Altered Carbon

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
23,352
27,209
The son was something new for the show, ortega's mom/family and cinco de mayo were also tv show only things

Also if you resleeve into your own body its totally fine (explained in the show) since you are used to it, you can resleeve all day and night like that no problems, thats how rich people travel across the planet and shit. but yeah Rei should have been able to resleeve into different bodies as she did pretty easily as she was an envoy, which has a lot less meaning in the show (a ragtag rebel group that never accomplished anything) vs the book, where it was the elitest of the elite spec ops group that was purposely created to needlecast across the stars and solve political (uprising) kind of problems, since taking a regular ship (no FTL in this universe) would have taken decades whereas needlecasting was FTL. The guy who was hunting kovaks with the Crysis armor should have had the same abilities too since he seems to be the "new" Envoy corps, but he just vanished after like episode 5.

I enjoyed book 2 a tad bit more than book 1 honestly, it was more indiana jones treasure hunt story and had some good galactic space opera thrown in. Its definitely gonna be interesting to see how the show approaches it, if season 1 was a 50% book / 50% new stuff, I'd guess season 2 is 30% book / 70% new stuff since there is virtually nothing connecting book 1 to book 2.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,085
13,608
If there is no FTL in this universe, then where is the alien planet? Just the act of discovering/colonizing that world would have realistically taken centuries. Also, what method do they use to transmit data? Unless it is virtually instant, you'd still be looking at years for round trip signals.
 
TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
42,689
108,916
Cybsled said:
If there is no FTL in this universe, then where is the alien planet? Just the act of discovering/colonizing that world would have realistically taken centuries. Also, what method do they use to transmit data? Unless it is virtually instant, you'd still be looking at years for round trip signals.
Click to expand...

There are multiple planets with alien ruins on it. The planet that Takeshi came from, Harlan's World, has tons of alien shit on it. In the book its even surrounded by massive floating obelisks that death ray you if you get too far off the ground. The aliens in the books are called Martians because we first discovered their ruins on Mars after a long time. They were very well hidden. The alien tech was used to advance science but it never explicitly says how. The cortical stacks are human technology and, "cyro-liners" are used to transport vast distances.

Such that, you fill an entire ship full of sleeves on ice. The humans all live in complex Virtual simulations at a dilated time so that a 50 year subspace trip seems like six months or a year. This is how actual mass is transported and the cheapest way to travel between worlds. Needlecasting is extremely, extremely, expensive. Reserved for the military/political elite or super rich most of the time. Because of this, the concept of your real age and your subjective age is a big point of the human culture.

Humans have been unable to pinpoint the location of the Alien homeworld due to a cultural curiosity the aliens had. All of their maps they find use the location the map was found as the center of it rather than having a standard galaxy map like we would imagine. Humans have been using these maps to find planets the aliens have inhabited/human means to discover liveable planets. They've never found any living aliens but there is evidence they were killed off by something. It's mostly just interesting background.
 
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
23,352
27,209
Cybsled said:
If there is no FTL in this universe, then where is the alien planet? Just the act of discovering/colonizing that world would have realistically taken centuries. Also, what method do they use to transmit data? Unless it is virtually instant, you'd still be looking at years for round trip signals.
Click to expand...

Yeah TJT explains it, mankind is sort of just following along the bread crumbs of another civilization that seems to have vanished, we aren't really conquering the stars. Book 2 and 3 go into more detail but its not a very deep dive.

Its a real bummer the books stop at 3, there is The Expanse kind of galactic soap opera that seems to be setup but I guess the author didn't want to pursue it.
 
Lanx

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
65,198
146,949
TJT said:
There are multiple planets with alien ruins on it. The planet that Takeshi came from, Harlan's World, has tons of alien shit on it. In the book its even surrounded by massive floating obelisks that death ray you if you get too far off the ground. The aliens in the books are called Martians because we first discovered their ruins on Mars after a long time. They were very well hidden. The alien tech was used to advance science but it never explicitly says how. The cortical stacks are human technology and, "cyro-liners" are used to transport vast distances.

