Altered Carbon - Netflix Cyberpunk

[Goose]

 

Quote

Based on the classic cyberpunk noir novel by Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon is an intriguing story of murder, love, sex, and betrayal, set more than 300 years in the future. Society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitized; human bodies are interchangeable; death is no longer permanent. Takeshi Kovacs is the lone surviving soldier in a group of elite interstellar warriors who were defeated in an uprising against the new world order. His mind was imprisoned, “on ice”, for centuries until Laurens Bancroft, an impossibly wealthy, long-lived man, offers Kovacs the chance to live again. In exchange, Kovacs has to solve a murder … that of Bancroft himself.

 

It’s set to debut on February 2, 2018 on Netflix. Apparently one of the most expensive shows they've made at an average of $7M per episode. 

[deerokus]

The book of Altered Carbon is good and there is enough interesting material to get 9ut of the central concept to make for a really good Netflix  series. Hopeful. 

[cassidy]

9 hours ago, deerokus said:

The book of Altered Carbon is good and there is enough interesting material to get 9ut of the central concept to make for a really good Netflix  series. Hopeful. 

Me too,  love the books. 

[Hawklord]

I so want this to be good. One of my favourite sets of books

[smac]

Fingers crossed. There's a lot of good material in the Kovacs books.

[Danster]

cool, loved the Kovacs books.

[Padaxes]

Fuck yes! I love this book!  While the real world goes to shit TV just keeps getting better and better. Yay for escapism! 

[revlob]

I enjoyed this series of somewhat trashy novels. Looking forward to seeing what Netflix do with the material.

[TehStu]

Oh hell yes. TV is knocking it out of the park at the moment.

[Vespa Alex]

Really looking forward to this. They are books I can always reread and enjoy.

[Harsin]

On 04/12/2017 at 23:02, deerokus said:

The book of Altered Carbon is good

 

Apart from some of the worst sex scenes ever committed to paper.

[deerokus]

That is true enough 

[Benny]

Science fiction writers and sex go together like... Well, they don't go together.

[Harsin]

And they tend to get pervier as they get older as well, see Peter F. Hamilton and his succession of saucy teenage temptresses vigorously sexing up middle-aged men who bear absolutely no resemblance to the author. Don't even go near the later works of Robert Heinlein.

 

I wish Richard Morgan would just stick to the sci-fi action. In one of his books the hero has a bickering Mulder/Scully type relationship with a female cop. At one point they're exchanging repartee, when she suddenly drags him into an alley...

 

 

...and you get a description of her giving the hero a surprise tit-wank (yes really) all written in a style that suggests the author had one hand down his pants when he was writing it.

 

 

Anyhoo, sorry for going off topic. The original Altered Carbon should make for a good series, not so sure about the sequels.

[footle]

Perhaps you’d enjoy the sex scenes in his fantasy series more?

[KartoffelKopf]

 

[JohnC]

 

[Gotters]

that looks really good - nice use of a bit of Nine Inch Nails too which makes any futuristic industrial/cityscape setting seem more authentic.

[revlob]

They've nailed the cyberpunk aesthetic. Dirty hotel lobbies and dark streets filled with light.

[ZOK]

Looks like the Netflix said ‘We don’t care what you do, just make sure it looks like a rip-off of Ghost in The Shell, Bladerunner and the Matrix and it’s all good.’

 

Gimme dat cyberpunk!

[cassidy]

Yeah gotta admit that's a decent looking trailer. Hopes are high. 

[pastry]

Quote

Kovacs is the lone surviving soldier in a group of elite interstellar warriors who were defeated in an uprising against the new world order. 

 

Hah, of course. Thank god the premise sounds otherwise brill.

Is that the guy from Iron Fist?

[ryanm]

44 minutes ago, pastry said:

 

Hah, of course. Thank god the premise sounds otherwise brill.

Is that the guy from Iron Fist?

That stuff is a departure from the books, and I'm not at all convinced by it.

[Benny]

The dialogue in that trailer was proper shite.

[Delargey]

 

12 hours ago, ryanm said:

That stuff is a departure from the books, and I'm not at all convinced by it.

 

Would you recommend the books?

[ryanm]

48 minutes ago, Delargey said:

 

 

Would you recommend the books?

Overall yeah - the central conceit of digitising and transferring minds raises interesting questions and is explored pretty well, and the world is imaginative.

Just brace yourself for some of the most toe-curling sex scenes ever committed to print.

[footle]

23 hours ago, ryanm said:

That stuff is a departure from the books, and I'm not at all convinced by it.

 

Is it? It sounds a lot like the backstory from the later books to me. Don’t think it was necessarily revealed in Altered Carbon though.

 

(it’s going to be twenty years since I read them).

 

ten seconds on Wikipedia and it’s close enough, and apparently it can only be 12 years since I read Woken Furies

[Hawklord]

Richard Morgan finally blogs about it

 

https://www.richardkmorgan.com/2018/01/fragments-of-a-jet-lagged-dream/

[Danster]

Great blog post. It must be amazing to see your words translated into "reality". He sounds super hyped about it, unsurprisingly.

[ryanm]

12 hours ago, footle said:

 

Is it? It sounds a lot like the backstory from the later books to me. Don’t think it was necessarily revealed in Altered Carbon though.

 

(it’s going to be twenty years since I read them).

 

ten seconds on Wikipedia and it’s close enough, and apparently it can only be 12 years since I read Woken Furies

I might be getting mixed up: my recollection is that he's an apolitical career criminal after leaving the envoys, and completely cynical about all anti-protectorate causes right up to the end of the third book.

Immediately before waking up on earth he's being shot to bits by police while preparing for a violent robbery. 

Dying as the hero of a desperate revolution is a bit of a departure.