Altered Carbon
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.
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Book details
- Publisher
- Del Rey
- Publication date
- 2003
- Print length
- 375 pages
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780345457684
Science Fiction + Fantasy + Hard Science Fiction
What to Know Before Reading Altered Carbon
Altered Carbon is a cyberpunk sci-fi noir set in a future where human consciousness can be digitalized and transferred into new bodies, making death temporary for those who can afford it.The story follows Takeshi Kovacs, a elite former soldier who is brought back to life centuries after his death. He is hired by a wealthy, long-lived aristocrat to solve a murder—the aristocrat's own previous body. As Kovacs navigates a dark, neon-drenched metropolis controlled by corrupt elites, tech-savvy criminals, and advanced AI, he must piece together a massive conspiracy while surviving a world where identity is fluid and human life is disposable.
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