Altered Carbon series incoming

I'm not sure Marid would do well in current political climate, even if it is filmable at all. Which I doubt.

Alas.

Altered Carbon, wowzeee!

 

To be fair, Blade Runner flopped because it was a sequel to Blade Runner, not because of lack of anything (oh, the Joe k. protagonist... oh... all around Deckard!).

Now, the series is very promising!

Current political climate? I live in Madrid, and have to cross it everyday to go to my job, and I'd say you might be confused... Hell, it would even be more contaminated than in the books, and the real problem would be going to the huge cross in the "Valle de los Caídos" (Valley of the Fallen, more or less, referencing war casualties).

 

@xagroth - are you bend on driving me crazy?

We're not talking about Madrid, as in city of Madrid. We're talking about Marid Audran, protagonist of the Marid Audran series (unfinished, sadly) by late George Alec Effinger (When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss and the unfinished anthology Budayyeen Nights).
One my avatar comes from.

 

Ouch! Sorry, I just read it fast and... sorry! ^^U

 

Dammit! I had those books in the queue, and now i gotta read them before february? Gimme some heads up, Netflix!

 

They are only three books... and the second has like a third of it emulating some sort of "Balance of Terror" (Star Trek TOS episode, I mention it because I rewatched it recently :p) situation, only inside a Bunker, so it's not really that slow to be read.

Thad being said, for me the best book was the first, without doubt, while the third had the most potential (but a strange final, a little Deus Ex Machina). The second is quite intense, but not really as appealing to me as the first. Of course, it's a little personal bias: the first has a lot of a (noir) detective style, the second could be "black ops, rogue agents, and a war in the background", while the third has a lot Cyberpunk/Shadowrun feel to it, hidden inside a hawaiian beach with a touch of a lot of rich internal (as in, "from this setting") background.

 

It was written in 2001.
It was optioned around 2005.
It was announced there would be a series based on it in 2015 (initial announcement) followed by netflix confirming it would be them.

Long enough of a heads-up for ya?

 

And there is no Hendrix now, but Poe. Kovacs has a sister with a different surname. Quell is Envoy's leader. Or so is what http://ew.com/tv/2017/12/04/altered-carbon-trailer-netflix/ says. *shrug*

 

Quellcrist Falconer the leader of the Envoys? Either the writer of the article understood things VERY wrong, or the writers of the series want to mishmash the three books in a single go... And I would think is the former, since there is no reason for Kovacs to have a sister (it was her lover/partner in crime) at the beginning of the series, nor was it needed to explain the Envoys outside of the flashbacks (but maybe the "trapped in a simulation of Innennin as a young woman" was deemed too strange -since they had no reason to elaborate in the scene- for TV, thus botching a good way to showcase them). So...

 

I don't expect the series to be too good storywise. They probably will stay far below the standards of the books.
But with that in mind, I don't care too much about canon as long as it is an entertaining series with neat FX and a real cyber(punk) mood. :)

 

You blamed the reporter for two things... now explain the third, why Hendrix became a visible Poe. All smells of changes to the plot (OK, the sister thing with different surname is really weird then). They could have gone with some minutes of "WTF is going on" for simulations... but maybe they didn't and took the ultra easy path. Just like what I read about resleeving being shocking, when the character is susposed to be trained and used to do it.

 

According to what is written on the article (I had to stop reading after a few paragraphs) it would seem like the Hotel is a building, and the AI is a humanlike-sleeved intelligence... While on the books the AI was "sleeved" in the hotel. I'd say the plot doesn't change much, but maybe they are mixing stuff...

As for the resleeving trauma, you are making a small mistake: the mind, Kovacs, is trained to deal with the trauma of resleeving, while the body was not, meaning the physical trauma (a few minutes to recover optimal functionality, taking out the breathing hose, that stuff) still is there. The Envoy training deals with compensating as much as possible with that trauma, and negating the little problems derived from changing to a new body: differnt sizes, diferent arm/leg length, displaced center of gravity, unpredictable set of augmentations, etc...

 

I wasn't asking an explanation of what happened as I read it in full (talking building called Hendrix is out, IA gets a body and is named Poe now) but why. So until we know more for sure, I run with the idea they are changing and mixing things, sometimes for no obvious good reason ("it has to be easy" is not good when part of novels is the mindfuckery). OK, I thought one for Hendrix/Poe name (but not body), legal battles over rights.

 

I doubt "The Hendrix" is a trademark, but if it were changing the name would have suffice, instead of remaking the whole thing.

Me, I'll give it a shot, but I'm way past the "I like the brand, so I'll be grateful they crap something with the name and the ambient, regardless of what it ends up being". ST Discovery made that veeeeery clear to me.

 

I just checked, Jimi Hendrix (well, their heirs) has (have) a web page... and twitter... and in the page you can see:

So while there could be a reason it is a different thing and thus legal to call the fictional hotel that way, it would probably need some wasted time and money in judges, and thus they avoided it.

Now, the look change (humanoid), checking the video... I can see why, instead of the WTF of hotel with military (IIRC) weapons, they go with a shotgun. So much cool... not. Overused. But I guess audience gets excited with shotguns, some blood and fake fly to near wall, instead of automatic cannon doing hamburguers.

 

A whole 11 episodes, and it sounds like that's just for the first book.

Thank you, Netflix, for a nice 40th birthday present!

Easier for the 'ghost in the machine' to have an avatar to interact with. See also the Ship Avatars from Roddenberry's Andromeda.

 

We are way past talking to non humanoid things. Phone-faced, flower-vase-faced and other assistants already shown in movies and series.
Maybe they got money from operators of those spy tools for avoiding the creepiness (flashbacks to HAL9000... now with cannons). *lightbulb*
Nah, it's the shotgun.

 

This is called an estate. It also means the Jimi Hendrix brand which is Jimi himself is controlled by them. You have to get permission and pay up for this likeness (especially for popular figures/celebrities) in TV and film. You can't just put someone in because you want to. That opens you up to being sued if you didn't acquire permission.

It doesn't matter in Altered Carbon the book but it does for Altered Carbon the show. The producers probably did ask the Hendrix estate if they could use his likeness and they probably said no or asked for more money then the producers were willing to spend. So they went with Edgar Allan Poe instead.

I'm kind of iffy on the show as of right now. They're mixing in story lines that don't need to be mixed.

 

I'm fine with it. More SF means less high-falutin'-fantasy tripe like Shannara on our screens. (Yes, I'm not a fan of two-bit fantasy hack tripe clogging up my screens - like a Game of grisly deaths or Shannara, or the upcoming LOTR spinoff, Midsommer Mordor. You'll get over it).
Sometimes compromises have to be made to get stuff done. Accept it and move on, or stick around picking on minutiae until you disappear up your own singularity.