Saturday, 8th of May, 2004

In a recent review in the NY Times, Gerald Jonas says of Neal Asher: “Like his fellow Brit Richard K. Morgan in his Takeshi Kovacs novels, Asher assumes that science’s success in extending life will only multiply the opportunities for inflicting pain.”
I was a little bit in two minds about reading Altered Carbon, the first of Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels, and it wasn’t just the violence putting me off. After all, I know Morgan’s politics are pretty sturdy (anti-globalisation etc) and I do enjoy a bit of rollicking cyberpunk. However, I’d read Paul di Filippo’s review in Asimov’s and, positive though it is, he does mention how unlikely it is that the world 500 years into the future would be as Morgan describes. I like my sf to be as believable as possible, but hey - I’d heard lots of good things about this book.

So anyway, it turns out that the time thing is a bit of a problem for me; not fatal to the book, but it’s a bit disturbing. Altered Carbon’s just far-future cyberpunk; where’s the nanotech? The biotech is pretty much just “neurachem”, conditioning of the “sleeve” to make it really good at martial arts, ya know. What are sleeves, you ask? Well one’s mind in Morgan’s future is saved on a cortical stack, rather like Greg Egan’s Ndoli devices, only different. Stacks can be remotely backed up, and in certain circumstances can even be duplicated. When the stack is fitted into a new body it’s known as “re-sleeving”, and that body may well have been owned by somebody else previously. And indeed they may not have taken that good care of it…

The book is set five centuries in the future to facilitate the particular political climate, especially important because central to the plot are the ultra-rich who can afford to keep clones on ice, and in effect never grow old: the meths (after Methusalah of course). Takeshi Kovacs comes from off-world: the war-torn colony planet Harlan’s World (sounds a bit like Sky’s Edge in Alastair Reynolds‘ Chasm City), where he was trained in basically black ops… This history gives ample opportunity for harrowing back-story glimpses, a familiar technique in gritty cyberpunk (see the splendid Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s works, for instance). Captured as a criminal doing something shady or other, his stack is put into storage for some extreme length of time (basically this is the ultimate punishment), but his particular abilities are requested for an interesting seeming-suicide case on Earth, so the contents of his stack are squirted to Earth using some seemingly-faster-than-light technology, and off we go with the rollicking plot.

There was a point about a third of the way through this book when I almost stopped reading. Those familiar with the book will know immediately what I’m talking about: it’s the virtual reality torture scene, and to be honest, I still wish I hadn’t read it. Being an Amnesty International Human Rights Defender (ie supporter) I get to read more than enough about the extraordinary brutality with which humans can treat each other. What this passage brought home (and without wishing to disparage what is a great read, this is probably the one original aspect of the book) is how mind-uploading and VR gives a limitlessly-expanded scope for torture and cruelty.
Mind you, there’s plenty of real-life violence and brutality here too. Basically Altered Carbon is far-future cyberpunk noir, hard-boiled as it comes, fast-paced and very well plotted. It really does all fall together by the end, the (really bad) baddies really are ultra-bad and the, well, particularly grotesquely bad ones get their come-uppance. Thing is, even our hero Takeshi is technically a baddie, although it’s never clear what’s that bad about him; we sortof have to take that on trust.

Nevertheless, despite the fairly low-brow high-action plotting, and despite my disbelief at the rate of technological change, and despite the fact that none of the ideas are really that new, Morgan does come up with some very nice philosophising about such things as the physiological basis for sexual attraction (and how that relates to love), the culture-shock (of sorts) of being downloaded into a new body (in a cute twist, Kovacs’s host is a smoker, and he spends much of the book relieving the sleeve of that particular dependency), the amorality of the near-immortal ultra-rich (an oft-visited sf trope, mind you), and the way some things just never change.
So it is thought-provoking enough (despite being steadfastly derivative), its morals are in the right place (despite many stomach-churning moments, and that one sit-up-at-night-going-I-don’t-want-to-have- dreams-based-on-that passage), and, well, it’s not way-hard science fiction but it doesn’t do too badly.

I’m still not sure whether I want to read more Morgan though. I’ve had a reading copy of his newie, Market Forces, for months & months (well before it came out) but I’m not sure. Jon Courtenay Grimwood slowly got over the penchant for ultra-violence, and maybe Richard Morgan will too. I’ve been staying away from the formerly-mentioned Mr Asher for similar reasons… Although I think I’ve read a good short story in Interzone and he’s debuting in the June Asimov’s (arriving soon I hope)…

One Response to “Morgan, Richard - Altered Carbon”

1. Philthy McBastard says:
   May 22nd, 2004 at 12:28 am

   Hey man,

   I must admitt I stumbled upon you blog by meer accident. But I am pleasently suprised. I too am a sci-fi fan and have just recently (3 days ago) finished reading Altered Carbon and I agree with you almost on many points. But the one thing that truly impressed me was looking at Richard Morgans website and peering at his recommened readings. What I initally found to be too many parallels to “Modern Sci-Fi” translated into a self stylized approach to the old school. At any rate I really did enjoy the book and cannot wait to read the next. And by the way, thanks for the awesome list of authors mentioned here. I will be sure to look them up at my local library.

   Sincerely,

   Philthy