Set in a future where consciousness is digitized and stored, a prisoner returns to life in a new body and must solve a mind-bending murder to win his freedom.

ALTERED CARBON is set in a future where consciousness is digitized and stored in cortical stacks implanted in the spine, allowing humans to survive physical death by having their memories and consciousness "re-sleeved" into new bodies. The story follows specially trained "Envoy" soldier Takeshi Kovacs, who is downloaded from an off-world prison and into a combat ready sleeve at the behest of Laurens Bancroft, a highly influential aristocrat. Bancroft was killed, and the last automatic backup of his stack was made hours before his death, leaving him with no memory of who killed him and why. While police ruled it a suicide, Bancroft is convinced he was murdered and wants Kovacs to find out the truth.

Takeshi Kovacs wakes up after 250 years in hibernation. He is now in a different body, a fact made possible by modern technology. Humans are able to upload their profile into a device embedded in their bodies, a "stack". This allows humans to be immortal, as long as their stack is not damaged: if their body, or "sleeve", dies they can transfer themselves into a new sleeve and continue existing. The recently-murdered Laurens Bancroft, one of the wealthiest people in the world, now hires Kovacs to find out who murdered him.—grantss

Altered Carbon is set in the 23rd century when the human mind has been digitized and the soul it self is transferable from one body to the next. Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite interstellar warrior known as an Envoy who has been imprisoned for 250 years, is downloaded into a future he'd tried to stop. If he can solve a single murder in a world where technology has made death nearly obsolete, he'll get a chance at a new life on Earth.—ahmetkozan