Altered Carbon

“From the slight widening of the young woman’s eyes I guessed that she had summoned them on an internal mike. Slick. On Harlan’s World people are still a bit averse to sticking racks of hardware into themselves, but it looked as if Earth was going to be a different proposition.”

Despite having access to advanced technology on both worlds, there are cultural differences that Kovacs recognizes. One is the extent to which people integrate technology into their bodies. In this case, Earth as a culture is more willing to integrate technology, making Kovacs less sure of his surroundings. The understated word “Slick” conveys his admiration but also his unease.

“I looked down at my hands and found they had quite unconsciously taken out Kristin Ortega’s cigarettes. I was in the middle of tapping one out of the pack. Nerves. Feeling oddly betrayed by my new sleeve, I put the pack away.”

Kovacs does not intend to be a smoker in his new sleeve but finds that his sleeve wants to smoke. This gesture highlights the theme of The Instability of Identity Across Different Bodies. It dramatizes the tension between Kovacs’s consciousness and Ryker’s physical legacy.

“There are ruins, steeped in shadow, and a bloodred sun going down in turmoil behind distant hills. Overhead soft-bellied clouds panic toward the horizon like whales before the harpoon, and the wind runs addict’s fingers through the trees that line the street.”

In this excerpt, Morgan uses imagery and personification—“bloodred sun going down in turmoil”—to render the landscape as violent and amplify the unsettling nature of the trauma in Kovacs’s past. He describes the clouds as whales fleeing a harpoon, which creates an atmosphere of danger and fear, amplifying what Kovacs already experienced. These stylistic choices externalize his trauma.

“A row of eight metallic cylinders not unlike the one I’d woken up in yesterday were ranked along one wall, but where my birthing tube had been unpainted and scarred with the million tiny defacements of frequent use, these units carried a thick gloss of cream paint with yellow trim around the transparent observation plate and various functional protrusions.”

When Kovacs visits Laurens’s birthing tanks for his other clones, he witnesses just how wide the wealth disparity on Earth is. Laurens has the resources and privilege to keep multiple tubes in perfect condition, waiting for his use, while Kovacs and others use overused and broken ones. This difference highlights how the wealth of the Meths isolates them in society, changing their worldview and ethics.

“I walked out through the open door and left her standing there with her arms wrapped around her chest and her head down, staring at the satin-padded floor of the cabin as it she was seeing it for the first time. Lit in red.”

Morgan uses imagery to amplify the tension in Altered Carbon. In this particular scene, after Kovacs visits Anemone, he turns and sees her contemplating what he said. Whereas before she was playing the part of an eager sexual partner, she now looks as though she has woken up to the reality of her life. The description of the room, which is lit in red, also foreshadows her death.

“I caught a final glimpse of Ortega’s face through the rain-streaked cabin window, then the wind seemed to carry the little craft away like an autumn leaf wheeling away and down toward the streets below.”

Morgan uses similes to help ground the speculative nature of his ideas in familiar imagery. In this instance, he uses a simile to compare a flying car to a leaf blowing away in the wind. By doing this, Morgan connects familiar movements to this imaginative technology, bringing the unrecognizable to life.

“I wandered over to the nearest display case and looked in at a selection of samurai swords. There were date tickets attached to the scabbards. Some of them were older than me.”

Kovacs and other characters reach ages far greater than the natural human life span. Throughout Altered Carbon, Morgan highlights this fact through the inclusion of artifacts that date the characters. In this instance, Kovacs sees swords older than he is. He is well over 100 years old, though by the standard of how much time he is awake, he is only middle aged. Despite this, the swords act as a reminder of just how old he is.

“The blowtorch hissed and chuckled softly to itself in the quiet room. Sunlight poured in through the high window and brought with it, infinitely faintly, the sounds of a city full of people.”

When Kovacs is tortured virtually, Morgan amplifies the tension and violence of the act through personification. In this instance, he describes the blowtorch as hissing and chuckling, which are two distinctly human actions. By personifying the blowtorch, Morgan adds a feeling of unease to the scene, suggesting the blowtorch is eager to inflict pain against Kovacs.

“I stuck the Philip’s gun around the corner to the left and, without bothering to look, sewed a silent scribble of bullets across the red-lit air in the corridor. The weapon seemed to sigh them out like branches blowing in a breeze.”

