Hello dear readers, I am back once again. This time, a quick review of a series I recently watched on Netflix. It’s considered punk science fiction, set over three hundred years into the future, and consists of two seasons.

It includes the relatively novel idea that you can upload your mind into different bodies called sleeves. There are laws that you cannot double-sleeve, that is, exist in two bodies at the same time, but you can have backups that can be activated if you die. So yes, things get complicated.

From Wikipedia –

The series starts 360 years in the future, with most episodes of the first season set in the year 2384 in a futuristic metropolis known as Bay City. In the future, a person’s memories and consciousness (termed digital human freight, or DHF) are recorded onto a disk-shaped device called a cortical stack, which is implanted in the vertebrae at the back of the neck. These storage devices are of alien design and have been reverse-engineered and mass-produced but can only be made from the material on Harlan’s World. Physical human or synthetic bodies are called “sleeves” and stacks can be transferred to new bodies after death, but a person can still be killed if their stack is destroyed and there is no backup. Only the wealthiest, known as “Meths” have the means to change bodies through clones and remote storage of their consciousness in satellites, so they never have to die of old age before being resleeved.

Takeshi Kovacs, a political operative with mercenary skills, is the sole surviving soldier of the Envoys, a rebel group defeated in an uprising against the new world order.^[8] In the first season, set 250 years after the Envoys are destroyed, his stack is pulled out of prison by 300-year-old Meth Laurens Bancroft, one of the wealthiest men in the settled worlds. Bancroft offers him the chance to solve a murder—Bancroft’s own—to get a new shot at life.

The second season takes place in the early 2410s, set 30 years after the first season: Kovacs, now in a new sleeve, continues to search for his lost love and Envoy leader Quellcrist Falconer.

Both series have great pacing, and I remained fully engaged throughout. It contains great action scenes, and the world-building is excellent.

Of particular note is the relationship between Takeshi and his AI companion Edgar Poe, who runs the hotel where he stays. It is unclear why Takeshi decides to stay there. Nobody else has stayed in decades. This is one of the drawbacks to the series. It is based on a book that probably goes into great detail, but is at times glossed over in the series.

They are a great watch, and I give a score of four out of five.

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