Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon is a 2002 British cyberpunk novel by the English writer Richard K. Morgan. It is set in a future in which interstellar travel and relative immortality are facilitated by transferring consciousness between bodies, and it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs, formerly an elite United Nations soldier and now a private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death.

The central invention is the sleeve, a body that can be occupied by a transferred consciousness. Because consciousness can be moved, the novel's murders and threats have to be constructed around what can and cannot be recovered, which is where the noir machinery of the plot comes from. The society is organised around the sleeve: a body is property, and the difference between the wealthy and everyone else is how many of them a person can afford, so the plot's threats follow from what can and cannot be undone.

It was followed by the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies, and was adapted as a television series in 2018. A graphic novel was produced with Dynamite Comics in 2019. Kovacs is no longer a soldier when the book opens, and the work he has taken instead is private investigation.