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Jean le Flambeur #1
The Quantum Thief
Jean le Flambeur gets up in the morning and has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night.Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an archcriminal, a man named le Flambeur....
Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burglar, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques form the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power--in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.
The Quantam Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, a race of hyperadvanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantam Thief is also a story powered by the very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge. It is a stunning debut.
Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burglar, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques form the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power--in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.
The Quantam Thief is a breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, a race of hyperadvanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild. But for all its wonders, The Quantam Thief is also a story powered by the very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge. It is a stunning debut.
331 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2010
About the author
Hannu Rajaniemi
54 books1,357 followersEN: Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finnish author of science fiction and fantasy, who writes in both English and Finnish. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a founding director of a technology consultancy company, ThinkTank Maths.
Rajaniemi was born in Ylivieska, Finland. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Oulu, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to starting his Ph.D. candidature, he completed his national service as a research scientist for the Finnish Defence Forces.
While pursuing his Ph.D. in Edinburgh, Rajaniemi joined Writers' Bloc, a writers' group in Edinburgh that organizes semi-regular spoken word performances and counts Charlie Stross amongst its members. Early works included his first published short story Shibuya no Love in 2003 and his short story Deus Ex Homine in Nova Scotia, a 2005 anthology of Scottish science fiction and fantasy, which caught the attention of his current literary agent, John Jarrold.
Rajaniemi gained attention in October 2008 when John Jarrold secured a three-book deal for him with Gollancz, on the basis of only twenty-four double-spaced pages. His debut novel, The Quantum Thief, was published in September 2010 by Gollancz in Britain and in May 2011 by Tor Books in the U.S. A sequel, The Fractal Prince, was published in September 2012 by Gollancz and in November 2012 by Tor.
FI: Hannu Rajaniemi on Edinburgissa, Skotlannissa asuva suomalainen tieteiskirjailija, joka kirjoittaa sekäs suomeksi että englanniksi. Rajaniemi on opiskellut matemaattista fysiikkaa Oulun ja Cambridgen yliopistoissa ja väitellyt säieteoriasta filosofian tohtoriksi Edinburghin yliopistossa. Hän on perustajajäsen matematiikan ja tekniikan konsulttiyhtiössä nimeltä ThinkTank Maths.
Opiskellessaan Edinburgissa Rajaniemi liittyi kirjoittajaryhmään, joka järjesti tekstien lukutilaisuuksia. Hänen varhaisia novellejaan on ilmestynyt englanniksi Interzone-lehdessä ja Nova Scotia -antologiassa. Näistä jälkimmäinen kiinnitti Rajaniemen nykyisen kirjallisuusagentin kiinnostuksen vuonna 2005.
Vuonna 2008 Rajaniemi solmi kustannussopimuksen kolmesta romaanista brittiläisen Gollancz-kustantamon kanssa. Valmiina oli silloin ainoastaan romaanin yksi luku. Esikoisromaani The Quantum Thief ilmestyi syyskuussa 2010. Hänellä on näiden kolmen romaanin julkaisusopimus myös yhdysvaltalaisen Tor-kustantamon kanssa. Suomeksi Rajaniemen esikoisteoksen julkaisee Gummerus nimellä Kvanttivaras.
Rajaniemi was born in Ylivieska, Finland. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Oulu, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to starting his Ph.D. candidature, he completed his national service as a research scientist for the Finnish Defence Forces.
While pursuing his Ph.D. in Edinburgh, Rajaniemi joined Writers' Bloc, a writers' group in Edinburgh that organizes semi-regular spoken word performances and counts Charlie Stross amongst its members. Early works included his first published short story Shibuya no Love in 2003 and his short story Deus Ex Homine in Nova Scotia, a 2005 anthology of Scottish science fiction and fantasy, which caught the attention of his current literary agent, John Jarrold.
Rajaniemi gained attention in October 2008 when John Jarrold secured a three-book deal for him with Gollancz, on the basis of only twenty-four double-spaced pages. His debut novel, The Quantum Thief, was published in September 2010 by Gollancz in Britain and in May 2011 by Tor Books in the U.S. A sequel, The Fractal Prince, was published in September 2012 by Gollancz and in November 2012 by Tor.
FI: Hannu Rajaniemi on Edinburgissa, Skotlannissa asuva suomalainen tieteiskirjailija, joka kirjoittaa sekäs suomeksi että englanniksi. Rajaniemi on opiskellut matemaattista fysiikkaa Oulun ja Cambridgen yliopistoissa ja väitellyt säieteoriasta filosofian tohtoriksi Edinburghin yliopistossa. Hän on perustajajäsen matematiikan ja tekniikan konsulttiyhtiössä nimeltä ThinkTank Maths.
Opiskellessaan Edinburgissa Rajaniemi liittyi kirjoittajaryhmään, joka järjesti tekstien lukutilaisuuksia. Hänen varhaisia novellejaan on ilmestynyt englanniksi Interzone-lehdessä ja Nova Scotia -antologiassa. Näistä jälkimmäinen kiinnitti Rajaniemen nykyisen kirjallisuusagentin kiinnostuksen vuonna 2005.
Vuonna 2008 Rajaniemi solmi kustannussopimuksen kolmesta romaanista brittiläisen Gollancz-kustantamon kanssa. Valmiina oli silloin ainoastaan romaanin yksi luku. Esikoisromaani The Quantum Thief ilmestyi syyskuussa 2010. Hänellä on näiden kolmen romaanin julkaisusopimus myös yhdysvaltalaisen Tor-kustantamon kanssa. Suomeksi Rajaniemen esikoisteoksen julkaisee Gummerus nimellä Kvanttivaras.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,248 reviews
July 10, 2014
There are authors who don't cotton to hand-holding, and then there are authors who drop you off in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve, distract you with a party favor, and then run the other way as fast as they can. Maybe you'll eventually find your way in the throng, even if you are tear-streaked and sniffling by the time you do (did I mention you are 5?). Maybe at the end of it you've learned something (most likely that there are a bunch of people in Times Square who desperately want you to attend a comedy show) and are a little stronger for it. Or your mind has snapped and you have been reduced to a blubbering, shell-shocked simpleton. Fifty-fifty.
Hannu Rajaniemi is, clearly, the latter type, and I'm still not quite sure what my trek through this book has done to me. Not since Neuromancer has a sci-fi book left me questioning how a bunch of words could be strung together in logical, well-crafted sentences and still not make any sense. Both books made me feel dumb and slow and a bad reader. I don't think this is my fault, but I also doubt it was the writers' intention.
See, they both create richly imagined new worlds out of reassembled bits and pieces of what we recognize as reality, mixing things up with new gadgets and technology and the repercussions of fictional disasters. And they just plop us down into these worlds and never, ever tell us what is going on.
I totally get avoiding exposition dumps and telling versus showing, but seriously, this book hurt my brain. There are concepts -- key plot concepts -- that the characters take as rote parts of their everyday lives that are introduced on page 1 and not clearly explained until maybe 75 percent of the way through the book. The primary antagonists are roughly sketched at best, and even though all the characters know who they are and what they're about, we don't get anything but hints up until the epilogue. But it's not just that -- technology is referenced again and again before we get an idea of what it does. For about half the book, I wasn't sure if it was happening inside of a computer or not. See what I mean about feeling dumb?
But it's ok for a few reasons. One, Hannu Rajaniemi lays down some of the sharpest prose I've encountered in genre writing, dense without feeling mannered, spare and yet evocative. This is a short novel by space opera standards, and he shows those bloated quasi-epics how it's done. (Of course, snipping out all that exposition is a good way to start.)
Two, the plot is a fairly straightforward Whodunnit mixed with elements of One Last Job, with a thief and a detective squaring off, sprinkled with a Mysterious Backstory and some small-r romance. When books make me work this hard, I don't mind if I can see some of the structure poking through. It's nice to have a clue if it's going to be able to support my weight.
Three, the SFnal ideas here are pretty great. Novel twists on familiar concepts (including a nifty take on the "uploading consciousness into the cloud" trope) are just the start; there's also this wonderful riff on our growing concern for privacy through the invention of a system that allows you to control what you share with people all the time. You can walk down the street cloaked in privacy, so anyone passing won't recognize you unless you want them to. You can even edit what parts of a conversation someone will be able to remember (which removes a lot of the potential awkwardness from one-night stands). Lots of sci-fi has explored they way memory shapes reality, but Rajaniemi manages to find a fresh angle.
So, should you read this? I'd say it depends on A) your comfort level with having no idea what the hell is happening for hundreds of pages, and B) your familiarity with the genre. Because while not the trickiest book I've ever read, this is hardly elementary school SF. That's what you get when you let Finnish mathematical physicists write books.
Hannu Rajaniemi is, clearly, the latter type, and I'm still not quite sure what my trek through this book has done to me. Not since Neuromancer has a sci-fi book left me questioning how a bunch of words could be strung together in logical, well-crafted sentences and still not make any sense. Both books made me feel dumb and slow and a bad reader. I don't think this is my fault, but I also doubt it was the writers' intention.
