Just Finished Reading: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (FP: 2001)

Waking up from the dead, in someone else’s body, on an alien planet was never going to be a good start – until it got worse: His new body, his sleeve, was a smoker and he’d just managed to quit. Then there was the reason he’d been brought back. A rich guy, a Meth, a Methuselah who was effectively immortal, had apparently committed suicide but was convinced he’d been killed and wanted Kovacs to find out who killed him. It wasn’t going to be easy. Kovacs was new to Earth, new to its culture and new to the life of the immortals. He needed help and that wasn’t going to come easy either. The police had better things to do than investigate a victimless ‘crime’ but others seemed to have a different agenda – they wanted the investigation stopped and stopped dead if necessary. But in a world where the rich and powerful live forever and even the average person gets a second chance at life how do you come to terms with jumping through time, occupying other bodies and losing the fear of death itself? What would you do to give life meaning if you had forever to find out?

I’d heard of this first as a series from Netflix never having come across the book or the author before that. The clips I saw on YouTube looked interesting so when the reissued paperback came out I picked it up. I have to say that, for a first novel, this was quite something. Although the action takes place several hundred years in the future – in San Francisco – the plot is recognisably Noir. If you’ve ever seen, and enjoyed, the American detective films from the 30’s and 40’s you’ll really like this book. It really has the feel of a grey tone Phillip Marlowe film complete with excellent dialogue (which more than once made me laugh out loud it was so spot on). Likewise with characterisation:  Kovacs himself is a brilliant character, laconic, deeply flawed, hurting (and not just for nicotine) and cynical. He has the Noir sensibility nail down. The main love interest, Kristin Ortega, is equally complex and believable. I liked her and I equally liked the strange assassin/hard case Trepp who didn’t mind too much that Kovacs had killed her earlier in his quest for the truth. But this was far more than a well-executed Future Noir. The implications of effective immortality were both shown and discussed in many of its aspects, how it shaped society, individuals and culture including religion. The issue of being “re-sleaved” in a different body hundreds of years after ‘dying’ is a fascinating idea. Even more so was an almost side issue of those who believe that uploading the consciousness would fail to upload the soul and therefore upload was death. As the legal penalty for many crimes was upload and storage for the length of the sentence to them every crime carried a death sentence! How would you cope with that and what if you were ‘brought back’ for some reason? How would you cope? There’s a novel right there!

Now the caveats: This is essentially a gritty crime novel with an updated Noir sensibility. That means there’s a fair amount of swearing, rather bloody violence and sex. Often taking place in the shadows there’s also drug use, blood sports, sexual exploitation and torture – both real and virtual. Needless to say this is not for the faint of heart! But, if you have the stomach for it, it’s an excellent future noir and I am really looking forward to the other two books in the series. Definitely one of the best SF novels I’ve read in years. Highly recommended.