A disclaimer: a reader's enjoyment of a book always depends on factors outside of the author's control, but Altered Carbon is, more than any recent book I've read, a victim of the circumstances in which I read it. I began Altered Carbon on the plane ride from home back to Yale Law School; I finished it about a week and a half later, through one of the busier stretches of my life. As a result, my experience with Altered Carbon was fractured, sporadic: I would read a few pages a day, then a big chunk, then a few more pages the next day. A lot of my observations--as well as my generally negative feeling toward the book--no doubt stem from the way in which I read it.

That being said, Altered Carbon presents an interesting vision of the future, though there's nothing about this vision that we haven't seen before. In the world of Altered Carbon, minds are distinct from bodies--and thus separable. The book begins with a bloody action scene in which the macho protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is shot down by the police. He wakes up on another planet, and in another body. His death was just a minor inconvenience: like everybody else, Kovacs has a memory device implanted in his head that automatically backs him up in the event of his death; the device can then be implanted into a "sleeve" (essentially a mindless body).

Of course, even though minds are lighter than bodies (and thus easier to transport), it isn't cheap to ship a mind across space and then put it in a fresh sleeve--especially when the mind you're shipping is that of a convicted terrorist. Kovacs is therefore unsurprised to discover that a rich patron, one Mr. Laurens Bancroft, has sponsored this interplanetary trip. What does surprise Kovacs, however, is the job for which he was awakened. It seems that Bancroft is one of those people rich enough to be able to afford the daily uploading of his mind onto orbiting backup satellites. In the event of his death, the idea is, his estate will just be able to download the latest backup, and life for Bancroft will continue as usual. Bancroft has already died several times, usually during thrill-seeking adventures. This time, however, Bancroft wakes up to discover that his earlier self had committed suicide. And Bancroft wants to find out why.

I liked how the central mystery of the novel emerged from Altered Carbon's science-fiction environment without straying too far from the usual tropes of murder mysteries. Kovacs also hews fairly closely to the traditional tough but basically good-hearted detective with a disturbing past. And, like many of his hapless predecessors, Kovacs gets beat up a lot. A lot. (It's painful to read.) And when he's not being beat up, he's beating other people up--are shooting them, or burning them, or decapitating them, as the situation demands. Altered Carbon is as much an action novel as a mystery, and it's a fairly gory one at that.

One big problem with the novel is that it's so unstintingly bleak. I mean, yes, income disparity means that rich people live forever and poor people sell themselves out as sleeves; the drug problem is only growing, endangering innocent lives and enriching criminals; and the most powerful members of society also have a disturbing tendency to be sadists, or at least amoralists: but do you have to be so goddamned depressing? Now I generally don't have a problem with downbeat novels. But Altered Carbon is unrelenting: the world in which Kovacs moves is so tawdry and diseased that it's hard to feel happy about anything--including the book--while you read.

[Side note: I think the book's tone is due in large part to Morgan's thinly disguised dislike for the rich. The entire novel can, in fact, be read as a screed against the ultra-wealthy: money, Morgan argues, warps these people so much that they become something other (and probably less) than human.]

The biggest problem with the novel, however, is that Morgan has a bad habit of mentioning some minor matter, then resurrecting it as a significant fact several chapters down the road--when you've already forgotten what it was. In a mystery, this problem is nearly fatal. In fact, when Morgan flourished the big surprise revelation at the end of the novel, I had to flip back to the first chapter--the first chapter--to refresh my memory about what was going on.

The ending, however, is quite amazing--particularly the way in which the uber-villain is finally dispatched.

Altered Carbon is the first of a series of books starring Kovacs. I hope that Morgan takes his characters off world (or at least out of the city) next time: there is one striking dialogue in the book where the characters hint at the larger universe, including Martians, the "Day of Understanding" when the cetaceans become self-aware, and so on. At the very least, taking the characters somewhere else will introduce some wonder--and counteract an otherwise depressing narrative.

Copyright © 2003 Steven Wu