I ddin’t even think about this until I read this comment, thank you.
If I had to guess this is one of those things that the author of the novels thought about. And if that’s the case I have to agree with the conclusion he came to. the labels relevant to us now probably would stop being relevant after 100-200 years of life and a few or many sleeve changes. I think I have mixed feelings about this. One one hand it sort of feels like a cop-out for not engaging in any conversation on topics like race or sexual minority representation. On the other it feels right. It feels real. If I knew I knew I was gonna be alive indefinitely and had the chance to live in the body several people who weren’t Black male 20-somethings, how long would it take for me to stop identifying as a Black person? It’s a hard thing to process, but it sounds more likely that I would stop identifying as Black, as opposed to having the body of a White woman and calling myself Black for instance.
I really want @austin_walker’s take on this (if he has one he’d like to share).
This is where I really hope that seemingly constantly growing Netflix budget comes into play. I really want to see them use the premise to it’s full potential.
I eat up everything and anything sci-fi and especially cyberpunk. This show sparked a strange conversation about the current era’s morality and how tech will most likely change the view over time. The less than subtle examples of abusing someone in graphic fashion given enough money and those abused unable to escape it were fairly downplayed to me but liked the setup of the show overall.
Oddly in this show i spent a lot of time rooting for Dichen Lachman’s character and doubt they will return her to the show. Her story was what kept me watching past episode five and was disappointed by the end of the show ultimately
One thing I haven’t seen in discussions about Altered Carbon is the lack of any real reference to sexual orientation/race/even gender in any meaningful way. At first I felt like this was pretty glaring, but as more of the universe was revealed I realized these social constructions ceased to have meaning in a world where bodies are a mostly throwaway thing, so maybe it was deliberate.
The books actually engage with this at least a little bit - there’s entire seminars and things organized helping people who have been resleeved try to connect with their former partners, because some proportion of attraction is biochemical and it doesn’t always transfer.
I read the books ages ago and thought they were pretty decent, but I’ve only seen the first episode of the show. I’m angry that they changed his hotel’s identity, but glad that they kept the “guest privileges” scene in. The books never explain why an AI hotel needed to have defensive cannon and it’s just a ridiculous/funny piece of worldbuilding.
Wait, Poe isn’t in the original books? and what was in the books was better?? I…I… I really want to know what the hotel’s identity is in the books now. I personally really came to enjoy Poe in the show and how he evolves and takes on different relationship roles with the various characters.
also if the series continues it’ll be interesting, because none of the three books are even in the same genre aside from “science fiction”
I could go into a whole thing about how different the show is, but I should probably finish the show first. It did throw me for a fuckin’ loop to hear from Quellcrist Falconer in Episode 1 and she was apparently the head of the Envoys and it’s like woah what did you do to the history of this setting
Finally got around to finishing this. Season 2 casting was dropped recently.
Also, in terms of gender and representation, I actually really liked how it was presented. One of my favorite sequences was when the grandmother of Ortega was sleeved with that biker. The family didn’t care how she presented, what she looked like, what gender she was, they just accepted her as their grandmother as if she were as she usually was.
I also liked how the Elliot family was portrayed, save for the ‘RECOVERING FROM TRAUMA IS BECOMING BAD ASS’ angle. Vernon is initially shocked at how his wife is sleeved with a male-presenting/gendered sleeve, but then accepts her as she is and even embraces her lovingly. You even see her adapting to the new sleeve, changing hair styles, adding a scarf. It was neat to see a visual representation of her presenting in a healthy way.
I think what frustrated me was how culture seemed stagnant. I love representation in science fiction, but it felt like all the characters were literal carry overs from our current time. There was no change to language, or culture… A LOT can change in 350+ years, and I was surprised they didn’t try to show a future culture that had drastically changed, new cultures forming out of technology and mixed peoples.
The Expanse is a GREAT example of how to do this. In the novels and show, there is a significant Indian population on Mars that mingled with a Texan population on Mars that gave birth to an Indian group of peoples with a Texan drawl. The Belters have their own language, which is a mixture of a number of languages. Creatively, it would have been awesome to see this in the cultures of Altered Carbon, but they didn’t really approach it that way.
I like that technology has become stagnant though. It’s cool how nothing has really changed for Kovacs in the years he has been on ice, so he adapts to the future quite easily.
Feels like this cyberpunk wave of media this year could really raise all boats between this and the game. I liked the first season for the most part, and just the idea of a show that can swap actors in-fiction is so cool.
Though I never read the book I do remember hearing it had its own problems dealing with the subject matter. Imagining a (at least partially) post-prejudice society and telling stories about it is an essential part of making that our reality though so I am all for it and will continue to criticize them if/when they fuck it up.
I’ve read the book the first season is based on. No surprise whatsoever there. Creepiest perspective writing I’ve run into in a long time.
IMO, the adaptation is much better than the book (if only because we don’t regularly have to listen to the opinion of Kovacs’ genitals), but it fails to throw off the roots of a lot of the book’s problems (namely, a heavy streak of violent misogyny) so it’s one of those things I enjoy with serious caveats.
I haven’t read the book but I thought the show was pretty good with this like when they brought the grandma back out.
IIRC each book takes place many years apart from the previous one and has a very different tone, with one being a sort of Indiana Jones but in space kind of thing, one being a more typical epic sci-fi war kind of thing, etc. but with the same person getting spun up in a new body.
I feel like this hits a development time/budget kind of wall that very few things are able to actually break through. Like how in Star Trek many of the aliens are a human with a scratch on their face and how there was no human art or music produced between the late 90s and when Star Trek starts.
I dislike how TV often handles experiencing trauma = you’re weak, oh wait you overcame trauma now you are strong and a badass. Altered Carbon is pretty rough around the edges, but I felt like it was handled well with the daughter because of how the story was built around every character around her attempting to exert control over her body. And all of her interactions with all of them, despite them all being “the good guys,” involved them basically trying to tell her how to use the body in her mind and attempting to elevate or draw her into a particular mental state of their choosing.
So her becoming powerful because she walks away from that and does what ends up happening was a good figurative fit even if it was pretty clunky on the surface. It reminded me a bit of like a less good version of how season one of The Exorcist series plays around a lot with the tropes of how that often plays out in mainstream TV and movies.
