Altered Carbon – Richard K. Morgan
Just finished this quite outstanding first novel from Richard K. Morgan. Very Cyberpunk although it is set well into the future. Humans are defined as a digital conscious and that is kept in a cortical stack which can be implanted into the neck in a human body - a 'sleeve'. This allows travel to distant colonised planets by sending the digitised information via a needlecast transmission. The original colonists on each planet had to fly by space but once they are there they can get back to earth in moments but ending up in a different 'sleeve'.
The main action happens on Earth and is essentially a detective story but in a very noir fashion. Takeshi Kovacs, an Envoy, is the main character and he is hired by Bancroft to find out who killed him. Bancroft is still alive because he is rich enough to hold several cloned versions of his body and also back up his cortical stack every 48 hours - things that ordinary people can't afford. There is a nice religious twist to this in that the Catholics (the only remaining religion) are not allowed to resleeve and therefore when they are killed they die.
Excellent plot and action. Would make a good film but the sleeving would make it difficult for dweebs to follow what was going on and who was actually who!
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