See, they both create richly imagined new worlds out of reassembled bits and pieces of what we recognize as reality, mixing things up with new gadgets and technology and the repercussions of fictional disasters. And they just plop us down into these worlds and never, ever tell us what is going on.
I totally get avoiding exposition dumps and telling versus showing, but seriously, this book hurt my brain. There are concepts -- key plot concepts -- that the characters take as rote parts of their everyday lives that are introduced on page 1 and not clearly explained until maybe 75 percent of the way through the book. The primary antagonists are roughly sketched at best, and even though all the characters know who they are and what they're about, we don't get anything but hints up until the epilogue. But it's not just that -- technology is referenced again and again before we get an idea of what it does. For about half the book, I wasn't sure if it was happening inside of a computer or not. See what I mean about feeling dumb?
But it's ok for a few reasons. One, Hannu Rajaniemi lays down some of the sharpest prose I've encountered in genre writing, dense without feeling mannered, spare and yet evocative. This is a short novel by space opera standards, and he shows those bloated quasi-epics how it's done. (Of course, snipping out all that exposition is a good way to start.)
Two, the plot is a fairly straightforward Whodunnit mixed with elements of One Last Job, with a thief and a detective squaring off, sprinkled with a Mysterious Backstory and some small-r romance. When books make me work this hard, I don't mind if I can see some of the structure poking through. It's nice to have a clue if it's going to be able to support my weight.
Three, the SFnal ideas here are pretty great. Novel twists on familiar concepts (including a nifty take on the "uploading consciousness into the cloud" trope) are just the start; there's also this wonderful riff on our growing concern for privacy through the invention of a system that allows you to control what you share with people all the time. You can walk down the street cloaked in privacy, so anyone passing won't recognize you unless you want them to. You can even edit what parts of a conversation someone will be able to remember (which removes a lot of the potential awkwardness from one-night stands). Lots of sci-fi has explored they way memory shapes reality, but Rajaniemi manages to find a fresh angle.
So, should you read this? I'd say it depends on A) your comfort level with having no idea what the hell is happening for hundreds of pages, and B) your familiarity with the genre. Because while not the trickiest book I've ever read, this is hardly elementary school SF. That's what you get when you let Finnish mathematical physicists write books.
February 6, 2018
In 2014 my family went to Ireland and we had a great time. While there we had the opportunity to watch some Gaelic hurling. It’s a field game played by a bunch of tall, weather beaten Irish guys and is a kind of mix of field hockey, lacrosse, rugby and aggravated assault and looks rough as hell. It was fun to watch, had lots of action, one team won at the end of it and I really never fully understood what was going on.
Reading The Quantum Thief was like that.
Being a fan of sci-fi/fantasy, I am not unaccustomed to the first 30-40 pages of a new book having some “what-the-hell-is-going-on?” feelings. That feeling stayed with me beyond 50 pages - weird book; I even considered invoking my 100-page rule and putting it down, but it started to grow on me.
Similar to the writing of Ann Lecke and Alistair Reynolds this is an example of a far future setting where the line between human and computer simulation has grown seriously blurred.
There is a thief, similar to other roguishly fun burglars in literature throughout the centuries and there is a clever inspector chasing him. What sets this far apart from other books is the maddeningly complex and thinly explained science. It’s as though author Hannu Rajaniemi, a clearly extraordinarily gifted writer, demonstrates that he is smart and expects his readers to catch on.
This is very popular, many readers did. Maybe I would have liked it more if I were a programmer, mathematician or some kind of IT consultant. I reach for the calculator to pay my pub tab.
At the end of the day, I did like it, it was fun. It also makes me reconsider my thoughts on Poul Anderson’s Harvest of Stars, which I though was just really weird, but may have been decades ahead of its time.
Reading The Quantum Thief was like that.
Being a fan of sci-fi/fantasy, I am not unaccustomed to the first 30-40 pages of a new book having some “what-the-hell-is-going-on?” feelings. That feeling stayed with me beyond 50 pages - weird book; I even considered invoking my 100-page rule and putting it down, but it started to grow on me.
Similar to the writing of Ann Lecke and Alistair Reynolds this is an example of a far future setting where the line between human and computer simulation has grown seriously blurred.
There is a thief, similar to other roguishly fun burglars in literature throughout the centuries and there is a clever inspector chasing him. What sets this far apart from other books is the maddeningly complex and thinly explained science. It’s as though author Hannu Rajaniemi, a clearly extraordinarily gifted writer, demonstrates that he is smart and expects his readers to catch on.
This is very popular, many readers did. Maybe I would have liked it more if I were a programmer, mathematician or some kind of IT consultant. I reach for the calculator to pay my pub tab.
At the end of the day, I did like it, it was fun. It also makes me reconsider my thoughts on Poul Anderson’s Harvest of Stars, which I though was just really weird, but may have been decades ahead of its time.
June 27, 2018
3.5/5 stars
No spoonfeeding, nil exposition, bizarre, high concept, and compelling.
Jean Bizarre Adventure, this should be the title of the series. Let this review be an example of the author’s storytelling style; zero exposition and fast-paced. This is a short book, around five hours read because it cut every single world-building information usually contained in SFF books. Rajaniemi didn't spoonfeed his readers. He’ll push you off a cliff with his high concept, then instead of giving you a rope, he’ll shoot you with a bazooka to make sure you fall down even more. It falls down to the reader to understand what concept and terminologies he’s talking about from the narrative and the plot.
Picture: The Quantum Thief by Marc Simonetti
The characters were great and unique. The world and concept of the book were brilliant and imaginative. The story can be confusing at times because, like I said, the author didn’t bother to explain any single terminologies. The terms gevulot was very important to the story and it didn’t get explained until 70% of the book; it was in explained in two short sentences. Like. This. I really should hate this book, but I don’t know why I found myself completely immersed in it due to the theme of the book—identity, love, memories, digital uploading—and its fast-paced plot that’s written with engaging prose.
I just finished the first book and I already think that this seems like a trilogy that needs to be read at least twice in order to attempt to understand everything, maybe even thrice. I’ll continue to the next book and see how I feel about this series over all. For now, I recommend this trilogy strictly only for hard sci-fi readers. How about that for a review told in Hannu Rajaniemi style?
You can find this and the rest of my Adult Epic/High Fantasy & Sci-Fi reviews at BookNest
No spoonfeeding, nil exposition, bizarre, high concept, and compelling.
Jean Bizarre Adventure, this should be the title of the series. Let this review be an example of the author’s storytelling style; zero exposition and fast-paced. This is a short book, around five hours read because it cut every single world-building information usually contained in SFF books. Rajaniemi didn't spoonfeed his readers. He’ll push you off a cliff with his high concept, then instead of giving you a rope, he’ll shoot you with a bazooka to make sure you fall down even more. It falls down to the reader to understand what concept and terminologies he’s talking about from the narrative and the plot.
Picture: The Quantum Thief by Marc Simonetti
The characters were great and unique. The world and concept of the book were brilliant and imaginative. The story can be confusing at times because, like I said, the author didn’t bother to explain any single terminologies. The terms gevulot was very important to the story and it didn’t get explained until 70% of the book; it was in explained in two short sentences. Like. This. I really should hate this book, but I don’t know why I found myself completely immersed in it due to the theme of the book—identity, love, memories, digital uploading—and its fast-paced plot that’s written with engaging prose.
I just finished the first book and I already think that this seems like a trilogy that needs to be read at least twice in order to attempt to understand everything, maybe even thrice. I’ll continue to the next book and see how I feel about this series over all. For now, I recommend this trilogy strictly only for hard sci-fi readers. How about that for a review told in Hannu Rajaniemi style?
You can find this and the rest of my Adult Epic/High Fantasy & Sci-Fi reviews at BookNest
May 7, 2024
Re-Read 5/6/24:
Now on my fourth read, and I'll be honest: few novels truly GET me the way this does. High speed plotting enmeshed in post-Singularity thievery that includes mind, time-theft, truly high-tech baubles, bodies, AI ships, and Game Theory.
Add that to truly erudite writing, clever confabulations of new words, and a truly fluid re-imagining of a society that not only can upload their minds, but can re-fashion a whole world and everyone's memories outside of their bodies -- and how it could so easily be used against them.
What I love most about it is the imagination. The exploration of themes that very well might come to pass for us if we're not careful. But most importantly, this is an exploration WELL beyond the technology we have today, done cleverly and terrifyingly.
But does this mean it's inaccessible? Hello no! It's full of Jean le Flameur, thief extraordinare, and his thief-taker always in tow. :) Funny, brilliant, and full of great truly high-tech mystery.
This late in the game, I'd kinda point fingers at Alastair Reynold's Prefect series and Bank's Culture series as similar titles... but truly, I love this best.
