Richard Morgan

Altered Carbon puts consciousness on a stack at the base of the skull, so bodies become interchangeable and only the very rich are effectively immortal, and then runs a hardboiled detective plot through it.

Morgan is explicit about the politics: the technology does not liberate anyone, it lets wealth escape death while everyone else rents flesh.

He has written epic fantasy in the same register, deliberately unpleasant about the genre's usual heroism, and his central characters are often violent men he does not ask the reader to admire.