Woken Furies

Morgan, Richard. Woken Furies. London: Gollancz, 2005. Third in the Takeshi Kovacs series, preceded by Broken Angels and before that Altered Carbon.[1]

See citations for earlier works for transferred consciousness. Note in Woken Furies issues of identity with one personality in two bodies (as in Altered Carbon) but also two personalities in one body. Unlike Altered Carbon, where the two Kovacs's get along, in Furies what we'll call Kovacs-prime (the protagonist-Narrator) is opposed by a doppelgänger who is a younger version of himself, and a potentially deadly opponent. Note also that about 2/3 through the story (chapter 35 of 52 in audiobook numbering) the transferable consciousness is directly, if somewhat tentatively, called "soul"; as a rough approximation, "soul" is used more directly later.

Future-war novel, of the guerrilla variety. See for weapons with insectoid, scorpion, and spider-like characteristics, and for "bugs": vehicles here of the anti-gravity/hovercraft variety like the aerial motorcycle-analogs ("speeders") on Planet Endor in the STAR WARS series,[2] but some having mounted weapons. Note also the AI construct for residence and archaeological location of Dig 301; cf. and contrast the Hotel Hendrix in Altered Carbon; there is a mostly-virtual monastery bad-mouthed in dialog as unethical and cowardly escape from a revolutionary situation, but which the audience can judge as a potential pocket-eutopia: a decent little place to escape a pretty bad world.

Of interest to any SCUBA diver: SCUBA gear of the future, with some definite improvements. More important in terms of plot and imagery: what we might call very-deep communications technology braided into or replacing one's hair and allowing military command and control and possibly the retention and shared virtual space with a ghost of a hero long dead. This technology is significant for the theme of two personalities/people/consciousnesses occupying one body, developed in detail ch. 39 or so and following in the printed novel, 41 f.in the audiobook. And related to the question of who the real person is in a body doubly (or more) inhabited is the issue of VR vs. the life we call "real" and which is really real and which the "shadow play." "SPOILER POSSIBILITY": The hair-coms, so to speak, can allow communication with the Martian orbiters for a variation on the theme of First Contact and an additional form of virtual (in two senses) immortality: The destruction of a person by one of the orbital's death rays incorporates into the orbital's or orbitals' immensely large database that person's consciousness and personality (more or less "soul") in a manner that allows eventual downloading into a corporeal "sleeve."

(As with the other novels of the series, Woken Furies is "NC-17" in US film classification: adult literature in terms of explicit violence and quite explicit sex.)

RDE, finishing, 17-22Aug19, 26Aug19, 16Dec20