Original Review:
I am very surprised and delighted by this novel. I half-expected an idea or a theme from Stephen Baxter's Flux, but was thoroughly captivated by such a deeply thought-out world and a complex plot. I didn't find many issues with plot discontinuity, as such. There were quick scene changes that might have benefited by a more overt transition or two, but that is a minor issue compared to the tapestry of worlds within worlds that this author has written. Very enjoyable characters, and the twists are fully supported by the main premises. I found myself thinking of new twists that could be supported by his frame and was surprised by more that I hadn't thought deeply enough about. I think I'll enjoy reading this novel again, and not too far in the future. First, I shall read his second novel and see how much more craft he's crammed into his writing with such giddy fractal twirls.
I understand that this novel isn't for the general audience, but I'll tell you straight: IT SHOULD BE.
If you like this, then I recommend Charles Stross's Singularity Sky and Saturn's Children and especially Accellerando. Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash and Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon and Anathem. I would be remiss to leave out other cyberpunk masters, but let's face it: the good stuff is in the post-cyberpunk worlds, dealing with all of the complicated ideas and deeper developments.
The deeper exploration is where this novel really shines. From a strictly craft point of view, I loved the poetry in the techno-babble that verges on a simple techno-babel and almost teeters into complete cognizance. :) Actually, I lie. The quantum foam and Q-dots made me giggle. I loved every second of it.
Great book!
Second read was even better than the first, especially after getting to know all of the terms and players. I loved the poetry in the text, the visual imagery, the requirement for every reader to throw themselves and their souls into the story, only to come up, gasping for air, not quite realizing that the water was highly oxygenated and we could have been breathing it all along.
I laughed more times, this second read. I am almost to the opinion that everyone ought to read this book, or better yet, this trilogy, at least two times through before making a serious opinion of it. Only after thoughtful consideration have I finally come to the conclusion that this meta-tale, this monolith of story, this dire-light, this cutting of an epic gordian knot has got to be one of the classics of literature. It is dense. No doubt about it.
But it is ever so much more rewarding than I had ever expected it to be.
Now on my fourth read, and I'll be honest: few novels truly GET me the way this does. High speed plotting enmeshed in post-Singularity thievery that includes mind, time-theft, truly high-tech baubles, bodies, AI ships, and Game Theory.
Add that to truly erudite writing, clever confabulations of new words, and a truly fluid re-imagining of a society that not only can upload their minds, but can re-fashion a whole world and everyone's memories outside of their bodies -- and how it could so easily be used against them.
What I love most about it is the imagination. The exploration of themes that very well might come to pass for us if we're not careful. But most importantly, this is an exploration WELL beyond the technology we have today, done cleverly and terrifyingly.
But does this mean it's inaccessible? Hello no! It's full of Jean le Flameur, thief extraordinare, and his thief-taker always in tow. :) Funny, brilliant, and full of great truly high-tech mystery.
This late in the game, I'd kinda point fingers at Alastair Reynold's Prefect series and Bank's Culture series as similar titles... but truly, I love this best.
Original Review:
I am very surprised and delighted by this novel. I half-expected an idea or a theme from Stephen Baxter's Flux, but was thoroughly captivated by such a deeply thought-out world and a complex plot. I didn't find many issues with plot discontinuity, as such. There were quick scene changes that might have benefited by a more overt transition or two, but that is a minor issue compared to the tapestry of worlds within worlds that this author has written. Very enjoyable characters, and the twists are fully supported by the main premises. I found myself thinking of new twists that could be supported by his frame and was surprised by more that I hadn't thought deeply enough about. I think I'll enjoy reading this novel again, and not too far in the future. First, I shall read his second novel and see how much more craft he's crammed into his writing with such giddy fractal twirls.
I understand that this novel isn't for the general audience, but I'll tell you straight: IT SHOULD BE.
If you like this, then I recommend Charles Stross's Singularity Sky and Saturn's Children and especially Accellerando. Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash and Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon and Anathem. I would be remiss to leave out other cyberpunk masters, but let's face it: the good stuff is in the post-cyberpunk worlds, dealing with all of the complicated ideas and deeper developments.
The deeper exploration is where this novel really shines. From a strictly craft point of view, I loved the poetry in the techno-babble that verges on a simple techno-babel and almost teeters into complete cognizance. :) Actually, I lie. The quantum foam and Q-dots made me giggle. I loved every second of it.
Great book!
Second read was even better than the first, especially after getting to know all of the terms and players. I loved the poetry in the text, the visual imagery, the requirement for every reader to throw themselves and their souls into the story, only to come up, gasping for air, not quite realizing that the water was highly oxygenated and we could have been breathing it all along.
I laughed more times, this second read. I am almost to the opinion that everyone ought to read this book, or better yet, this trilogy, at least two times through before making a serious opinion of it. Only after thoughtful consideration have I finally come to the conclusion that this meta-tale, this monolith of story, this dire-light, this cutting of an epic gordian knot has got to be one of the classics of literature. It is dense. No doubt about it.
But it is ever so much more rewarding than I had ever expected it to be.
January 28, 2012
After being busted out of the Dilemma Prison by an Oortian warrior named Mieli, legendary master thief Jean Le Flambeur is taken to the Oubliette, one of the Moving Cities of Mars, and is tasked with the ultimate heist. Opposing him is a brilliant young detective named Isidore Beautrelet. But there is more to each man's quest than meets the eye...
My summary doesn't do the book justice. There are so many ideas crammed in it's slim 331 pages. Before Le Flambeur can even get started on his quest, he has to steal back his old memories. Isidore, on the other hand, has a lot of issues of his own, like his odd relationship with one of the tzaddikim, powerful vigilantes who work to keep the Martians safe from unseen enemies, and an equally odd relationship with his girlfriend.
Before I get any deeper into this review, I have a few things to mention. I bought this book the day it became available and then let it sit on my shelves for almost nine months. The reason was pretty simple: all the reviews I read mentioned that Hannu Rajaniemi throws the reader into the deep end of the pool. He doesn't explain a lot of his concepts, leading the reader to decipher the meaning of words like 'blink, gevulot, quplink, exomemory, and many others, soley by context. Having read both John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun in 2011, I was a little apprehensive. Should I have been?
No! While it takes a little getting used to, I felt The Quantum Thief was easier to understand than either of the earlier works I mentioned. It's written in a breezy style reminiscent of Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin, a work that this one owes a great debt to. Not only is Jean Le Flambeur based on Lupin, Lupin is even mentioned in the text.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The world Rajanieme creates is a very interesting one. While the author used the Lupin tales as a blueprint, it feels like he fleshed out his creation with bits pilfered from books like Hyperion, The Golden Age, Neuromancer, and many others, welding them all together with his background in quantum physics. This is one of those books that has so many big ideas flying around you can hardly keep track of all of them. Hell, I'm already forgetting things I wanted to mention. Maybe I'll just list them.
1. Time is used as a currency. When you run out of time, you die and the Resurrection Men come for you. After a period of time with your consciousness inhabiting a robot body and doing routine maintenance on the City, you get a new body.
2. Tzaddikim patrol the streets, keeping the general population safe.
3. By 'blinking, you can recall anything that happened anywhere in the Oubliette using the exomemory. It's like the internet, only better and with slightly less pornography.
4. Privacy is a big deal. By using a gevulot, you control the flow of information to other people.
5. There's a glossary of terms used in The Quantum Thief on Wikipedia. It would have helped immensely if I'd had it when I started but probably would have made the read a less rewarding experience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary...
The principle characters are an interesting bunch. I'd say the book approaches a number of ideas per page ratio comparable to one of China Mieville's works. It's primarily a heist tale but there's plenty of action. I sure wouldn't want to be in Miele's way. There's a point where sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Quantum Thief comes pretty close to that point on many occasions.
The ending met all my expectations, both in regard to actions and revelations about the overall setting. If I hadn't already known The Quantum Thief was the first in a trilogy (boo!), I would have been slightly disappointed.
While the Quantum Thief looks like a science fiction novel, it's really a heist story about a criminal and the man tasked with catching him. If you can handle being in the dark for part of the time, this is one hell of a read. I wouldn't say I like it as much as Hyperion but it's definitely WAAAAAAAY up there in my science fiction hierarchy.
Additional thought:
Hannu Rajaniemi looks a lot like Jason Bateman of Arrested Development fame. Look them up and see for yourself.
My summary doesn't do the book justice. There are so many ideas crammed in it's slim 331 pages. Before Le Flambeur can even get started on his quest, he has to steal back his old memories. Isidore, on the other hand, has a lot of issues of his own, like his odd relationship with one of the tzaddikim, powerful vigilantes who work to keep the Martians safe from unseen enemies, and an equally odd relationship with his girlfriend.
Before I get any deeper into this review, I have a few things to mention. I bought this book the day it became available and then let it sit on my shelves for almost nine months. The reason was pretty simple: all the reviews I read mentioned that Hannu Rajaniemi throws the reader into the deep end of the pool. He doesn't explain a lot of his concepts, leading the reader to decipher the meaning of words like 'blink, gevulot, quplink, exomemory, and many others, soley by context. Having read both John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun in 2011, I was a little apprehensive. Should I have been?
No! While it takes a little getting used to, I felt The Quantum Thief was easier to understand than either of the earlier works I mentioned. It's written in a breezy style reminiscent of Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin, a work that this one owes a great debt to. Not only is Jean Le Flambeur based on Lupin, Lupin is even mentioned in the text.
