Altered Carbon / Broken Angels (Morgan)

One of the few complaints I have with the Year’s Best Science Fiction is that editor Gardner Dozois overuses the adjective “pyrotechnic” for stories. However, I can’t find another word that accurately captures these two books (Altered Carbon and Broken Angels) by Richard K. Morgan. Rarely have I read such a rich combination of technology, action, and introspection.
The central character of both books is Takeshi Kovacs, a native of Harlan’s World (settled by Japanese companies who hired cheap Eastern European labor). Kovacs is a former UN Envoy, meaning that he’s undergone an extensive set of psychological and physical modifications to his body. Of course, the physical mods are secondary, because in Morgan’s future world, most folks are fitted with “cortical stacks” that act sort of like flight data recorders for the human brain. By putting your stack in a new body (or “sleeve”), you can easily be resurrected– as long as your stack isn’t damaged or lost.That opens up a wealth of possibilities, including bodiless business travel (check in in LA, have your stack contents broadcast to Osaka, and get a new sleeve for your 8am meeting),and virtual reality environments for police interrogation, psychotherapy, torture, and integration of stacks with military campaigns. One jarring note to this world is that life is extremely cheap; mass murder is fairly commonplace, and this is offputting. To say that Kovacs is cynical would be extreme understatement; on the other hand, when you end up a mercenary who can be resurrected time after time by resleeving, it’s hard to imagine turning out any other way. However, his cynicism is tempered by a fine eye for the good qualities in his fellow beings (although given who he works for, and with, these are depressingly few) and a sharp wit.
The actual plots of the books are relatively unimportant (although they are both well-plotted and engaging). The first book is a straightforward murder mystery; the second is a more complicated tale of the hunt for an artifact of great value. Both have a large number of plot twists and reversals that Morgan choreographs expertly. The only real moment of disbelief I had was when Kovacs ends up in Bay City, nee San Francisco; the odds that the city will still exist in 500 years defies probability.
To me, what made these books so fascinating was the density of well-realized future concepts that X throws off. Among his ideas: power knuckles (a cross between brass knucks and a cattle prod), an AI-operated Haight Ashbury hotel in San Fransciso named the Hendrix, street broadcasters who transmit direct-to-brain commercials (which, fortunately, can be filtered by vehicles), Catholics who shun resleeving technology for religious reasons, sleeve leases, custom-built genotypes for various tasks (i.e. a radiation-resistant sleeve based on Maori genes), criminals whose stacks are stored (effectively incarcerating them, unaware, without the consequences of traditional prisons)liquid spacesuits that harden into impermeable, self-healing units when activated, and– oh yes– Martians, who have all gone *somewhere* but not before leaving behind a variety of artifacts (including maps to several terrestroid planets and faster-than-light communications equipment). Morgan tosses these out like confetti; it’s not so much that he explains them in depth as that he very deftly sketches the implications of technical developments today in a way that makes it clear where we’re headed.
I suppose the best recommendation I can give thse books is this: I haven’t felt the same sense of mingled possibility (O brave new world, that has such wonders in it!) and dread (imagine if things *do* turn out this way in 500 years). These two are on my end-of-year “10 Best” list.