Morgan's Carbon

I really admire anybody that writes science fiction these days, it's very hard to be original with all that background and the works of giants as Heinlein, Asimov, Dick....etc. Altered Carbon is an entertaining novel, sure you can feel some Chandler's, Gibson's or Haldeman's overtones, but this is expected. Takeshi Kovacs is an interesting character but sometimes you feel that something more should be behind his motivations. Science is not very solid, but this is not an issue in this subgenre.

Nevertheless there comes the question: Personality (Mind, Soul, Auia, whatever) is independent from the body?, you change your body and still you are yourself?

Morgan tries to conceal the answer behind the Envoy training and some "biochemical" love between Ortega and Ryker's body. I can't believe that me, myself, My Self, has nothing to do with the body that carries it. Body identity disorders are a clinical study subject, for instance asomatognosia shows how far the self could be detached from the body, but that shows the necessity of a "whole identity" a complete relationship between mind and body. The stack and sleeves trick in the novel doesn't deal with that, bodies are interchangeable and mind just keep going. Sleeves just WALK out of the tanks, as if we haven't need two years of our lives just to learn how to do it. If some day we can achieve that level of technology we may find that our self is not as easy to download as we believe now.

It was an entertaining reading anyway.