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Proteus Jones posted:LOL. The first book is amazing. The next two are goodish to good. I'd suggest that, depending on what one enjoyed about Altered Carbon, the next two books are even better. I liked the noir elements in Altered Carbon just fine, but most enjoyed the hints of world building concerning the Martians and Quell -- both of those elements were expanded on and developed in interesting ways in the next two books (particularly the Martian stuff in Broken Angels). If anyone read Altered Carbon and liked those two things, it's definitely worth reading the next two. The sex scenes remains dreadful, but that just seems to be Morgan's deal, I guess. Cautiously looking forward to this series, but some of the basic changes they've made to some characters from Kovacs's past sound pretty dumb and unnecessary from the previews I've read.
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Feb 1, 2018 02:47
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Proteus Jones posted:I can respect that. Personally, I was disappointed the next two stepped away from the noir styling. While good and worth reading, the next two just didn't grab me like the first did. It's been *ages* since I read them, so maybe on re-read I'll have a different opinion. Yeah, one thing that anyone wanting to read the whole trilogy should know is that each book is effectively a different genre. The first is a noir detective story, the second is a mashup of war and archaeology adventure, and the third is a heist book. I enjoyed that each presented a different style, but I'd also welcome Morgan cranking out some more noir cyberpunk stuff. Or maybe just a book about the Martians and/or Quell (if he could leave out the sex stuff).
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Feb 1, 2018 03:14
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navyjack posted:The Envoys, iirc, were created as a response to Quellism, which, as a philosophy keeps cropping up and causing problems. I don't think that's right -- my recollection is the Envoys are a UN thing that predates Quell, and are basically created to deal with the problem of governing colonies on the former Martian worlds that humanity settles, where you can needlecast in data to fill a stack and sleeve troops right away, but to send actual trips on a ship would take generations. There's a part early in the book where Kovacs explains it to Bancroft: "Space, to use a cliché, is big. The closest of the Settled Worlds is fifty light years out from Earth. The most far-flung four times that distance, and some of the Colony transports are still going. If some maniac starts rattling tactical nukes, or some other biosphere-threatening toys, what are you going to do? You can transmit the information, via hyperspatial needlecast, so close to instantaneously that scientists are still arguing about the terminology but that, to quote Quellcrist Falconer, deploys no bloody divisions. Even if you launched a troop carrier the moment the poo poo hit the fan, the marines would be arriving just in time to quiz the grandchildren of whoever won. That’s no way to run a Protectorate. OK, you can digitise and freight the minds of a crack combat team. It’s been a long time since weight of numbers counted for much in a war, and most of the military victories of the last half millennium have been won by small, mobile guerrilla forces. You can even decant your crack d.h.f. soldiers directly into sleeves with combat conditioning, jacked-up nervous systems and steroid built bodies. Then what do you do? They’re in bodies they don’t know, on a world they don’t know, fighting for one bunch of total strangers against another bunch of total strangers over causes they’ve probably never even heard of and certainly don’t understand. The climate is different, the language and culture is different, the wildlife and vegetation is different, the atmosphere is different. poo poo, even the gravity is different. They know nothing, and even if you download them with implanted local knowledge, it’s a massive amount of information to assimilate at a time when they’re likely to be fighting for their lives within hours of sleeving. That’s where you get the Envoy Corps." So my understanding is the Envoy Corps are developed because of the realities of the colonial worlds and the availability of the stack/sleeve and needlecast technologies. Quell is a Harlan's World revolutionary -- and she's certainly presented in the book as being interested in smashing the local governing system in ways that makes the Protectorate antsy -- but it doesn't seem to me that the UN creates the Envoys to deal with Quell. I say this having only read the books, and not yet having tried out the show, but everything I've read here about the changes they made to what the Envoys are, who Quell was, and how stacks works sounds really weird, and not great compared to the books, and if Morgan was on board with all, it makes me think that the things I enjoy and think are important in the books must be totally different than what he thinks.
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Feb 10, 2018 01:06
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MrMojok posted:I don’t think Morgan had anything at all to do with the poo poo-stupidity of what they did to the Envoy Corps/Quellists/Rei Has he said anything about the changes in the show? I thought I read that he had some involvement when it was being made, but I can't find anything specific. Not that I'm sure I'd really trust Morgan's judgment, given his hilarious defense of the sex scenes he writes McCoy Pauley fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 03:36
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I've really been enjoying these write-ups. Interesting about how the show seems to lead to the third book. I'd like a well done, faithful adaptation of Broken Angels more than I would want almost any sci-fi adaptation I can think of, but given the changes the showrunners made here to fundamental storylines and characters -- changes that seem hard to understand how someone would think some of them are a good idea -- a well done take on Broken Angels seems impossible.
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Feb 10, 2018 16:58
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