed through the body (‘atomism’). I thought Morgan backed away at critical moments: for example having realised that one effect of ‘resleeving’ would be that someone could be tortured to death repeatedly (what about the potential, also, for repetitive suicides?), he sleeves his protagonist in a woman’s body to do it, and despite some right-on posturing about how ‘women are the race’, this is probably because he doesn’t want to imagine himself being tortured to death.
RM makes play of himself being a 'feminist' and (to his credit) dislikes the word 'loser' (noting that in Spanish, his wife's mother tongue, there is no such word - 'el perdedor' would simply mean someone who'd lost something). But I felt this was an over-masculine adventure trying too hard to catch up with its 'women are the race' stuff.
Chris reviewed Altered carbon by Richard K. Morgan
None
2 stars
IDK. I mean, RM makes play of himself being a 'feminist' and (to his credit) dislikes the word 'loser' (noting that in Spanish, his wife's mother tongue, there is no such word - 'el perdedor' would simply mean someone who'd lost something). But I felt this was an over-masculine adventure trying too hard to catch up with its 'women are the race' stuff - while downloading Our Hero into a woman's body before torturing him/her? Sounds like an excuse. (and btw what is the pronoun in that case? I like Hungarian and Turkish which don't have gendered pronouns). I found it unnecessarily icky and gung-ho.
Subjects
- Unabridged Audio - Fiction/Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Science Fiction - Series
- Mystery & Detective - General
- Fiction
- Thrillers
- Fiction / Science Fiction / High Tech
- Fiction/Science Fiction - General
- Unabridged Audio / Fiction/Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Science Fiction - High Tech
- Science Fiction - General