Such that, you fill an entire ship full of sleeves on ice. The humans all live in complex Virtual simulations at a dilated time so that a 50 year subspace trip seems like six months or a year. This is how actual mass is transported and the cheapest way to travel between worlds. Needlecasting is extremely, extremely, expensive. Reserved for the military/political elite or super rich most of the time. Because of this, the concept of your real age and your subjective age is a big point of the human culture.

Humans have been unable to pinpoint the location of the Alien homeworld due to a cultural curiosity the aliens had. All of their maps they find use the location the map was found as the center of it rather than having a standard galaxy map like we would imagine. Humans have been using these maps to find planets the aliens have inhabited/human means to discover liveable planets. They've never found any living aliens but there is evidence they were killed off by something. It's mostly just interesting background.
Click to expand...
Man, books seemed to have a good world building and ruleset in place.

While tvshow just said, naw I wanna resleeve daughter getting fucked in mom's body for shits n giggles.
 
j00t

j00t

Silver Baronet of the Realm
7,380
7,476
well, i understand why they did some of that stuff. i mean, what do you think paris hilton would do with this tech? what would the kardashians? with only one scene it identified her screwed up the bancrofts kids were. bored, sociopathic and filthy filthy rich? yeah i'd do some weird, depraved stuff too.

i also really liked the cinco de mayo stuff. i think it brought an interesting conversation to the table from the perspective of religious folk and lower-middle class. we only really see the ultra poor and the ultra rich have opinions on what's happening outside of the main characters so i think it was okay to have in there.

honestly, you have a book which has the liberty to take as much time as it wants in developing characters and world-building. shows have a VERY short time frame to do all that so you need to make some concessions. purists get pissed about it, and i've been there with other stories, but i completely understand why you have to make certain changes. WHAT those changes turned into can clearly be up for debate, but you can't just copy and paste a novel into a 10 hour show. you just can't.
 
Void

Void

BAU BAU
<Gold Donor>
9,800
11,715
Finished this over the weekend, and never having read the books I quite enjoyed it. I agree that there were a lot of problems and the plot got a lot worse towards the end, but we had Ortega's incredible second nude scene to bolster it. Jesus Fucking Christ she is just about perfect, body-wise.

I liked a lot of it, but see the flaws in a bunch of things that I just chose to overlook. I pretty much hated the whole Lizzie thing, except I really liked the wife that got sleeved into a man, I thought that actor nailed it. I also absolutely loved Poe, and am pissed that he's gone. Even if he would have never showed up in another episode, knowing he's dead just irks me. I also thought grandma in the thug was amazing. Things like that really stood out to me as awesome, whereas a lot of the more story-related stuff fell pretty flat. I also really disliked how they did scenes like the AIs playing poker. The visual distortion effect was annoying. Sure, it let me know immediately that it was VR, and they carried that through most of the VR scenes, but sometimes it was just way too much, especially like the early Lizzie scenes. Also, maybe I'm just slow, but the whole whore falling in the water thing didn't make sense to me for a long, long time. They kept referring to it as some big important thing, which it of course ended up being, but when that episode started off with it, I had zero clue wtf was going on. Maybe I missed a section of dialogue explaining it, but if I didn't, not having read the book, I was totally lost.

I still liked it for the most part. It was mostly coherent enough and I enjoyed the overall premise. After talking to a friend that read the books I can see where I would have MUCH more preferred that they get into what badasses envoys were, because that really didn't make sense in the show. They appeared to be guerrillas that just trained but never accomplished anything, yet somehow they were feared by everyone, even 250 years later. Obviously they were leaving out a ton of back story there, that I even noticed it without having the book to fall back on. I would have liked them to spend a lot more time on that instead of all the shittier aspects of being an envoy they chose to focus on.

And again, holy fuck is Ortega hot.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user
Rod-138

Rod-138

Trakanon Raider
1,183
966
Liked it and agree with a stronger intro and mid game than late, but at least all that nonsense late had a cheesy message sort of illustrated the black chick's theme - If people live too long they end up opening murder rape space stations.