Where was I? Oh, yes. The world Rajanieme creates is a very interesting one. While the author used the Lupin tales as a blueprint, it feels like he fleshed out his creation with bits pilfered from books like Hyperion, The Golden Age, Neuromancer, and many others, welding them all together with his background in quantum physics. This is one of those books that has so many big ideas flying around you can hardly keep track of all of them. Hell, I'm already forgetting things I wanted to mention. Maybe I'll just list them.
1. Time is used as a currency. When you run out of time, you die and the Resurrection Men come for you. After a period of time with your consciousness inhabiting a robot body and doing routine maintenance on the City, you get a new body.
2. Tzaddikim patrol the streets, keeping the general population safe.
3. By 'blinking, you can recall anything that happened anywhere in the Oubliette using the exomemory. It's like the internet, only better and with slightly less pornography.
4. Privacy is a big deal. By using a gevulot, you control the flow of information to other people.
5. There's a glossary of terms used in The Quantum Thief on Wikipedia. It would have helped immensely if I'd had it when I started but probably would have made the read a less rewarding experience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary...
The principle characters are an interesting bunch. I'd say the book approaches a number of ideas per page ratio comparable to one of China Mieville's works. It's primarily a heist tale but there's plenty of action. I sure wouldn't want to be in Miele's way. There's a point where sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Quantum Thief comes pretty close to that point on many occasions.
The ending met all my expectations, both in regard to actions and revelations about the overall setting. If I hadn't already known The Quantum Thief was the first in a trilogy (boo!), I would have been slightly disappointed.
While the Quantum Thief looks like a science fiction novel, it's really a heist story about a criminal and the man tasked with catching him. If you can handle being in the dark for part of the time, this is one hell of a read. I wouldn't say I like it as much as Hyperion but it's definitely WAAAAAAAY up there in my science fiction hierarchy.
Additional thought:
Hannu Rajaniemi looks a lot like Jason Bateman of Arrested Development fame. Look them up and see for yourself.
January 4, 2013
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take a class on quantum physics from the Swedish Chef? If so, this is the book for you. It almost reads like English. You can almost understand it. There are tantalizing glimpses of incredibly creative ideas and memorable characters. And then you get sentences like:
He set his gevulet to q-bomb the sapornov. Nano gogols shot through the web of the quantum lattice, setting a self-replicating sequence into his assailant's exomemory. Only 2 terraseconds before he'd become a Quiet.
Basically, the book takes place so far in the future that the technology is incomprehensible to modern standards. And the author doesn't try to explain it. He just thrusts you into his world - like dropping a caveman into Manhattan, and lets you try to make sense of the world as the plot happens around you. It takes a hearty and stubborn soul not to give up. There are a lot of really cool ideas in the book, but it's so hard to make sense of that it's hard to recommend.
He set his gevulet to q-bomb the sapornov. Nano gogols shot through the web of the quantum lattice, setting a self-replicating sequence into his assailant's exomemory. Only 2 terraseconds before he'd become a Quiet.
Basically, the book takes place so far in the future that the technology is incomprehensible to modern standards. And the author doesn't try to explain it. He just thrusts you into his world - like dropping a caveman into Manhattan, and lets you try to make sense of the world as the plot happens around you. It takes a hearty and stubborn soul not to give up. There are a lot of really cool ideas in the book, but it's so hard to make sense of that it's hard to recommend.
September 5, 2022
Why it is ever so slightly discombobulating that I slightly liked this book (a little):
① I was suffering from one of the deadliest, most lethal cases of severe book slump-itis ever when I picked it up.
② The story is confusing as fish (← this might or might not be the understatement of the millenium, just so you know). Every single page is packed with dumbfounding neologisms, mistyfying concepts, cryptic as shrimp lingo and somewhat baffling terminology. I had no bloody shrimping idea what the fish was going on as I was reading, as the following selfie will attest to:
To say that this book made me feel like a complete, utter, absolute, total dimwit on a particularly braindead day would be putting it midly indeed. And this is coming from someone whosurvived read The Dragon Never Sleeps twice—and has the badge to prove it —which should tell you something.
③ The story sort of reminded me of Perdido Street Station at times, which, you'll have to admit, is pretty terrifying indeed.
Quite.
(I wasn't sure where those Mieville vibes came from until I read Carol's review and experienced a mostuncommon enlightening light-bulb moment.)
④ As you might havebrilliantly deduced after reading ②, this is heavy-duty stuff and not your decaf, diet, gluten-free, non-GMO type of Sci-Fi 👋👋 waves at the Wayfarers bunch 👋👋. Given the unfathomable depth of the book slump I was in when I started the book, you would have thought a lighter read might have been slightly more appropriate, and that going for this somewhat bewildering complex tale instead would result in a debacle of epic proportions to end all debacles of epic proportions.
So quite logically, ① + ② + ③ + ④ should have = 💀💀💀, right? Well, quite logically (albeit in a moderately illogical way), it bloody shrimping didn't. And why didn't it, you ask? Because both the story and the world it is set in are creative as fish. Because the characters are weirdly engaging and engagingly weird (not to mention Super Extra Original—SEO™—with complexity on top). Because the plot is strangely intriguing and intriguingly strange (not to mention Super Extra Refreshing—SER™—and like nothing I've read before. Not in the entirety of my entire life, anyway). And also becauseI said so reasons.
This most definitely calls for a celebratory dance, methinks.
➽ Nefarious Last Words (NLW™): this book is typically the kind of story that I DNF faster than it takes to say "unleash the crustaceans!" And yet this book survived being read by me during The Book Slump of Doom and Oblivion (TBSoDaO™). Which seems to imply that this book is Slightly Very Good (SVG™) indeed. Need I say more? Didn't think so .
· Book 2: The Fractal Prince ★★★
[Pre-review nonsense]
To say I was slightly a little confused while reading this book would be putting it quite very mildly indeed.
More or less, yes.
Also, before tackling this story, I was down with acute book slump-itis.
And yet, I ratedthis befuddling as fish tale the book 4 bloody shrimping stars. That should tell you something right there. Yes, it should.
➽ Review to come and stuff.
① I was suffering from one of the deadliest, most lethal cases of severe book slump-itis ever when I picked it up.
② The story is confusing as fish (← this might or might not be the understatement of the millenium, just so you know). Every single page is packed with dumbfounding neologisms, mistyfying concepts, cryptic as shrimp lingo and somewhat baffling terminology. I had no bloody shrimping idea what the fish was going on as I was reading, as the following selfie will attest to:
To say that this book made me feel like a complete, utter, absolute, total dimwit on a particularly braindead day would be putting it midly indeed. And this is coming from someone who
③ The story sort of reminded me of Perdido Street Station at times, which, you'll have to admit, is pretty terrifying indeed.
Quite.
(I wasn't sure where those Mieville vibes came from until I read Carol's review and experienced a most
④ As you might have
So quite logically, ① + ② + ③ + ④ should have = 💀💀💀, right? Well, quite logically (albeit in a moderately illogical way), it bloody shrimping didn't. And why didn't it, you ask? Because both the story and the world it is set in are creative as fish. Because the characters are weirdly engaging and engagingly weird (not to mention Super Extra Original—SEO™—with complexity on top). Because the plot is strangely intriguing and intriguingly strange (not to mention Super Extra Refreshing—SER™—and like nothing I've read before. Not in the entirety of my entire life, anyway). And also because
This most definitely calls for a celebratory dance, methinks.
➽ Nefarious Last Words (NLW™): this book is typically the kind of story that I DNF faster than it takes to say "unleash the crustaceans!" And yet this book survived being read by me during The Book Slump of Doom and Oblivion (TBSoDaO™). Which seems to imply that this book is Slightly Very Good (SVG™) indeed. Need I say more? Didn't think so .
· Book 2: The Fractal Prince ★★★
[Pre-review nonsense]
To say I was slightly a little confused while reading this book would be putting it quite very mildly indeed.
More or less, yes.
Also, before tackling this story, I was down with acute book slump-itis.
And yet, I rated
➽ Review to come and stuff.
June 29, 2013
There Will Be Invisibility Lotion For Ugly Lovers
This belongs to the "post-singularity" sub-genre of science fiction. "The singularity" was originally a name for a conceivable point in the future beyond which science fiction writers cannot extrapolate. Basically, the idea is that if we come to understand the human mind well enough to improve it through technology, and in particular our improvements make them better at the cognitive task of improving minds, then they'll be able to make even better minds, which in turn could be able to make even better ones, and so forth in a feedback loop of increasing intelligence. Once this process starts up, the enhanced-human experience will quickly diverge from the ordinary human experience in ways that are -- basically by definition -- impossible for us to predict or perhaps even understand. So you can't write stories about what it will be like to live after the singularity.
