Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon is a 2002 cyberpunk novel by the English writer Richard K. Morgan. Set in a future in which interstellar travel and relative immortality is facilitated by transferring consciousnesses between bodies ("sleeves"), it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. elite soldier turned private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death. It is followed by the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies. The book was adapted as a Netflix television series, also titled Altered Carbon, in 2018. In 2019 a graphic novel was created with Dynamite Comics. Premise In the future, humans have achieved virtual immortality. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their consciousness. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Their stacks can be downloaded into new bodies, or "sleeves", after death. Roman Catholics do not allow their stacks to be re-sleeved after death, as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics easy targets for murder, since killers know their victim may not be re-sleeved to testify. At the start of the novel, UN Resolution 653 is being debated. This proposition reverses precedent and would allow authorities to temporarily re-sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial. Dual-sleeving, or controlling two bodies with one personality, is strictly prohibited by U.N. law.