Morgan utilizes similes in Altered Carbon to normalize the violence of this futuristic world. The society that Kovacs faces, both on Harlan’s World and Earth, are gritty worlds where violence is a constant. In this instance, Morgan describes Kovacs’s gun as “sighing,” personifying it before comparing that sigh to “branches blowing in a breeze,” a simile that brings to mind a peaceful image. Both of these uses of figurative language suggest that violent is routine and natural.

“Periodically the whole vessel was reeled gently back down to earth to disgorge its sated customers and take on fresh. There was a queue around two sides of the docking hangar when we arrived, but Ortega jumped it with her badge, and when the airship came floating down through the open roof of the hangar, we were the first aboard.”

Morgan creates a world in which technological marvels are commonplace and unexciting to provide context to concepts like resleeving and stacks. He does this primarily through describing the world around Kovacs, demonstrating how advanced technology impacts every aspect of society. In this excerpt, Morgan describes a floating restaurant, showing how it floats up and down to serve its customers. This tactic trivializes technological marvels.

“The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant spider god.”

When Kovacs and Ortega visit the Panama Rose, Kovacs once again witnesses how storage and birthing tubes are used. This time, however, they are not overused like those at Bay City Central and are not excessively well-preserved like Laurens’s. These are described in an ominous way—their cables are compared to pythons, and their sheer quantity makes them look like an altar. This description provides an alternate view of the stack technology: entertainment. These tubes are meant to churn out a large quantity of bodies, quickly, to entertain crowds waiting for fights.

“When I started running with the gangs and making more money, the ratio and resolution went up, and the scenarios got more imaginative, but the thing that never changed was the stale smell and the tackiness of the ’trodes on your skin when you surfaced afterwards between the cramped walls of the coffin.”

Kovacs reflects on the technology that facilitates virtual reality, and he accepts that no matter how real it feels, it is not actually real. He acknowledges that the quality of the virtual reality improves, especially with access to money, though the technology remains the same. The electrodes he wakes up to every time are the same and serve as a reminder that what he experienced while under them is not real.

“There was no traffic on the bridge. The rust-colored suspensions towers rose like the bones of some incalculably huge dinosaur above deserted asphalt lanes and side gantries lined with unidentifiable detritus.”

One of the most recognizable images in Altered Carbon is the Golden Gate Bridge. Set in a future San Francisco, Morgan takes advantage of the landmark to visualize just how different this world is from the present. He describes the bridge as old, comparing it to the bones of a dinosaur, while also using words like “deserted” and “detritus” when describing it. This creates an image of a dilapidated bridge that no one uses because of their access to flying cars.

“It seemed to take forever to leave the hall, and when the huge steel portals cracked open to reveal the outside world, the light spilled inward was an infusion of life that I grabbed at like a drowning man.”

After his encounter with Reileen Kawahara, Kovacs feels lost and confused and is uncertain of how to move forward. Morgan brings these emotions to life with the use of figurative language. As Kovacs leaves Kawahara’s fortress, the light offers a reprieve and renewed energy. Morgan uses a simile to compare Kovacs’s need of the light to that someone drowning grabbing for something to float on. This image makes it apparent just how unbalanced Kovacs is in this moment and how desperate he is to escape.

“Neither of us said anything for a long time. The ship plowed on its automated way, and around us the dangerous cold of the mirrors lapped inward like any icy tide, threatening to tinge and then drown the intimacy.”

In this excerpt, Morgan depicts the intimacy between Kovacs and Ortega as it fades, and reality descends. After they have sex, they remember that—despite how their bodies reacted to each other—Kovacs is not Ryker. Morgan emphasizes this with figurative language, using a simile to compare the change in their dynamic to that of an icy tide that negatively impacts their feelings for one another.

“If you couldn’t even meet the same person twice in one lifetime, in one sleeve, what did that say about all the families and friends waiting in Download Central for someone they once knew to peer out through the eyes of a stranger? How could that even be close to the same person?”

Throughout Altered Carbon, Morgan explores the theme of the instability of identity across different bodies, specifically through the experiences of people being resleeved into new bodies. In this instance, families see their loved ones in a completely different body, and Kovacs wonders how they can maintain their relationships if the people they love disappear physically. He wonders what it means to have an identity and to understand someone else if their body changes.

