I've been reading sci fi since the 1960s and I've been stuck in the Golden Age of Asimov, Clarke, & Heinlein for most of my life. Even Jack Chalker, Jerry Pournelle, & Larry Niven seem like hacks alongside their giant ancestors.
However Morgan has firmly dragged me into the 21st century with his books, for which I'm going to have to (*gasp*) pay real money and add to my personal collection.
Although his predecessors hit it with short stories & magazines, Morgan spent over 15 years getting his first novel in print while teaching English as a second language. This is his fourth novel, I don't think he's done anything shorter, and it's a heckuva hard way to make the best-seller lists.
"Woken Furies" is his third and possibly best tale of film-noir mercenary criminal Takeshi Kovacs. It's tough-guy private detective stuff, but the twist is that future humanity has colonized the stars and perfected the art of "digitized humans". People can live in their own bodies (well, just about any body), in cheap synthetic robots, or in virtual reality. Hardware "cortical stacks" are attached to brains to record their personae & experiences. Add in wireless Internet archival and corporeal death becomes meaningless-- as long as you recover the cortical stack or have an uncorrupted backup copy in secure storage. (A "virus" in this world is a mutating biological software nightmare.) "Sleeve" yourself into a new (cloned) body and you're good to go. Spaceships are for robot freighters, not people-- digitally hypercast your archived self to a new planet for a different resleeve and a new life. The possibilities (and lifespans) are endless as long as you can afford it!
Morgan drops you in the middle of Kovacs' problems and lets you sort out the plot with its endless subplots & conspiracies. Kovacs is a modern-day equivalent of Robert Mitchum in a Raymond Chandler novel (or for you kids, Spenser in Robert B. Parker). Tough guys are replaced with combat-ready neurachem-boosted sleeves, guns & fistfights are replaced by blasters & martial arts, babes become troubled gritty grrl heroines, cigarettes & alcohol are replaced with recreational hallucinogens & tetrameth. Sex & pornography have, of course, made similar "advances". I also appreciate the unexpected literary gifts. Morgan's first book invoked Jimi Hendrix as an AI running a hotel, and "Woken Furies" pays homage to Kem Nunn's books with a beachside colony of multi-centenarian revolutionaries turned surfers. When you can practice your cutbacks for decades, you get pretty good at the lifestyle while selling your trained surfing sleeves to kooks & groms. Kovacs is nursing a grudge this time but "Furies" refers to the "Hell hath no fury like a women scorned" storyline with a sci-fi vengeance.
I'm hooked. I read each Morgan book three times-- once for the exploration & surprises, a second time to figure out all the foreshadowing and setups, and a third time to enjoy a writer reveling in his craft. Now I'll have to stack all three next to my recliner and read them in one long story arc. "Whaddya DO all day?" indeed-- it's like Harry Potter for grownups. Did I mention that I really like Morgan's books?
"Woken Furies" stands alone. You don't have to read "Altered Carbon" or "Broken Angels" first but it certainly puts the later books into a deeper and more complicated context. And if you like Morgan's surfers, you'll like Kem Nunn's even better. (Thanks, Ronin!)
However Morgan has firmly dragged me into the 21st century with his books, for which I'm going to have to (*gasp*) pay real money and add to my personal collection.
Although his predecessors hit it with short stories & magazines, Morgan spent over 15 years getting his first novel in print while teaching English as a second language. This is his fourth novel, I don't think he's done anything shorter, and it's a heckuva hard way to make the best-seller lists.
"Woken Furies" is his third and possibly best tale of film-noir mercenary criminal Takeshi Kovacs. It's tough-guy private detective stuff, but the twist is that future humanity has colonized the stars and perfected the art of "digitized humans". People can live in their own bodies (well, just about any body), in cheap synthetic robots, or in virtual reality. Hardware "cortical stacks" are attached to brains to record their personae & experiences. Add in wireless Internet archival and corporeal death becomes meaningless-- as long as you recover the cortical stack or have an uncorrupted backup copy in secure storage. (A "virus" in this world is a mutating biological software nightmare.) "Sleeve" yourself into a new (cloned) body and you're good to go. Spaceships are for robot freighters, not people-- digitally hypercast your archived self to a new planet for a different resleeve and a new life. The possibilities (and lifespans) are endless as long as you can afford it!
Morgan drops you in the middle of Kovacs' problems and lets you sort out the plot with its endless subplots & conspiracies. Kovacs is a modern-day equivalent of Robert Mitchum in a Raymond Chandler novel (or for you kids, Spenser in Robert B. Parker). Tough guys are replaced with combat-ready neurachem-boosted sleeves, guns & fistfights are replaced by blasters & martial arts, babes become troubled gritty grrl heroines, cigarettes & alcohol are replaced with recreational hallucinogens & tetrameth. Sex & pornography have, of course, made similar "advances". I also appreciate the unexpected literary gifts. Morgan's first book invoked Jimi Hendrix as an AI running a hotel, and "Woken Furies" pays homage to Kem Nunn's books with a beachside colony of multi-centenarian revolutionaries turned surfers. When you can practice your cutbacks for decades, you get pretty good at the lifestyle while selling your trained surfing sleeves to kooks & groms. Kovacs is nursing a grudge this time but "Furies" refers to the "Hell hath no fury like a women scorned" storyline with a sci-fi vengeance.
I'm hooked. I read each Morgan book three times-- once for the exploration & surprises, a second time to figure out all the foreshadowing and setups, and a third time to enjoy a writer reveling in his craft. Now I'll have to stack all three next to my recliner and read them in one long story arc. "Whaddya DO all day?" indeed-- it's like Harry Potter for grownups. Did I mention that I really like Morgan's books?
"Woken Furies" stands alone. You don't have to read "Altered Carbon" or "Broken Angels" first but it certainly puts the later books into a deeper and more complicated context. And if you like Morgan's surfers, you'll like Kem Nunn's even better. (Thanks, Ronin!)
I'll have to check out Woken Furies this summer. All finance reading all the time has my head spinning. I need some fun reading. 
