Altered Carbon; Richard Morgan

growler

anyone read this book ?

Very good storyline , graphically violent at times and some very unusual ideas, the main one being based on people being able to store their own conciousness (stack) and download it into different bodies (sleeves), makes for some interesting scenarios.
worth a read

CiDeRmAn

I think you will find most of us have here!
You are right though a very violent book and his two follow up novels don't lack in that dept. either.
What they do lack however is the sophistication of the first novel, the best of the three so far, but they are fantastic reads, great fun, Woken Furies and Broken Angels.
The next two really go into the whole notion of resleeving and the personal consequences of this technology, not to mention the commercial and military exploitation by those who pull all the strings.

Johnny Storm

Excellent book - one of the very few in recent years that I actually stayed up all night to finish. Not great, deep literature by any means but IMHO a great read, kind of like an exciting thriller with good SF elements.
I thought Broken Angels was almost as good. But Market Forces was crap - almost as if it had been written by a different writer (he does say that the book had a "long and varied evolution" - assume this means that it was written long ago and no one would publish it until after the success of his other books)

Ping Chow Chi

This is one of my favourite books, and one of the few that I will be reading for a second time. The first edition is worth a far bit of money as well for anyone who owns it

If your liked this series, you should also try out Peter Hamiltons' MindStar series as I thought they had a simalar feel to them.

David Stewart

Johnny Storm wrote:

But Market Forces was crap - almost as if it had been written by a different writer (he does say that the book had a "long and varied evolution" - assume this means that it was written long ago and no one would publish it until after the success of his other books)

Actually it was written after. He was approached to write a treatment for a movie. When the deal fell through he rewrote the treatment as a novel.

growler

I'm halfway through Broken Furies at the moment and don't think it's anywhere near as good as Altered Carbon, the resleeving stuff has lost its impact on me.

Johnny Storm

David Stewart wrote:

Actually it was written after. He was approached to write a treatment for a movie. When the deal fell through he rewrote the treatment as a novel.

wow - then if it cant be put down to inexperience, its really amazing how bad it is

David Stewart

I actually liked Market Forces. I read it last year and was amazed at how topical it was. This was at the time when Mark Thatcher was underwriting a coup in an African state.

Johnny Storm

I take your point David.
I was very suprised at how different it was from the other books of his I had read and enjoyed.
It seemed to me to be very Eighties-ish ie yuppies in power suits and BMWs and that whole Gordon Gecko / "business is like war" kind of vibe. I had assumed it had been written in the Eighties
Glad to hear you enjoyed it. Maybe I just came to it on a bad day or something

CiDeRmAn

Nope, my mate and I both disagreed on Market Forces, I enjoyed it as the movie in book form that it is, but he just plain didn't like it.
It read like a series of action sequences, and most of the plot predictable but it was fun never the less.
Don't reckon its sequel material but he wouldn't be the first writer to ruin his reputation by regurgitating rubbish time and time again to the delight of his publishers and to the horror of SF fans. Baxter, Asimov, Clarke take note (well those of you who are alive to take note anyhow, or who read this thread, probably narrows it down a tad).

Read more John Varley, you really, really should you know, start with Steel Beach and The Ophiuchi Hotline, trust me on this.