The SF Collection

by Richard K. Morgan

Richard Morgan blazed onto the SF scene in 2002 with ALTERED CARBON, which won the Philip K. Dick award and was optioned by Hollywood. He followed this up with two further novels continuing the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs - BROKEN ANGELS and WOKEN FURIES. He also wrote two further standalone SF novels, MARKET FORCES and BLACK MAN (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award).

All five of these novels are collected here as the perfect introduction to Richard's work, or a welcome reminder of his power as a writer. Richard has also written two computer games (CRYSIS 2 and SYNDICATE), comics for MARVEL and is currently working on a fantasy trilogy comprising OF THE STEEL REMAINS, THE COLD COMMANDS, THE DARK DEFILES.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks

2836 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 14, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Richard K. Morgan (sometimes credited as Richard Morgan) is a science fiction and fantasy writer.

Reviews

[Des Cave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never read any Richard Morgan before and so this collection was new. They are definitely a good read and keep you interested. Definitely adult stories with the language and events. They are more crime thriller set in the future rather than pure science fiction, but the science is good and feasible for the future and the storyline is exciting.

[Conrad Bukoski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A firm literary glimpse into a very probable, humanistic future. The collection has all 3 Broken Angels novels in the series: Altered Carbon (2004 Philip K. Dick award winner), Broken Angels, and Woken Fury. There are another 2 other Morgan works thrown in to sweeten the deal, which includes a 2008 Arthur C. Clarke award winner.

It is 200 years in the future where a super-soldier's disembodied consciousness is hired by wealthy immortal human and 'sleeved' into a new body on earth.

You are up and running to learn the situation over the next few novels but central gist of it is humanity has achieved the ability to copy a consciousness into electronic drives called 'stacks' that are hardwired into a human's spinal column. These copies are expensive- only selected governmental workers and ultrawealthy can afford the data upkeep cost and power needed. If one is poor or even a moderate well off citizen, you are shit outta luck.

Morgan explores a grimdark cyberpunk future where a few immortal humans without any morals battle over a vast expanse for unbelievable power, incomprehensible wealth, and unimaginable technology (wry trivial note: the Expanse is Morgan's word for humanity's interstellar empire, coined a decade before The Expanse came along in 2012). The novels themselves don't shy from exploring in vivid excruciating experiments.

How do we define what it means to be human?

When is the line drawn between man and machine when a machine becomes a man?

What is consciousness, does organized religion have a place in the future and do souls exist?

If we were to find sapient alien life in fossils of other planets, what would humanity think, act and believe?

And if that life had abandoned technological relics of their civ ahead of our species by millennia, how would you interface with it? And why did they abandon everything?

Should we move out to habitable exoplanets, what forms of interstellar, interplanetary, planetary, and local organizations would arise? How would (or could) a centralized human government control the rim planets?

If humans are still killing over societies' organizational economic system ideas (namely, capitalism v. collectivism), what happens a few centuries after a nuclear carpet bombing of a continent? Is it even possible to make it habitable?

And if those aren't enough, what's the point of living?

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this collection was an outstanding, eye opening and vaguely embarrassing look at what to be a man

Incredibly incite full I learned a lot about myself. Thank you and I have urged as many people as I can to try your stuff. Sci fi fan or not. Once again thank you

[Walter Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Great read loved the characters in the stories and the dark futuristic settings all very believable with some great plot twists.