Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon” Adapted to Web Series

“In February, Netflix will begin streaming an ambitious adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s debut science fiction novel “Altered Carbon“. The novel is a cyberpunk mystery that delves into issues about wealth and power, and it’s the perfect source material for a prestige television series.

Set in a future where people can trade bodies on a whim, “Altered Carbon” is the first of Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (it’s followed by 2003’s “Broken Angels” and 2005’s “Woken Furies”). Its cynical take on human behavior puts a cyberpunk face on the idle excesses of the super wealthy, a theme that feels more relevant than ever in 2017.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series)

Richard Morgan (born 1965 and known as Richard K. Morgan in the USA) is a British science fiction and fantasy author.

Richard Morgan’s books are generally set in a post-extropianist dystopian world. Morgan described his “takeaway” of one of his books as

“Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by a corrupt, incompetent and irresponsible élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a wilful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the very majority whom the system oppresses.”

In 2002 Morgan’s first novel “Altered Carbon” was published, combining elements of cyberpunk and hardboiled detective fiction and featuring the antihero Takeshi Kovacs.

The film rights for the book sold for a reported figure of $1,000,000 to film producer Joel Silver, enabling Morgan to become a full-time writer. In 2003 the U.S. edition received the Philip K. Dick Award.

In 2003 “Broken Angels” was published, the sequel to “Altered Carbon”, again featuring Takeshi Kovacs and blending science fiction and war fiction in a similar way to his cross-genre début.

Market Forces“, Morgan’s first non-Kovacs novel, is set in the not-too-distant future. It was originally written as a short story, then as a screenplay (both unpublished). After the success of his first two works, it was released as a novel and optioned as a film.

Morgan’s third, and he has stated final, Takeshi Kovacs novel “Woken Furies” was released in the UK in March 2005 and in the U.S. in September 2005.

Black Man” was released in May 2007 in the UK and in June 2007 in the United States (as Thirteen or Th1rte3n).

According to the author, the book is about the constraints of physicality and the fact that you are locked into who you are and there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. These are things he could not deal with in the Kovacs universe, because for Kovacs and people like him mortality is avoidable: you just skip into a new body. The novel subsequently won the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award.

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