Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan

A stunning debut sci-fi/noir thriller reminiscent of Blade Runner--and the beginning of a new series featuring a one-of-a-kind anti-hero: ex-UN envoy Takashi Kovaks. \nNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NOW AN EXCITING SERIES FROM NETFLIX - The shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning in this tour de force of genre-bending, a brilliantly realized exercise in science fiction.--The New York Times Book Review \n \nIn the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or sleeve) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. \n Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats existence as something that can be bought and sold.\n