Of course, once someone makes a proclamation like that, people are going to want to try to square the circle. So now it's become quite common for people to write science fiction in which human or human-like minds can be "uploaded" into software and casually modified and improved and redesigned for various tasks. Of course, the problem of the singularity is still there. How would a vastly more capable mind experience life? One approach to this problem would be to try to convey the very ineffability of this experience by using fractured, confusing, difficult writing. But for cultural reasons -- SF loves its "transparent prose" -- this approach has not been widely followed. (Actually, if anyone knows of any good examples of this approach, I'd love to hear about them.) The more common approach is, alas, to simply ignore the problem.
So, for instance, in The Quantum Thief, there are lots of cool post-human technologies, but human culture seems to have been stuck in a time capsule ever since 2010 A.D. People on Mars have a technological privacy system called "gevulot" that mediates their interactions -- just like on Facebook, you can control who sees what, so that only certain people can see your face, and others can access some of your memories at will (cool!) -- and the female lead, Mieli, has a psychic link to the human-level mind of her sentient spaceship, Perhonen (cool!). But what do Mieli and Perhonen talk about?
I'm not sure I can put into words just how weird this is. Every moment of Perhonen's dialogue -- not just in this exchange -- makes her out to be a chatty twenty-something woman who could have stepped out of a 20th-century sitcom. She talks freely about "flirting" and in fact flirts with some of the male characters despite the fact that -- I don't how to put this without making it sound incredibly silly, which in fact it is -- she is a spaceship. As she says, she doesn't have a face -- her body is "a butterfly-like spaceship with glittering wings." Wouldn't that change your experience of life, just a bit? There are one or two nods in the book to the idea of ship-human romance, but, um, how does that even . . . work?
And then we have the fact that after the singularity, when you can remake the stuff of Mind at will, people are still talking like rom-com characters from the present day. You mean romance isn't going to be a little more interesting when our minds have been turned into machine software and can remold and upgrade each other? Elsewhere, someone calls Perhonen a "beautiful ship" and she responds: "Thank you, but I'm not just a pretty face." The joke covers a fundamental absurdity -- if minds can inhabit spaceships as easily as human bodies, why do they still talk (jokingly) in human-centric terms like "pretty face," rather than actually changing the way they think about the relation between mind and body? Why isn't there a language of beauty that actually encompasses the various forms that sentience can now take?
I can accept cheesy dialogue like the above from Doctor Who aliens, but come on. This is supposed to be "hard science fiction." The author blurb mentions Rajaniemi's "several advanced degrees in mathematics and physics" as though to say, this guy actually knows what he's talking about, unlike your average sci-fi bullshitter. Maybe he does when it comes to certain of his ideas about physics and cryptography, but that's where the plausibility ends. This future is as "hard" as melted cheese.
(While I'm on the topic of hardness, here's a description of a technique used by mind-pirates to upload their targets' brains: "You infect the target with a virus that makes their neurons sensitive to yellow light. Then you stimulate the brain with lasers for hours, capture the firing patterns, and train a black box function to emulate them." Excuse me? Given the number of possible "firing patterns" and their non-negligible duration, wouldn't that take, like, thousands or millions of years or something? During which time the brain is of course changing in response to all this stimulation, like brains do, so you're really getting a blended-together snapshot of a bunch of different brains? And then you get a giant look-up table of "firing patterns" -- which will take what, a galaxy's worth of computer memory? And what the fuck is a "black box function"? Some sort of artificial neural net? But the training would take forever! What the hell is this shit? Someone get Rajaniemi a few more advanced science degrees, stat!)
Um, anyway. There are plenty of other examples of Rajaniemi's refusal to imagine actual cultural development. There are all the flirty/"badass" remarks the characters sling back and forth, which mostly sound like they're from bad TV shows. A character expresses delight that Perhonen is handy with "pop culture references," as though there will be such a thing as pop culture when humanity has colonized the whole solar system and has fractured into numerous tiers and types of minds. There's the one single subculture that Rajaniemi actually describes in detail, which has grown over the course of centuries out of an MMORPG guild, and now consists of people who act like 21st-century nerds out of cultural tradition and go on "raids" with actual flesh-and-blood monsters they refer to as "epic mounts." The scenes involving these people are hilarious, but of course this is a huge cop-out: references to 21st-century culture free Rajaniemi from having to imagine anything new.
Okay, okay. I get it. Rajaniemi isn't interested in writing a sensitive evocation of future cultures, he's interested in writing a fun detective-vs.-mastermind story. But he fails at that too, for the opposite reason: everything is too different. Rajaniemi tries pretty hard to disorient the reader with lots of futuristic concepts and terminology, and I approve of this in the abstract, but it really doesn't work well with the kind of story he's telling. To enjoy such a story, I need to be able to follow the detective's thoughts and appreciate the mastermind's cleverness. But Rajaniemi's technologies are too vaguely described to ever make the rules clear, so that understanding never coalesces. People are constantly doing fiddly little things with each other's gevulot, and performing semi-incomprehensible actions that are described with lots of words like "Sobornost tech" and "q-dots" and "pseudomatter" and "cognitive rights management software," and eventually it is made clear to the reader that a given action is supposed to be a crucial insight or a clever move, but it's never really clear why. The experience of reading about these technologies is like that of a computer ignoramus listening to a lecture about computer security: basic gists like "the bad guys are gaining control of the system" may get across, but you still don't know exactly what is possible and what is impossible, what is audacious and what is routine, what is clever and what is foolish. As a result, despite taking place in the far future, it is less, not more, dazzling than an ordinary detective story.
I almost gave this three stars because the last 70 pages or so were really cool and made me curious about what would happen in the sequel. But serial fiction always does that kind of thing, and I'm sure if I read the sequel it would be bad in the same way, right up until its end which would try its hardest to get me to buy the third one. I'm just confused about why this book got so much hype. I'm interested in science fiction, and I definitely like some subset of it, but sometimes I don't understand the judgments made by the genre's culture. Is this really one of the best things anyone's done with science fiction lately? I sure hope not.
This belongs to the "post-singularity" sub-genre of science fiction. "The singularity" was originally a name for a conceivable point in the future beyond which science fiction writers cannot extrapolate. Basically, the idea is that if we come to understand the human mind well enough to improve it through technology, and in particular our improvements make them better at the cognitive task of improving minds, then they'll be able to make even better minds, which in turn could be able to make even better ones, and so forth in a feedback loop of increasing intelligence. Once this process starts up, the enhanced-human experience will quickly diverge from the ordinary human experience in ways that are -- basically by definition -- impossible for us to predict or perhaps even understand. So you can't write stories about what it will be like to live after the singularity.
Of course, once someone makes a proclamation like that, people are going to want to try to square the circle. So now it's become quite common for people to write science fiction in which human or human-like minds can be "uploaded" into software and casually modified and improved and redesigned for various tasks. Of course, the problem of the singularity is still there. How would a vastly more capable mind experience life? One approach to this problem would be to try to convey the very ineffability of this experience by using fractured, confusing, difficult writing. But for cultural reasons -- SF loves its "transparent prose" -- this approach has not been widely followed. (Actually, if anyone knows of any good examples of this approach, I'd love to hear about them.) The more common approach is, alas, to simply ignore the problem.
So, for instance, in The Quantum Thief, there are lots of cool post-human technologies, but human culture seems to have been stuck in a time capsule ever since 2010 A.D. People on Mars have a technological privacy system called "gevulot" that mediates their interactions -- just like on Facebook, you can control who sees what, so that only certain people can see your face, and others can access some of your memories at will (cool!) -- and the female lead, Mieli, has a psychic link to the human-level mind of her sentient spaceship, Perhonen (cool!). But what do Mieli and Perhonen talk about?
He is flirting with you, Perhonen says. Oh my god. He so is.
Of course he isn't. He has no face. Mieli feels a tickle that tells her that the tzaddik is scanning her. Nothing that will penetrate the camouflage layers beneath her gevulot, but it serves as another reminder that the natives have more than just bows and arrows.
Neither do I, and that has never stopped me.
Never mind. What do I do? I can't tap into the thief's feed without him scanning me.
He's a do-gooder. Ask him for help. Stick to your cover, silly girl. Just try being nice for a change. (114)
I'm not sure I can put into words just how weird this is. Every moment of Perhonen's dialogue -- not just in this exchange -- makes her out to be a chatty twenty-something woman who could have stepped out of a 20th-century sitcom. She talks freely about "flirting" and in fact flirts with some of the male characters despite the fact that -- I don't how to put this without making it sound incredibly silly, which in fact it is -- she is a spaceship. As she says, she doesn't have a face -- her body is "a butterfly-like spaceship with glittering wings." Wouldn't that change your experience of life, just a bit? There are one or two nods in the book to the idea of ship-human romance, but, um, how does that even . . . work?
And then we have the fact that after the singularity, when you can remake the stuff of Mind at will, people are still talking like rom-com characters from the present day. You mean romance isn't going to be a little more interesting when our minds have been turned into machine software and can remold and upgrade each other? Elsewhere, someone calls Perhonen a "beautiful ship" and she responds: "Thank you, but I'm not just a pretty face." The joke covers a fundamental absurdity -- if minds can inhabit spaceships as easily as human bodies, why do they still talk (jokingly) in human-centric terms like "pretty face," rather than actually changing the way they think about the relation between mind and body? Why isn't there a language of beauty that actually encompasses the various forms that sentience can now take?
