Quellcrist Falconer

Quellcrist Falconer is a female human who features in Altered Carbon.

Biography

Nadia Makita

Quellcrist was born on Harlan's World, a planet settled via digitally stored personalities and clone banks sent through space in colony ships. After the initial Harlan family elite was thus established, the colony was augmented by individuals whose personalities were sent, purely digitally, by needlecast.

She disappeared, and was subsequently presumed dead, following an attempt to escape from an overwhelming "Protectorate" force. She was last seen fleeing in a small helicopter with her pilot, and was assumed shot down by the 'orbitals' (orbital gun platforms, a web of active Martian relics surrounding Harlan's World.) These orbitals routinely disintegrate anything flying higher than 400 meters. The helicopter's disappearance and the lack of any wreckage indicated this was the fate that befell it. It was revealed that she was indeed shot down by the orbitals, but they did not kill her. The orbitals are discovered to be "digitizers" rather than contemporary weapons of destruction, and Quellcrist was stored in the orbitals' memory for over three hundred years. She was eventually downloaded into Sylvie Oshima, a woman whose profession in decommissioning AI hunters led to a large amount of computerized hardware linked to her consciousness. This caused a great deal of instability in the political structures of the planet, whose ruling class had re-established itself by that point.

Overview

Personality and attributes

Quellcrist wrote several books, most notably Poems and Other Prevarications and Things I Should Have Learned by Now. Her views ignited a revolutionary action against the ruling class of the planet, which is referred to historically as the "Un-Settlement". She believed that all war is the result of unused male drive and the over-accumulation of testosterone in men, yet her own actions and views led to a great deal of violent action. Quellcrist was visionary regarding the importance of "data-stacks" and the "resleeving" of consciousness with respect to revolutionary efforts. She proclaimed that the rebellion would prevail so long as its followers were patient - 20 years or 200 years, the difference being insignificant in the face of immortality.

Powers and abilities

Quellism had elements of libertarianism and anarchism.

Notes

• Quellcrist Falconer was created by Richard K. Morgan where she featured in the Takeshi Kovacs series.
• In an Random House interview, Morgan states that Quellism is an "engaged hi-tech social democracy". He explains that Quellism is an expression of his own, "exasperation with both the inherent self-serving corruption of right-wing politics and the back-biting, up-its-own-arse self-absorption of the left." He goes on to state that he based Quellism on anarchism and the ideas of Proudhon and Bakunin. However, he notes that these philosophies are altered in Quellism in such a way that it, "doesn’t have the ludicrous, lethal innocence that goes with anarchist belief, and her practical post-revolutionary ideas are grounded in a clear understanding of human foibles, checks and balances, and necessary social systems."

Appearances

• Altered Carbon:

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