On a separate note - kind of funny to think about this show and today's pro trans / BLM movement. Hate your dick? Hate being white? Re sleeve buy bye. SJW world would be Wakanda.
 
  • 1Picard
Reactions: 1 user
Blitz

Blitz

<Bronze Donator>
5,945
6,612
It's a shame how much better the first half of the show was than the second. It went from 8/10 territory to 5 or 6/10 type shit.

So my question is, does the sister storyline happen in the book? Is it as prominent? Seems just lame all the way around, if so. I know a lot of people here talk highly of the books. Hope it's better than the last 4 epidoes of the show.

No Ortega in future seasons? No thanks! What a fucking body.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
23,352
27,209
No sister in the books. The showrunner of Altered Carbon is a woman and has written that she deliberately changed the story and characters to include more empowered women, like in book 1 Kovacks goes up to Head in the Clouds by himself and has some help from a female version of the weird asian helper dude but nobody else. I don't think you can really avoid that kind of changes nowadays, everything has to appeal to both men and women I guess.
‘Altered Carbon’ Showrunner and Cast Talk About the Diversity and Violence in Show’s Futuristic World

book 2 takes place ~30 years after season 1, is on a different planet, and is sort of a treasure hunt book. all new cast.
book 3 takes place ~100 years (I think?) after book 2, another planet, some ties to season 1, and is a mix of military sci fi and James Bond. all new cast.

Definitely worth reading the books though, they are pretty fun and fast to read
 
  • 1Picard
Reactions: 1 user
Kovaks

Kovaks

Mr. Poopybutthole
2,358
3,147
Book 3 is all on Harlands world and I don't know how they can do it as it focuses back on Quell, which is completely a different character/timeline in the books,

Also
it is based on the government using a copy of kovacks when he was an envoy to hunt them down, but that doesn't work when the envoy are stupid terrorist instead of seal team six on steroids.
 
Lanx

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
65,198
146,949
spronk said:
No sister in the books. The showrunner of Altered Carbon is a woman and has written that she deliberately changed the story and characters to include more empowered women, like in book 1 Kovacks goes up to Head in the Clouds by himself and has some help from a female version of the weird asian helper dude but nobody else. I don't think you can really avoid that kind of changes nowadays, everything has to appeal to both men and women I guess.
‘Altered Carbon’ Showrunner and Cast Talk About the Diversity and Violence in Show’s Futuristic World

book 2 takes place ~30 years after season 1, is on a different planet, and is sort of a treasure hunt book. all new cast.
book 3 takes place ~100 years (I think?) after book 2, another planet, some ties to season 1, and is a mix of military sci fi and James Bond. all new cast.

Definitely worth reading the books though, they are pretty fun and fast to read
Click to expand...
Dumb bitch writer explains every plot hole

Like if sister spent years and billions to get JUST the right opportunity to get her bro back, she sends the retard Russian to pick him up from the Poe hotel.

Like, bitch... Your bro is the only badass envoy alive, and he's not trusting and angry and sounds like an all around dick, and you send the future equivalent of a Russian retard druggie to pick up your bro?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users
TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
42,689
108,916
Lanx said:
Dumb bitch writer explains every plot hole

Like if sister spent years and billions to get JUST the right opportunity to get her bro back, she sends the retard Russian to pick him up from the Poe hotel.

Like, bitch... Your bro is the only badass envoy alive, and he's not trusting and angry and sounds like an all around dick, and you send the future equivalent of a Russian retard druggie to pick up your bro?
Click to expand...

Like I said. Had the sister been waiting at the terminal outside the resleeving center and intercepted him before Ortega did. The entire plotline would be null and void.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Soygen

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,431
44,760
Fuck it. I'm just gonna' read this series.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 3 users
Lanx

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
65,198
146,949
Soygen said:
Fuck it. I'm just gonna' read this series.
Click to expand...
but you miss out on ortega, whom now is basically a diversity show hire
avL7Rrd_700b.jpg
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
You must log in or register to reply here.