Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Altered Carbon

I really dig the hardboiled sf/mystery style (Lethem also does this really well). After Halting State, all the violence and action that Morgan packs into his work was especially welcome. It's not great literature, but it's a fun ride.

I have this massive fear of being trapped. Trapped underground in a tight cave. Trapped under the ice (not that I have ever seen a really frozen lake or pond - I'm a Florida boy). Trapped in my own body, mind alive but unable to move (China Miéville's books tap into some of that, especially some of the punishments in the Bas-Lag novels). So Morgan's vision of mind being kept "on the stacks", frozen in time or manipulated by anyone who can afford the technology, really gave me the heebie jeebies.

Not to mention all the brutality in Altered Carbon. Now, this isn't packed full of detailed violence like Chung Kuo, by David Wingrove, but he does linger on some pretty fucked up torture a time or two. I don't have a problem with that. It fuels the rage behind the story, and who among us isn't a little fascinated by blood and gore?

All in all, a dark, flowing cyberpunk adventure. I thought I knew the answer to the whodunit early on but turned out to be wrong - a good thing, indeed. I look forward to reading more in the series.

Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem

Gun, with Occasional Music

I just realized that Lethem writes books I enjoy. By which I mean I just looked up his past work and found out he also did Motherless Brooklyn, which I read a few years ago and suggested to several people. I didn't make that connection until now.

I like twisty, noir-ish mysteries and hardboiled investigators... I mean inquisitors. (Which, by the way, if you dig that style you should pick up a few by Kinky Friedman, because he does a great Chandler.) I like unsettling and amoral scientific processes applied willy nilly to a defenseless population. I like custom drugs, Demolition Man style prisons, and the idea of mainstream media broadcasting appropriate music rather than the facts of the day.

Well, no, most of that scares me shitless in real life, but you get me. On paper, that's solid gold. And Lethem bends and crafts it beautifully. I've found that a lot of authors, once they get a concept like "babyheads", feel compelled to lay the whole thing out right there. Really explain the background and the effects. Show it off like a new toy, "See? And then they did *this* and *this* happened," when the actual protagonist would have no reason to delve into that kind of exposition or may not even know that info at all. Lethem's better at just taking us along for the ride, letting the info slide in naturally as it comes up, not bothering to explain what can be guessed (musical news, for instance).

Basically, I'd like to thank my girlfriend for giving me this book, because now I want to hunt down everything else Lethem's written and see how it holds up.

final thought: And, regardless of genre or time period, the cops are still mostly dicks.