Post-cyberpunk emerged in the 1990s as a response to traditional cyberpunk, treating technology as socially integrated rather than purely dystopian. This study analyses technological liberation and ethics in Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002), examining how the cortical stack system enables consciousness transfer between bodies through ‘sleeving’, promising to free humanity from mortality’s constraints. However, Morgan's narrative reveals the paradoxical nature of this liberation; while cortical stacks promise freedom from death and bodily limitations, they simultaneously intensify class stratification, biopolitical control, and commodification of human bodies. By employing posthumanist theory (Braidotti), transhumanist philosophy (Bostrom), and cybernetic systems theory (Hayles), this study demonstrates that technologies promising liberation simultaneously function as mechanisms of control and commodification. Morgan's post-cyberpunk vision moves beyond the genre’s dystopian framework to interrogate whether technological enhancement truly liberates or merely reconfigures domination. By examining  cortical stacks, neural enhancement, and AI agency, this study shows how Altered Carbon questions the meaning of liberation in futures where survival depends on technological access, revealing that promised freedom intensifies existing inequalities rather than eliminating oppression.

Ms. Anu Antony is a Research Scholar pursuing her Ph.D. in English at PSGR Krishnammal College for Women under the guidance of Dr. Sushil Mary Mathews. Her research focuses on the evolving dimensions of post-cyberpunk literature, with particular emphasis on science fiction, posthumanism, and digital culture. She has presented papers at several national and international conferences and has several publications to her credit. Her academic interests also include contemporary literary theory, media studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature and technology. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Alphonsa College, where she is actively involved in teaching, research, and mentoring student scholars.

Dr. Sushil Mary Mathews works as an Associate Professor & Head at the Department of English, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. With three decades of rich teaching experience she is also actively engaged in guiding research scholars, her research expertise includes Chinese American novel, New Literatures and Women’s Writing.

About – Richard K. Morgan. (2024, October 26). Richard K. Morgan. https://www.richardkmorgan.com/about-the-author/

AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines. (n.d.). Dokumen. Pub. https://dokumen.pub/ai-narratives-a-history-of-imaginative-thinking-about-intelligent-machines-0198846665-9780198846666.html

Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot. Gnome Press, 1950.

Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward: 2000–1887. Ticknor and Company, 1888.

Bostrom, Nick. “The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction.” World Transhumanist Association, vol. 2, 2003, pp. 4–43. https://nickbostrom.com/views/transhumanist.pdf

—. “Transhumanist Values.” Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2005.

—. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Edited by Lisa Carl Rectenwald, 2011, https://nickbostrom.com/papers/a-history-of-transhumanist-thought/

Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity Press, 2013.

Buleu, Constantina Raveca. “Varia: Variations of Death in Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon: From Cybergothic to Candygothic.” VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social  Sciences, vol. 5, no. 2, 2021, pp. 211–18. University Press of St. Cyril and St. Methodius  University of Veliko Tarnovo.

Carmody, Todd. “Neuromancer.” The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 596–608.

Cavallaro, Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. Athlone Press, 2000.

Clarke, Arthur C. The City and the Stars. Harcourt, 2001.

Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press,  2008.

Cyberpunk. (2024, October 29). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  https://webster.com/dictionary/cyberpunk#:~:text=The%20word%20cyberpunk%20was%20%20coined,in%20the%201970s%20and%20'80s                    

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Ballantine Books, 1996.

Forsek, Nikola. “Transhumanism, Ethics and Religion in Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.” Undergraduate thesis, University of Osijek, 2019. https://repozitorij.ffos.hr/islandora/object/ffos%3A4627/datastream/PDF/view

—. “The Precariat in Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy.” Americana: E-Journal of  American Studies in Hungary, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–12.

Fuller, Alvarado M. A.D. 2000. 1895.

Fuller, Alice W. A Wife Manufactured to Order. 1895.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Ace Books, 1984.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Huereca, Rafael Miranda. “Posthumanism in the Cyberpunk Science Fiction of William Gibson,

Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson.” PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Arlington, 2010.

Huxley, Julian. “Transhumanism.” New Bottles for New Wine: Essays, Chatto & Windus, 1957, pp. 13–17.

Kecan, Ana. “(Cyber) Punk’s Not Dead: Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon.” Knowledge International Journal, vol. 34, no. 6, 2019, pp. 1603–07. https://doi.org/10.35120/kij34061603k

—. “Immortality, Mortality and Humanity in Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon.” Explorations: A Journal of Language and Literature, vol. 7, 2019, pp. 81–91.

Mitchell, Edward Page. The Tachypomp and Other Stories. 1879.

Morgan, Richard K. Altered Carbon. Gollancz, 2002.

Person, Lawrence. “Notes Toward a Post-Cyberpunk Manifesto.” Slashdot, 9 Oct. 1999, slashdot.org/story/99/10/08/2123255/notes-toward-a-post-cyberpunk-manifesto.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.” 1835.

Schneider, Erich. “Cyberpunk as a Science Fiction Genre.” The Cyberpunk Project, 10 Feb. 2017, http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/scifi.html 

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Edited by J. Paul Hunter, W. W. Norton, 2012.

Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Bantam Spectra, 1995.

Verne, Jules. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Translated by F. P. Walter, Naval Institute Press, 1993.

Wells, H. G. The Time Machine. Penguin Classics, 2005.

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, 1948.

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

—. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Zaidi, Saba. “Post-Cyberpunk Technoculture: The Commodification and Corporatization of Subjectivity in Dave Eggers’ The Circle.” Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, 2020, pp. 102–21.

Zaidi, Saba, and Khurram Shahzad. “An Analysis of Post-Cyberpunk as a Contemporary Postmodernist Literature.” Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 59, no. 1, 2020, pp. 97–109. https://doi.org/10.46568/jssh.v59i1.329