Altered Carbon Audiobook

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), 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. . . .

"Morgan's debut novel, the first in a series, combines noir mystery with ultra-high tech science to create a complex sf thriller. Featuring a hard-nosed antihero with his own sense of personal honor and ethics, this is highly recommended for sf collections."—Library Journal

Download and start listening now!

"I thought I had read the majority of really good cyber punk or near future sci-fi books that deal with the era for a personal perspective. I have read some of Gibson and some of Neal Stephenson and even a lesser author accoladed author Mel Odom who did a great mixture of a noir Crime thriller complete with a sociopath in a cyberpunk setting. I bring that book up because the main character in this book is very much the flawed hero in the three cyber punk books that Richard K Morgan has done. This book is just exactly as billed in that it is a noir styled cyber punk book with our protagonist Takeshi always finding a way to work his way through very complex circumstances where human natures dark and selfish side is melded to powerful biologic, electronic, and mechanical technology. Thus you have a world were every one has their essence shifted away from their physical body and distilled down to what is contained in their Cortical stacks. So in essence the human person is containable in a cylinder about the size of a cigarette butt inserted at birth at the base of their brain. The body whether regular, designer or synthetic is just a sleeve that completes the physical manifestation of the human. And Takeshi Kovacks is further altered in a far less common way because he was a good enough military man with surplus smarts so he was part of a top secret program to create a particularly adaptable and augmented form of human that is free of all of mans natural mammal instincts and is augmented with both nano-electronic tech in his cortical stack and training that allow him to have amazing control over his emotions, perfect and total recall of all he experiences, and the ability to tweak the brain or nervous system he is in for all that it is worth. Further more unlike most humans going to and fro from various bodies is much easier for him and he can adapt far faster than the average person. Being cyberpunk, it goes without saying the future he envisions is not the beginning of the creation of star fleet. In his dystopic future it is leftists who also dislikes leftist solutions, most elaborate night mare of the corruption of societal institutions through acquisitive action of man acting in his own selfish interests in an interplanetary capitalist system. There is a governing body but the power behind the throne is really hierarchical groupings of various business Cartels that have absolutely zero redeeming qualities.And while I would to predict such a bleak future for man kind as these books do, our author is no facile dabbler on the subjects of politics, philosophy or human nature. In fact there are passages that amazingly quotable for their pithy construction and deep insight. In Altered Carbon the main focus is about a very simple crime investigation of a powerful human plutocrat that literally has been around long enough to remember when man did not have the ability to go from body to body to preserve his own life And one of the big themes in this book is how has this technology altered what it means to be human. It is explored by delving into the considerable excess and dysfunction that are both inside the family of his Plutocratic Client Mr Bancroft and his wife as well by delving into all the various forces that would come into play if you had a murder scenario of a very important citizen. I found the book extremely engaging and thought provoking both in the rather beautiful but graphic descriptions of the world and the action that can take place full of technological wonders an horror, as well as by the inner monologue of the protagonist who is constantly trying to figure out how to find a way to go forward in his life in a way that both allows him to survive and benefit but does not make him part of what he so often observes around him as a wide variety of human dysfunction and selfishness. He is only ever modestly successful in this and yet you find yourself pulling for him because in the end Kovacs always takes care of those who deal with him the most honestly and are not already attached to something that he might have to clash with. I once read an interview with Richard Morgan that described Noir as everything that is not disney. I find that a very hard definition of noir that lacks the elements of romance or anti-hero idealism that I believe in other forms of noir both on film and in books but it is certainly the very hardest core interpretation of it. I think that Altered Carbon is a must read book because while very dark, it is very elegantly dark, with a very believable and visceral world for one to sink their teeth into, even if the point of view is almost too cynical and hopeless at time. The prose is extremely readable and at times even beautiful and quotable. And while I would not say that the book has a happy ending the book does have a satisfying resolution. I think I missed out on this book when it first came out because I was very sick at the time, but it won the Phillip K Dick award as was generally praised all around. And the Phillip K. Dick fans are a picky lot. I would have to put this book up there beyond Gibson's and more on par but even more elegantly put together as my favorite cyber punk books, Snow Crash, and Diamond Age. The world is so compelling and the character is so likable even though he is in no way some super hero. Even if you are like me and you get a bit tired of all speculative fiction trying to be creative and impactful by going hopelessly dark, you will still really deeply enjoy these books for three main reasons. One they are simply well written words, and two, the world is just that well described and explained as to evoke a massive amount of pleasant internal imagining, and three that where the book goes dark, it is not a pretense but rather an expression of a very smart mans exasperations with the various problems of mankind on both a personal and political level that show he has read and thought about the subject in the real world quite a bit before choosing to comment on it in his dystopic rendering of a future world for humanity."

— Occamsbeard (5 out of 5 stars)