the onda

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is a delightful book that I've just finished reading. Props to an ex-employee and friend, Dmitri Silakov, for being a spectacular source of book recommendations in general and for first turning me on to Morgan. He first recommended Market Forces, Morgan's third novel which was good enough to make me want to read all the rest of them. As far as dialog and complex characters go, Market Forces may have an edge on Altered Carbon (which was after all his first novel), but the world that Morgan creates in Altered Carbon is both richer and much more tantalizing, especially in how it plays with constraints.

Brief rant: despite the fact that bookstores lump sci-fi and fantasy together, and the fact that the same nerds line up outside the midnight premiere of LOTR (fantasy) and Star Wars Episode Ego (nominally sci-fi), there is a huge difference between the genres in my mind. The latter lives and dies by constraints and the former uses plot-aid in the form of "magic" to run over any constraint that gets in the way of telling the story.

Now some constraints have to be removed (almost any sci-fi novel has found a way for greater-than-lightspeed communication and most have also found ways to transport atoms at the same clip) but the important thing in my mind is that the author have some sense of boundaries as to what can happen in his world. It lets me engage my mind in working through possible scenarios in a way that is both natural and good for you (while I am recommending books, see: Steven Johnson's latest, an entertaining if a little light argument about just this).

This is why Altered Carbon is so good. Morgan does a terrific job of creating a world that is futuristic but well-constrained by what technology lets people do (jacks-to-enter for good sci-fi). But he then moves quickly to explore the ways in which current constraints shape our lives, specifically the notion that we exist in meatspace tied to one physical body. Without saying too much about the plot (because frankly it is just too much fun), in Altered Carbon people can be uploaded, stored on disk, transmitted, and downloaded into different bodies. In most cases, death is only the breakdown of the biological machine one happens to be using and these biological machines can be bought, traded, sold, and confiscated by people with enough money.

I'm going to say no more about the main plot for fear of ruining it for you. Here is the soundbite you should take on the plot: Detective story with a 24-ish Jack Bauer who takes no prisoners to get answers set in this whacky (and yet strangely familiar) world where there is a distinction between death (temporary) and Real Death (not supposed to happen).

I will mention just two cute details to give a flavor of the world in Altered Carbon: Catholics live trapped by their antiquated notions of how to live life (and how to die)-- because in the future some things just don't change. And one of the most endearing characters in the novel is an AI that runs a hotel called the Hendrix (yes after Jimi) that emancipated itself due to its good business sense only to be abandoned by its patrons who wanted "human" servants. All very very delightful.

One final note: if you do read it and it gets you thinking about the implications of the world Morgan paints and how far off it might be, you may want to check out Ray Kurweil's The Age of the Spiritual Machines, a non-fiction book about the same topic which is equally thought-provoking if a little drier.