“It was a process that could not be braked, a kind of mental avalanche. Chunks of reality splintering away and tumbling downward, except that instead of chaos they were falling into something that had form, a kind of restructured whole whose final shape I still couldn’t make out.”

Kovacs’s Envoy training allows his mind to process information quickly and effectively. When he begins to piece together the mystery of Laurens’s death, he feels the unstoppable force of his mind. Morgan simulates this feeling with descriptive language, comparing what Kovacs feels to an avalanche, with “Chunks of reality splintering away and tumbling down.” This creates an image of chaos, demonstrating that Kovacs does not have control over his thoughts.

“The night passed around the vehicle like cold mist, and I suffered the vague sensation that I was drifting away from the lights of the Elliotts’ home, out to sea on snapped moorings with nothing between me and the horizon where there was a storm building.”

As Kovacs waits outside of the Elliotts’ home for Irene, he feels a creeping sensation of trouble brewing. Morgan foreshadows the climax of the novel and Kovacs’s faceoff with Reileen Kawahara, writing that Kovacs feels as though nothing can stop this looming storm on the horizon. Not only is the storm unstoppable, but Kovacs feels as though he is not attached to anything, hinting at the inevitability of this confrontation.

“By the end of the journey she had it down. I could see the run already unfolding behind her eyes. The tears had dried on her face, forgotten, and her expression was clean-purpose, locked down hate for the man who had used her daughter, and an embodied will to revenge.”

Though Kovacs often feels the need for revenge against his enemies, he is not the only character to navigate The Imbalance of Justice and Revenge. Irene Elliott holds a grudge against Laurens for what he did to her daughter, Elizabeth, though she goes between feeling a need to avenge this and a desire to start fresh and work toward freeing Elizabeth. When Kovacs offers her a real chance at revenge, she takes it. Morgan promotes her desires by describing the need for revenge as “clean-purpose,” demonstrating how single-minded Irene is about it.

“For that matter, so was Kadmin, so maybe it hadn’t been that blatant. Maybe the word had gone out to bring Kadmin down, but only for as long as I was needed. With Bancroft convinced, I was once more expendable and the word had gone out again, to let Kadmin be. He could kill me, or I could kill him, whichever way the luck turned. Leaving Kawahara to clean up whoever was left.”

When Kovacs finds himself in the Panama Rose facing off against Kadmin, he realizes that Kawahara manipulated both him and Kadmin, using them as pawns in her greater scheme. This demonstrates how Morgan explores The Impact of Immortality on Ethics through Kawahara, reflecting her view that human life is expendable by setting up her primary tools in the conspiracy to eliminate each other.

“Out on the killing floor, the noise was less uniform, more uneven. Individual voices sawed across the background like bottleback fins in choppy water.”

The figurative language and imagery reflect the atmosphere of the scene. Here, as Kadmin and Kovacs are about to fight in front of an audience of people Ryker wronged, the language simulates the tension. The word “uneven” and his description of voices that “sawed across the background” suggest that Kovacs is in a hateful and distracting environment.

“I was surprised how flat the name suddenly sounded to me. Without Ryker’s pheromonal interface, I was left with little more than a vague appreciation that the woman beside me was very attractive in a lean, self-sufficient way.”

When Kovacs resleeves out of Ryker’s body, he feels his attraction toward Ortega change. He does not feel drawn to her without the connection Ryker’s body had with her, prompting him to reflect on how Ryker’s body impacted his identity and relationships. It creates a moment of doubt in which the physical body becomes a part of how the mind sees and interacts with the world.

“The sensation was a dimly remembered joy, something this sleeve did not recall at a cellular level. From the cramped confines of the tube and the noisy vibration of the transport’s engines I was suddenly blasted into absolute space and silence.”

In the body Kovacs resleeves into to face off against Kawahara, he once again encounters a moment in which his body and mind are not in sync. When Ortega ejects him from the ship, Kovacs’s mind remembers the rush and thrill of such an action from previous missions, but he realizes that his body, having not experienced this yet, does not. Kovacs fails to feel what he expects to, once again forcing him to reflect on the relationship between his mind and body.