Altered Carbon (novel)

Morgan, Richard K. Altered Carbon. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 2002. First in Takeshi Kovacs series, source of the TV series. Available as an audiobook from Audible.com, one of our sources here.

From opening of Wikipedia entry: "Altered Carbon is a 2002 science fiction novel by British writer Richard K. Morgan. Set in a future in which interstellar travel is facilitated by transferring consciousnesses between bodies ('sleeves'), it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. elite soldier turned private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death. It is followed by the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies."[1]

A late cyberpunk work returning strongly to the (sub)genre's roots in the noir detective novel, more specifically of the US West-Coast variety. Of primary interest here for its examination of identity, continuity, and personality in different and even serial (quite literal) embodiments. There is as part of the premise and to some extent plot and dialog the question out of the STAR TREK universe of what might happen to a soul, if people have souls, when one is uploaded, possibly transmitted, and downloaded (in Star Trek the issue involves the transporter and includes the question if transportation involves a kind of secular and routine death and resurrection).[2][3] The dialog in Altered Carbon dismisses issues of soul and favors the importance of embodiment on who one is (cf. in this "Masks" and "No Woman Born"). However, in the over-arching action of Altered Carbon, people move from bodies to bodies with continuity of personality, as in a work such as Frederik Pohl's The Annals of the Heechee, where "vastened" characters go into "gigabit space" for the convenience of the story and without bringing up issues of metaphysics, or physics, or any details of the technology involved. With movements among the significantly named "sleeves" as in in Paul Simon's "The Boxer,"

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RDE, Initial compiler, 11July19, 7Aug19