I can accept cheesy dialogue like the above from Doctor Who aliens, but come on. This is supposed to be "hard science fiction." The author blurb mentions Rajaniemi's "several advanced degrees in mathematics and physics" as though to say, this guy actually knows what he's talking about, unlike your average sci-fi bullshitter. Maybe he does when it comes to certain of his ideas about physics and cryptography, but that's where the plausibility ends. This future is as "hard" as melted cheese.
(While I'm on the topic of hardness, here's a description of a technique used by mind-pirates to upload their targets' brains: "You infect the target with a virus that makes their neurons sensitive to yellow light. Then you stimulate the brain with lasers for hours, capture the firing patterns, and train a black box function to emulate them." Excuse me? Given the number of possible "firing patterns" and their non-negligible duration, wouldn't that take, like, thousands or millions of years or something? During which time the brain is of course changing in response to all this stimulation, like brains do, so you're really getting a blended-together snapshot of a bunch of different brains? And then you get a giant look-up table of "firing patterns" -- which will take what, a galaxy's worth of computer memory? And what the fuck is a "black box function"? Some sort of artificial neural net? But the training would take forever! What the hell is this shit? Someone get Rajaniemi a few more advanced science degrees, stat!)
Um, anyway. There are plenty of other examples of Rajaniemi's refusal to imagine actual cultural development. There are all the flirty/"badass" remarks the characters sling back and forth, which mostly sound like they're from bad TV shows. A character expresses delight that Perhonen is handy with "pop culture references," as though there will be such a thing as pop culture when humanity has colonized the whole solar system and has fractured into numerous tiers and types of minds. There's the one single subculture that Rajaniemi actually describes in detail, which has grown over the course of centuries out of an MMORPG guild, and now consists of people who act like 21st-century nerds out of cultural tradition and go on "raids" with actual flesh-and-blood monsters they refer to as "epic mounts." The scenes involving these people are hilarious, but of course this is a huge cop-out: references to 21st-century culture free Rajaniemi from having to imagine anything new.
Okay, okay. I get it. Rajaniemi isn't interested in writing a sensitive evocation of future cultures, he's interested in writing a fun detective-vs.-mastermind story. But he fails at that too, for the opposite reason: everything is too different. Rajaniemi tries pretty hard to disorient the reader with lots of futuristic concepts and terminology, and I approve of this in the abstract, but it really doesn't work well with the kind of story he's telling. To enjoy such a story, I need to be able to follow the detective's thoughts and appreciate the mastermind's cleverness. But Rajaniemi's technologies are too vaguely described to ever make the rules clear, so that understanding never coalesces. People are constantly doing fiddly little things with each other's gevulot, and performing semi-incomprehensible actions that are described with lots of words like "Sobornost tech" and "q-dots" and "pseudomatter" and "cognitive rights management software," and eventually it is made clear to the reader that a given action is supposed to be a crucial insight or a clever move, but it's never really clear why. The experience of reading about these technologies is like that of a computer ignoramus listening to a lecture about computer security: basic gists like "the bad guys are gaining control of the system" may get across, but you still don't know exactly what is possible and what is impossible, what is audacious and what is routine, what is clever and what is foolish. As a result, despite taking place in the far future, it is less, not more, dazzling than an ordinary detective story.
I almost gave this three stars because the last 70 pages or so were really cool and made me curious about what would happen in the sequel. But serial fiction always does that kind of thing, and I'm sure if I read the sequel it would be bad in the same way, right up until its end which would try its hardest to get me to buy the third one. I'm just confused about why this book got so much hype. I'm interested in science fiction, and I definitely like some subset of it, but sometimes I don't understand the judgments made by the genre's culture. Is this really one of the best things anyone's done with science fiction lately? I sure hope not.
May 19, 2014
The Quantum Thief is bursting with so many ideas that it is an exhilarating read. What it needs is just a little more finesse, a slightly better pace for doling out information, for letting us play in this wonderful playground he's created. It is so complete, but so alien, and I needed just a little bit more of a guide. I like to flatter myself that I'm not an unperceptive reader, and I certainly don't mind it when authors don't tip their hands all at once and want me to work for it.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
June 1, 2015
Quantum begins with a thief in prison, endlessly reliving The Prisoner's Dilemma. Ah, but this one is different, mainly because he doesn't learn. An enhanced woman and her sentient ship break him out for reasons unknown, but before they can get far, the chase is on. In payment for freeing him, the woman and her hidden benefactor have something they want him to steal. Next stop, Mars, where he has to discover his prior identity in an idealistic, privacy focused society. Meanwhile, a young man working for a version of the secret order-keepers is driven to solve crime puzzles.
Hm, interesting: my summary makes the book sound far more coherent than it was. The world-building and total immersion style reminds me of Zelazny, but without the lovely poetic imagery. Maybe a little like Mieville in playing with concepts of societal structure, privacy and identity, but Mieville has more coherent plotting. The character of Jean reminded me a great deal of Locke Lamora. I suppose it's an archetype; a construct of the clever, urbane thief. Overall, a decent read that feels like the author was working a bit too hard to prove how clever he is. I can't say that I'd recommend it to most readers.
April 21, 2024
It's hard to leave a review about this book without also talking of all the wonderful secrets it holds, hence spoiling some of them for future readers. Let's say this is good mystery but also an excellent science fiction novel.
One thing though, you have to hit the ground running from the first page because Jean Le Flambeur waits for no one. The first pages may catch you unaware and you will have to push through all the new terms and names thrown at you left and right, but don't worry because soon you won't even notice them as you navigate a Mars that is equally futuristic as it is real. At this time it may seem obvious, but I really liked this book, and if you like science fiction, the kind that really has science in it and things that feel possible if improvable, I'm sure you'll enjoy it too.
One last word of caution... don't let the beginning scare you, after a few pages you'll take to this Mars as a fish to water, just bear with it for a little while letting all those new images percolate into your consciousness.
One thing though, you have to hit the ground running from the first page because Jean Le Flambeur waits for no one. The first pages may catch you unaware and you will have to push through all the new terms and names thrown at you left and right, but don't worry because soon you won't even notice them as you navigate a Mars that is equally futuristic as it is real. At this time it may seem obvious, but I really liked this book, and if you like science fiction, the kind that really has science in it and things that feel possible if improvable, I'm sure you'll enjoy it too.
One last word of caution... don't let the beginning scare you, after a few pages you'll take to this Mars as a fish to water, just bear with it for a little while letting all those new images percolate into your consciousness.
September 13, 2020
3.5 Stars
This was an incredibly complex science fiction story that explored concepts of memory and privacy in very unique ways. Admittedly, aspects of this novel went over my head, but I still really enjoyed the aspects that I could wrap my head around. The main character reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes character, which I really enjoyed. My favourite section was the part when Isodore was trying to solve the mystery surrounding the murdered chocolatier. While I did not fully connect with the character, I still really appreciated this highly intellectual, mind bending science fiction novel.
This was an incredibly complex science fiction story that explored concepts of memory and privacy in very unique ways. Admittedly, aspects of this novel went over my head, but I still really enjoyed the aspects that I could wrap my head around. The main character reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes character, which I really enjoyed. My favourite section was the part when Isodore was trying to solve the mystery surrounding the murdered chocolatier. While I did not fully connect with the character, I still really appreciated this highly intellectual, mind bending science fiction novel.
April 17, 2024
A fascinating read about a fascinating world filled to the brim with fascinating advanced technology and mind-boggling concepts.
This book completely blew my mind the moment I finished reading and kept me dazed in a book hangover for weeks afterward. I was blown away by the complex worlds (and worlds within worlds) the author created and I wanted to experience them over and over again. But now that those effects are wearing off, so are my feelings regarding the book's ingenuity and the author's prowess. That's not to say I don't like it anymore; I still like it and look forward to continuing Jean le Flambeur's flighty adventures, but I can't help but see the fascinating world building as a distraction from a fairly clever, albeit thin, heist adventure set in outer space.
There are two story arcs that converge near the end. The thief's story is all about cyberspace and neuroscience and outsmarting systems much clever than himself, and he's quite a clever fellow. The detective's story is woven with decadence and a steampunk atmosphere, as though someone brought Victorian England to outer space.
Each story has a mystery and both the thief and the detective have to solve their respective mystery before their time runs out, but the things they're chasing after aren't what they seem. These are mysteries within mysteries. So your mileage may vary.
I enjoyed the chase and trying to stay one step ahead of both characters was exhausting but fun. I don't read that much hard sci-fi, so I suspect this book might be a more of a popcorn read in its genre. But it's fun, fast, and impressive--great, if you're in the mood for mind games. Overall, a pretty good way to spend a long weekend.
Originally posted at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
* * * * *
UPDATE: reread June 2017
Loved it the first time. Still love it the second time around. This is one of my absolute favorite reads of all time. Still haven't finished the trilogy though. I should probably get on that soon.
