Richard Morgan has named Gibson as the reason the book exists, and Altered Carbon is written from inside the form Neuromancer established rather than beside it. What it takes from the Sprawl:
- The body as equipment. Gibson's Case is locked out of cyberspace by damaged nerves and the plot is buying his way back in; Morgan makes the whole body a replaceable sleeve and the plot is who can afford which one
- Corporate power past the reach of any state, with the very rich effectively immortal
- A burnt-out professional pulled back in by an employer who owns him for the duration
- The prose register: hard-boiled detective voice moved into science fiction, which is Gibson's single most copied move
Filed HIGH, and the honest limit is that Morgan is extending a genre rather than reworking one book. He has been explicit that the genre is Gibson's.