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Altered Carbon Holds Up as a Compelling Cyberpunk Mystery
I first read Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs trilogy years ago, and really enjoyed it. When word arrived that Netflix had commissioned a series based on the first book, Altered Carbon, I awaited it with eagerness—and was not disappointed in the result. But the TV series does include a major plot element I did not remember at all. Not that I pretend to remember everything from a book I read more than 10 years ago—but I thought that I would certainly have remembered this. And then, just as I was deciding whether or not to reread it to satisfy my curiosity, my science fiction book club elected to do so. (If you aren’t in a science fiction book club, I highly recommend it.)
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In the universe of this trilogy, humans discover the remnants of an alien civilization on Mars sometime in the 21st century. The Martian technology and materials found there are used to develop “cortical stacks,” a technological doodad inserted at the base of the skull, which can record and store a person’s consciousness and memories. Initially, the tech is used to permit instantaneous transmission (“needlecast”) of the data that makes up a person to other worlds, leaving the interstellar journeys to the empty starships that travel for years at slower than light speed to get the receiving equipment to another star, along with bodies (or aka “sleeves”) that will house the personalities sent via needlecast.
By the 25th century, and the opening pages of Altered Carbon, a human’s “real death” only occurs if the cortical stack is damaged—otherwise, anyone who dies, whether due to illness or malice, can be “sleeved” into a new body. As one character so eloquently puts it, “Poor Death, no match for the mighty altered-carbon technologies of data storage and retrieval arrayed against him.” The richest “meths” (from Methuselah) are virtually immortal, periodically sleeving themselves into new cloned bodies and storing backups of their stacks, so if a stack is damaged, all they lose are their freshest memories.
Stack tech also allows people to easily enter virtual environments. Or to switch bodies. Or to download themselves into more than one sleeve at a time (although that is strictly illegal).
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Morgan uses the potential of this invention to great effect. His protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is a former Envoy, a highly trained government operative (think super soldier, spy, and master manipulator rolled into one). When he left government service, Kovacs and some other Envoys turned their skills to crime. He was caught, and sentenced to having his stack put in stasis without a body for 120 years. But he is paroled early, needlecast from his home planet, Harlan’s World, to Earth where he is sleeved into someone else’s body. A powerful meth named Laurens Bancroft, over 350 years old, has leased the body, and Kovacs’ mind, to solve a murder—his own.
It’s a classic locked room murder mystery, with an SF twist: Laurens’ head and stack were destroyed with a weapon keyed to the handprints of only Laurens or his wife Miriam. The weapon had been locked in a safe that could likewise be opened only by one of the pair. The police have closed the case as a suicide. Since Bancroft had a backup of his stack and plenty of cloned sleeves, all he lost was 48 hours of memories. But he refuses to believe he killed himself, or that his wife could have murdered him. He’s looking to Kovacs to find the real killer and uncover their motive.
Kovacs must utilize all his Envoy skills to navigate the complex culture of a cyberpunk Earth that is, to him, an alien world, filled with technology that has progressed in the years that he was on ice. He also has to fight, using only those skills and the physical prowess of his sleeve, to avoid real death himself—as someone obviously does not like where his investigation is leading him.
At its core, Altered Carbon is a well-crafted whodunit. We watch, through Kovacs’ first person point of view, as he uncovers clues and follows leads that take him down false trails. The ultimate solution to the mystery is satisfying and surprising.
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But it is also excellent science fiction, with worldbuilding that considers deeply how technology shapes societies and individuals. The stack technology is of foremost relevance to the plot, but we learn a little about those aliens too. Even after humans determine that the beings were interstellar travelers who just happened to visit Mars, they are stuck with the label “Martians,” much the same way the indigenous people of North America were called Indians for centuries. (In the Netflix series, the aliens are called “Elders,” which simplifies things.) We learn much more about the so-called Martians in the other two books of the trilogy, Broken Angels and Woken Furies.
Morgan drops in other SF-nal ideas that could support full stories of their own—as when a character tell Kovacs she was born on “Understanding Day,” the day humanity had a breakthrough in communication with whales, and we not only discovered how intelligent the cetaceans are, but also that they have deep-seated cultural memories of the Martians visiting Earth.
And that plot element in the adaptation that I didn’t remember from the book? It wasn’t in the book. (Major spoiler for TV series ahead.) In the book, Reileen Kawahara, the criminal boss Kovacs confronts at the climax of the story, was simply someone from his criminal past. In the TV series, she is his own sister. (The books do mention Kovacs has two younger siblings, but they don’t figure in the plot at all.) Adding his sister as major character, alongside several flashbacks to his childhood, do well to add depth to Kovacs’ character. That is one of a number of changes made in the trip from page to screen, and a good one. Netflix’s version of the story isn’t better, just different, and both the series and the book are excellent, and worth spending time with, in whichever order you prefer. But one advantage with the book is that you don’t have wait to see if/when Netflix brings out a second season. I plan on continuing on to reread the rest of the trilogy right away. Because I do remember that Woken Furies is one of the best SF novels I have ever read, and a great ending to the story that begins in Altered Carbon.
How does the adaptation of Altered Carbon stack up to the novel?