* * * * *
UPDATE: rereading in February 2024 with the intention of completing this trilogy once and for all. No idea why I read the first and second books, but never got around to the third book. Gonna do it this time though.
This book completely blew my mind the moment I finished reading and kept me dazed in a book hangover for weeks afterward. I was blown away by the complex worlds (and worlds within worlds) the author created and I wanted to experience them over and over again. But now that those effects are wearing off, so are my feelings regarding the book's ingenuity and the author's prowess. That's not to say I don't like it anymore; I still like it and look forward to continuing Jean le Flambeur's flighty adventures, but I can't help but see the fascinating world building as a distraction from a fairly clever, albeit thin, heist adventure set in outer space.
There are two story arcs that converge near the end. The thief's story is all about cyberspace and neuroscience and outsmarting systems much clever than himself, and he's quite a clever fellow. The detective's story is woven with decadence and a steampunk atmosphere, as though someone brought Victorian England to outer space.
Each story has a mystery and both the thief and the detective have to solve their respective mystery before their time runs out, but the things they're chasing after aren't what they seem. These are mysteries within mysteries. So your mileage may vary.
I enjoyed the chase and trying to stay one step ahead of both characters was exhausting but fun. I don't read that much hard sci-fi, so I suspect this book might be a more of a popcorn read in its genre. But it's fun, fast, and impressive--great, if you're in the mood for mind games. Overall, a pretty good way to spend a long weekend.
Originally posted at https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
* * * * *
UPDATE: reread June 2017
Loved it the first time. Still love it the second time around. This is one of my absolute favorite reads of all time. Still haven't finished the trilogy though. I should probably get on that soon.
* * * * *
UPDATE: rereading in February 2024 with the intention of completing this trilogy once and for all. No idea why I read the first and second books, but never got around to the third book. Gonna do it this time though.
April 21, 2024
This is the stuff. Oh yeah, straight into my veins. TQT launches violently and doesn't hold your hand and tell you it's going to be ok. It comes at you hard with new vocabulary and complex post-singularity world-building (I may have looked at the Wiki once or twice). This is high-degree-of-difficulty work requiring the judge to multiply the score accordingly.
I'm not a big fan of pulpy noir detective work at the core but the incredible wrapper made that medicine go down easy. Don't get me wrong, I liked the story and it paid off. The author's distinct style settled nicely and his witty delivery made me laugh. The micro-culture of the Oubliette is fascinating and rich. All the characters were unique and well-formed. TQT drew me in and demanded I finish, pronto. That's the type of relationship I need with a book.
I'm not a big fan of pulpy noir detective work at the core but the incredible wrapper made that medicine go down easy. Don't get me wrong, I liked the story and it paid off. The author's distinct style settled nicely and his witty delivery made me laugh. The micro-culture of the Oubliette is fascinating and rich. All the characters were unique and well-formed. TQT drew me in and demanded I finish, pronto. That's the type of relationship I need with a book.
July 26, 2014
5 Super big stars
3 times is a real charm with this masterpiece. After two rereads my love for this book is even more...
"Being about to become someone else is a thrilling feeling, a tickle of possibility in my gut. There must have been times when I flicked from one identity to another, posthuman, zoku, baseline, Sobornost. And that makes me want to be the god of thieves again, more than anything."
This is an unusual case for me in that I really found that I loved and appreciated this book so much more after reading it a second time through…Wow, was the complexity and depth to this hard science fiction novel lost on me during my first read. Before beginning this a second time through, I visited the Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quan...
I was shocked at the amount of vocabulary, creatures, science terminology, and other far out made up words that I took in at face value my first time reading tQF. This is a huge Wiki glossary that tries to explain the large amount of details that are simply part of the fabric that make up this hard sci-fi detective novel. Freaking sweet.
I enjoyed the mystery, the characters, the plot, and the conclusion the first time through. I loved Rajanieme’s accomplishment and huge achievement the second time through. I felt giddy every time I found myself putting more pieces of the puzzle together. I was awed at the way Rajanieme seamlessly and without prejudice that he incorporates the unusual races and species into our mystery.
His writing is top notch:
“I was right: Perhonen is an Oortian spidership. It consists of separate modules, tethered together by nanofibres, living quarters spinning around a central axis like an amusement park ride to create a semblance of gravity. The tethers form a network in which the modules can move, like spiders in a web. The q-dot sails – concentric soap-bubble-thin rings made from artificial atoms that spread out several kilometres around the ship and can catch sunlight, Highway mesoparticles and lightmill beams equally well – look spectacular.”
The prison within prison theme plays throughout this book.
“I feel a chill. Clearly, I have little privacy in this body, or in my mind. Another panopticon, another prison. But as prisons go, it is a lot better than the last one: a beautiful woman, secrets and a good meal, and a sea of ships carrying us to adventure.”
The action and the gadgetry are all from the fantastic far future.
“Her right hand contains a q-dot gun, a linear accelerator firing semi-autonomous coherent payloads. Her left has a ghostgun with an array of nanomissiles: each has a war gogol ready to invade enemy systems, to flood them with copies of itself. The programmable matter layer under her epidermis becomes armour, her fingernails harder than diamond. The fusion reactor in her right thighbone spins up. The metacortex Nash engine chooses a set of optimal targets and a cover position for the thief.”
I cannot emphasize how much I love and appreciate the depth and complexity that tQT realizes. Rajanieme has crafted a hard science masterpiece that sets up a wonderful series…on to book two.
SUPER HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!
====================================================
====================================================
My original review:
4 Stars
This book is a combination of two of my favorite genres, Hard Science Fiction, and a Hard Boiled Detective Mystery. Rajaniemi takes a no holds barred approach to his writing style, and does it in a way that will often leave the reader in the dark. As I muddled my way through the beginnings of this book, I found myself a bit lost, and I found that I had to do some detective work to grasp the meanings behind many of Rajaniemi's made up words.
After I finished this book, I learned that there is a great Wiki page, a glossary of terminology which I am glad that I was ignorant of. Deciphering parts of this book added to its style and flare. It is the written style, the prose, and the things that are left unwritten that make this book standout. Rajaniemi does not insult the reader’s intelligence by trying to spell everything out. He challenges them to either accept his ideas or enjoy the ride, or to be left in the dark. Many reviewers have compared this work to that of China Mieville's, and I too feel that they have much in common. Twist his command of vocabulary and ideas with the hard science of say a Greg Egan novel, and you can see what this book is like.
His descriptive prose is very good:
"There is a dead man lying on the floor, in a pool of chocolate. A beam of pale Martian morning light from a high window illuminates him, turning him into a chocolate sculpture of suffering: a wiry pietá with hollow temples and a sparse moustache. His eyes are open, whites showing, but the rest of him is covered in a sticky layer of brown and black, spilled from the vat he is clutching, as if he tried to drown himself in it. His white apron and clothes are a Rorschach test of dark stains."
The beginning of this book and it's setting inside the prison needed to be longer. This was a great way to start off this novel and series, but damn it, I wanted more. This feeling of wanting more was a recurring feeling of mine. All three of the main characters are interesting and cool, but to me, this book was too short to do them justice. This entire novel felt far to cut down to hold the thought provoking and mind bending themes contained within. The saving grace to this is that this is just book one of the series, which means Rajaniemi has plenty of time to write up some real backstory and to fill out these cool ass characters in three dimensions.
This is a brave short book that should not be missed by science fiction lovers. I will have to reread this one when the next book becomes available. Pretty cool stuff in this one.
The high concepts and amazing science make this book a classic. AMAZING!
"‘I lost my faith in the past. Something is wrong with it. Something is wrong with what we know. That is why I didn’t want you to study the texts in the library. I would not wish this feeling on anyone. Perhaps the old philosophers were right, and we are living in a simulation, playthings of some transhuman gods; perhaps the Sobornost has already won, Fedorov’s dreams are true and we are merely memories."
3 times is a real charm with this masterpiece. After two rereads my love for this book is even more...
"Being about to become someone else is a thrilling feeling, a tickle of possibility in my gut. There must have been times when I flicked from one identity to another, posthuman, zoku, baseline, Sobornost. And that makes me want to be the god of thieves again, more than anything."
This is an unusual case for me in that I really found that I loved and appreciated this book so much more after reading it a second time through…Wow, was the complexity and depth to this hard science fiction novel lost on me during my first read. Before beginning this a second time through, I visited the Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quan...
I was shocked at the amount of vocabulary, creatures, science terminology, and other far out made up words that I took in at face value my first time reading tQF. This is a huge Wiki glossary that tries to explain the large amount of details that are simply part of the fabric that make up this hard sci-fi detective novel. Freaking sweet.
I enjoyed the mystery, the characters, the plot, and the conclusion the first time through. I loved Rajanieme’s accomplishment and huge achievement the second time through. I felt giddy every time I found myself putting more pieces of the puzzle together. I was awed at the way Rajanieme seamlessly and without prejudice that he incorporates the unusual races and species into our mystery.
