Altered states…

Posted on June 20, 2018 by Clint

I’ve had a habit of singing praises of various movies and video games in this blog based on early impressions, some of which pan out and some of which don’t.

Well, who am I to break with habit?

 

I mean wow. WOW. I’m late to the party on this one (it debuted in its entirety on Netflix back in February) but if you’re any kind of fan of cyberpunk style science fiction or just science fiction world building in general, and you haven’t seen it yet, you should give Altered Carbon a go. The two episodes I’ve watched probably shouldn’t be enough for as strong a recommend as I’m making here, but again. Habit. Just from a writing perspective I’ve been thoroughly impressed with how they’ve handled the exposition and presentation of a world both familiar to and wildly different than our own. It reminds me of how I felt reading Asimov, but turned up to 11 and splashed into fully audio-visual format without losing any of the thought-provoking underpinnings of the philosophical consequences of advancing technology.

This being Netflix there’s also no shortage blood, butts, boobs and harsh language to go around, so it might not make for the best family viewing–if for no other reason than being stuck explaining to your kids all the gratuitous gratuities adults take for granted–but again there’s a feeling of deep thoughts beneath that surface sheen and even the sex and violence has angles of approach that are not what you might be used to experiencing.

And that’s all I’m really going to say because I knew nothing about this series going into it and I think it was all the better discovering it fresh with no preconceptions of what it could or should be.

Okay, one spoiler: Poe is awesome.

I leave the rest of the opinions to you.

3 thoughts on “Altered states…”

  1. Wymrlaf

    I watched when it became available and had a hard time trying to keep from binge watching it during the week when I had to get up the next morning for work. And yes, Poe is awesome! One review of it I had read complained that it didn’t delve deep enough into some of the moral and ethical problems/implications of what altered carbon allows humaninty to do but I think it touched on it enough without ruining the story.

  2. Clint

    We watched episode 3 last night and so far yes, I think it’s doing a good job of balancing story with explorations of premise (the “married couple gladiators” were chilling). One of the things that sometimes turns me off from the harder SF offerings is when it feels like the story is a barely there gloss over whatever speculative theories or sometimes even technical minutiae the author wants to work through, a problem which I can recall as far back as trying to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and getting impatient with Verne going on for pages and pages describing various fish swimming by outside the Nautilus.

    Not that Altered Carbon is hard SF by any means, but point is sometimes you just want to get to the fricking giant squid attack.

  3. Sarrah W

    I enjoyed that series quite a bit! Still holding out hope they’ll announce another season. It had some very interesting concepts, but never felt like it was beating you over the head with them. And yeah, Poe’s a great character!

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