[Honolulu_Blue]

Altered Carbon - by Richard Morgan

I am a little over 100 pages into this book. It's a sci-fi book set 500 years in the future. It's a mix of cyber-punk and hard-boiled detective/crime fiction. So far, I'm really enjoying it and would recommend it to anyone who likes cyber-punk type stuff.

It’s a pretty decent read, wraps some interesting science fiction ideas inside of a lot of ultra violence and explicit sex. It’s the holy grail for a 15-year-old sci-fi geek to stumble across in the library. Altered Carbon is the first of a loose trilogy, followed up by Broken Angels and Woken Furies. The interesting science fiction of the novel revolves around “sleeving.” Basically, everybody has a little black box embedded in the back of their skull that records all thoughts and personality. Bodies are just sleeves to be worn in this society. There are lots of philosophical bits between the explosions and sex: the rich collect bodies to wear on a whim, the poor literally sell their bodies, physical murder is just property damage, deleting a final back-up is an unspeakable crime, soldiers are sleeved in genetically engineered super bodies, certain religions forbid re-sleeving after death.