The specifics are too vague to discern until much later though. Yes, I did figure out most of it by the end of the first hundred pages. If someone claims to have worked out the entire plot before the climax, he or she is lying. The mystery aspect of the novel is fully satisfactory. He demonstrates this in his attempts to help the unfortunate Elliott family, as well as the level of concern he shows for the cop who reluctantly helps him out because he's sleeved in her boyfriend's body. Why care about a protagonist who seems to place little value on human life and isn't a nice guy in general? Well, the fact that he's a totally fun badass aside, he at least tries to be a good guy. As an antagonist cynically puts it, human life is cheap compared to machines. This becomes a running theme, particularly for the novel's antagonists, and fits with the nihilistic dangers inherent in the novel's principal technology. Morgan constantly portrays Kovacs as a product of his environment-that is, Kovacs is fucked up because he grew that way. Kovacs is far from a sympathetic character. But the body-hopping in Altered Carbon is less about identity and more about the prolonged psychological effects of separating consciousness from attachment to a physical form. He has fun with "double sleeving" Kovacs and introduces a spunky hotel AI. Although the concept of mind uploading is far from new, Morgan is never heavy-handed with it. As a result, the world of Altered Carbon feels rich without trying to force itself down my throat through unnecessary detail. Every new twist in the plot happens to reveal more about this realistic dystopia. On the risk of relying on generalities-because I don't want to get too bogged down in the plot specifics-I'll say that Morgan skilfully balances his setting and his plot, playing the latter off the former. Kovacs' mind gets broadcast from his home planet to Earth, where he's forced by a powerful businessman to solve the businessman's murder. In Altered Carbon, digitising the human mind has become commonplace to the point that the body is just a "sleeve" and everyone gets fitted with a cortical "stack." So as long as the stack is intact, physical death isn't much of a barrier, assuming you've got money. Immediately, Richard Morgan demonstrated he's playing a high stakes game. As an ex-Envoy, Kovacs has had a hard time adjusting to civilian life, so the book starts with him as a fugitive. The main character, Takeshi Kovacs, is an ex-United Nations Envoy, a sort of borderline psychopathic personality who went into messy situations and cleaned them up using any means necessary. This is exactly what I needed: a fast-paced mystery novel wrapped in the goodness of cyberpunk science fiction.
0 kommentar(er)
