Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon (2002) is Richard Morgan's debut novel and the first of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. In its future, human consciousness can be digitized and stored on cortical stacks at the base of the skull, allowing the wealthy to effectively live forever by transferring between bodies, or "sleeves." Kovacs, a former Envoy Corps operative, is downloaded into a new body in twenty-fifth-century Bay City and hired by a wealthy "Meth," one of the near-immortal elite, to investigate his own apparent suicide. The novel is hardboiled noir transplanted into a cyberpunk dystopia, and the premise of consciousness-as-transferable-data generates most of its moral and political argument. It imagines a world where death is optional for those who can afford it and class stratification has become essentially permanent. Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. Basis for the Netflix series. Signed and dated by Morgan on the title page in year of publication, with "Enjoy the ride!" written above his signature.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth boards with silver lettering on spine. London: Gollancz, 2002. Philip K. Dick Award winner (2003). ISBN: 00575073217. #10298.
Fine in fine dust jacket.