I also particularly appreciated that people *can* still die in various ways. It’s cool to read about, and it’s an interesting take on longevity.

So Kovacs has some immediate culture shock, which is interesting to see.Īlso, obviously, the idea of people’s brains being kept on usb sticks (basically) that you can just stick into the brain stem of another body and what implications that would have is just brilliant. Similarly, it sounds as if only Earth has people wealthy enough to become myths–people who can afford to be resleeved in new clones of their own bodies they grow and keep safe, as well as back up their brains at frequent intervals into a cloud. It sounds as if no other planets have that faction. For instance, Earth has a cadre of people who believe that resleeving is unethical and sign documents saying they are ethically opposed to being resleeved. So each planet has its own distinct culture, and, Kovacs at least, clearly feels that Earth is quite backwards. When he was a UN envoy he fought on one colonized by Middle East cultures. Kovacs’ planet was colonized by the Japanese and Nordic cultures. Earth has colonized various planets, and each planet was colonized by different mixes of cultures. The setting and ideas for this future scifi world are fantastic. Unfortunately, in spite of the very cool resleeving concept, I was left quite bored by the plot. I love a good noir, and I liked the futuristic scifi sound of this one (the most famous futuristic scifi noir is Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, in case you were wondering). Kovacs has no choice but to try to figure out who would waste their time killing a man who has endless sleeves to burn? If he doesn’t, he’ll serve out the rest of his sentence and get resleeved on Earth, far from home. If he solves the mystery, he’ll get sent back to his home planet and get a sleeve of his choice without serving any further sentence.

So he’s hired Kovacs to figure it out for him. After being resleeved, the local police told him it was suicide, but he doesn’t believe them. A rich myth–someone who has been alive for centuries in the same body, due to their wealth–has been killed. Kovacs is an ex-UN envoy but he’s also a criminal, and he wakes up one day in a new sleeve on Earth, not his home planet, before his sentence is up. Criminals are put into the brain bank for a set period of time to serve their “prison” sentence before being resleeved. In the future, people’s memories are backed up on sticks like external hard-drives, and when someone dies, they can just be put into a new body or resleeved.

Altered carbon by richard k morgan