His writing is top notch:
“I was right: Perhonen is an Oortian spidership. It consists of separate modules, tethered together by nanofibres, living quarters spinning around a central axis like an amusement park ride to create a semblance of gravity. The tethers form a network in which the modules can move, like spiders in a web. The q-dot sails – concentric soap-bubble-thin rings made from artificial atoms that spread out several kilometres around the ship and can catch sunlight, Highway mesoparticles and lightmill beams equally well – look spectacular.”
The prison within prison theme plays throughout this book.
“I feel a chill. Clearly, I have little privacy in this body, or in my mind. Another panopticon, another prison. But as prisons go, it is a lot better than the last one: a beautiful woman, secrets and a good meal, and a sea of ships carrying us to adventure.”
The action and the gadgetry are all from the fantastic far future.
“Her right hand contains a q-dot gun, a linear accelerator firing semi-autonomous coherent payloads. Her left has a ghostgun with an array of nanomissiles: each has a war gogol ready to invade enemy systems, to flood them with copies of itself. The programmable matter layer under her epidermis becomes armour, her fingernails harder than diamond. The fusion reactor in her right thighbone spins up. The metacortex Nash engine chooses a set of optimal targets and a cover position for the thief.”
I cannot emphasize how much I love and appreciate the depth and complexity that tQT realizes. Rajanieme has crafted a hard science masterpiece that sets up a wonderful series…on to book two.
SUPER HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!
====================================================
====================================================
My original review:
4 Stars
This book is a combination of two of my favorite genres, Hard Science Fiction, and a Hard Boiled Detective Mystery. Rajaniemi takes a no holds barred approach to his writing style, and does it in a way that will often leave the reader in the dark. As I muddled my way through the beginnings of this book, I found myself a bit lost, and I found that I had to do some detective work to grasp the meanings behind many of Rajaniemi's made up words.
After I finished this book, I learned that there is a great Wiki page, a glossary of terminology which I am glad that I was ignorant of. Deciphering parts of this book added to its style and flare. It is the written style, the prose, and the things that are left unwritten that make this book standout. Rajaniemi does not insult the reader’s intelligence by trying to spell everything out. He challenges them to either accept his ideas or enjoy the ride, or to be left in the dark. Many reviewers have compared this work to that of China Mieville's, and I too feel that they have much in common. Twist his command of vocabulary and ideas with the hard science of say a Greg Egan novel, and you can see what this book is like.
His descriptive prose is very good:
"There is a dead man lying on the floor, in a pool of chocolate. A beam of pale Martian morning light from a high window illuminates him, turning him into a chocolate sculpture of suffering: a wiry pietá with hollow temples and a sparse moustache. His eyes are open, whites showing, but the rest of him is covered in a sticky layer of brown and black, spilled from the vat he is clutching, as if he tried to drown himself in it. His white apron and clothes are a Rorschach test of dark stains."
The beginning of this book and it's setting inside the prison needed to be longer. This was a great way to start off this novel and series, but damn it, I wanted more. This feeling of wanting more was a recurring feeling of mine. All three of the main characters are interesting and cool, but to me, this book was too short to do them justice. This entire novel felt far to cut down to hold the thought provoking and mind bending themes contained within. The saving grace to this is that this is just book one of the series, which means Rajaniemi has plenty of time to write up some real backstory and to fill out these cool ass characters in three dimensions.
This is a brave short book that should not be missed by science fiction lovers. I will have to reread this one when the next book becomes available. Pretty cool stuff in this one.
The high concepts and amazing science make this book a classic. AMAZING!
"‘I lost my faith in the past. Something is wrong with it. Something is wrong with what we know. That is why I didn’t want you to study the texts in the library. I would not wish this feeling on anyone. Perhaps the old philosophers were right, and we are living in a simulation, playthings of some transhuman gods; perhaps the Sobornost has already won, Fedorov’s dreams are true and we are merely memories."
August 5, 2018
What a blast! This book was highly entertaining. It’s set in a far distant future with technology so advanced that the milieu truly lives up to the dictum that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The world-building here is vaguely based on principals of quantum physics, nanotechnology, AI and digitized consciousness. Much of it is very likely impossible, but just as some authors like Tolkien had the gift for naming in fantasy, Rajaniemi has a gift for describing fantastical technology in a manner that feels legitimate. In fact, I found the way that Rajaniemi builds this future to have invigorating poetic flare. It was really a joy to read. I didn’t care at all if some of the terminology he bandied about was a bit hard to understand. You get the basic gist of it and that was enough for me.
I enjoyed the writing and world-building quite a bit, but what really vaulted this book into 5-star territory for me was one of the key premises of the story that has a vivid prescient glory to it. What I mean is…in this future that Rajaniemi builds, most humans of any wealth at all have in some fashion digitized their consciousness. Some can even multiply that consciousness to inhabit different bodies/objects. Memories can be passed back and forth between people like we might share a business card. And as such, all memories are digitized and can be exported…preserved externally and re-downloaded into other forms. Memories can also in that manner be easily erased. And even…rewritten. History itself can be rewritten. Rajaniemi published this book in 2010 and yet this premise is such a perfect metaphor for the closed-loop re-writing of facts and news by the right-wing media, Republican Party, and Trumpistas that it sent a shiver through me. A truly insightful concept. Admittedly, it’s not utterly new…Holocaust revisionists have been around for decades. But it perfectly captures the current zeitgeist in such a way that I was blown away.
The story is a bit hard to describe, so let me just say it’s thrilling. In some ways, it reminds me of the original Matrix. It begins with our master thief being broken out of a mind prison for the purpose of committing a theft for those who helped him escape. But a big chunk of his memory (and identity) is missing, so they head to Mars where he last was before being imprisoned to attempt to recover his memory. Book 2, which I’m currently reading, has them heading off to Earth to actually steal the item they seek. I won’t give any more away than that.
I enjoyed the hell out of this and am eating up the rest of the series without hesitation. Highly recommended for fans of fantastical science fiction.
I enjoyed the writing and world-building quite a bit, but what really vaulted this book into 5-star territory for me was one of the key premises of the story that has a vivid prescient glory to it. What I mean is…in this future that Rajaniemi builds, most humans of any wealth at all have in some fashion digitized their consciousness. Some can even multiply that consciousness to inhabit different bodies/objects. Memories can be passed back and forth between people like we might share a business card. And as such, all memories are digitized and can be exported…preserved externally and re-downloaded into other forms. Memories can also in that manner be easily erased. And even…rewritten. History itself can be rewritten. Rajaniemi published this book in 2010 and yet this premise is such a perfect metaphor for the closed-loop re-writing of facts and news by the right-wing media, Republican Party, and Trumpistas that it sent a shiver through me. A truly insightful concept. Admittedly, it’s not utterly new…Holocaust revisionists have been around for decades. But it perfectly captures the current zeitgeist in such a way that I was blown away.
The story is a bit hard to describe, so let me just say it’s thrilling. In some ways, it reminds me of the original Matrix. It begins with our master thief being broken out of a mind prison for the purpose of committing a theft for those who helped him escape. But a big chunk of his memory (and identity) is missing, so they head to Mars where he last was before being imprisoned to attempt to recover his memory. Book 2, which I’m currently reading, has them heading off to Earth to actually steal the item they seek. I won’t give any more away than that.
I enjoyed the hell out of this and am eating up the rest of the series without hesitation. Highly recommended for fans of fantastical science fiction.
August 4, 2018
O_o
I used Google to find out the meanings of some words and names because they are non-English. Plus, I read the first 100 pages, then I went back and started reading from the beginning once more.
Speaking for myself, if I hadn't studied programming and database concepts in college, and currently maintain a subscription to New Scientist magazine, I would not have understood most of this book. Not only does it throw you bodily and without apology or explanation into a future world of digital life akin to living within the Internet, it does so with author-created language and theoretical physics made into actual plot design. I suggest you also bone up on the latest black hole hologram/information articles for the general reader, not because you'll need that, but just because. Knowing something about myths and a little game theory is helpful. Basically, if you have picked up a little bit of this and that in the years you have read science magazines, this novel is cool.
That said, I loved this book! It projects itself as a mystery/science fiction mixed genre, but underneath it's a playful literary novel written by a Ph.D. who holds a doctorate in string theory. The author certainly doesn't talk us down or talk down to us - but it is a fully-fleshed novel with the digital world as the stage and quantum mechanics setting the rules.
Yikes!
However, difficult it is to start, I found the novel worth the effort. It is so full of ideas, the kind of ideas that give you that breathlessness similar to standing at the edge of an airplane's door preparing to jump, or looking down from a mountaintop just before you ski off several cliffs.
Some of the characters:
Archons are gleeful Prisoner's Dilemma game creators who barely understand that they maintain prisons here and there in space. Mieli, an extremely teched-out winged beauty, rescues a certain thief, called Jean le Flambeur, from such a punishment prison. Mieli's ship, Perhonen, grown from coral, is sentient. Isidore Beautrelet is a Martian city detective. The tzaddiks are a League of superheroes, patrolling the city of Oubliette. Oubliette is a Martian city with legs and it walks about. In it resides thousands of citizens, connected to the exomemory system, which is sort of an advanced Internet, but fortunately everyone also possesses an internal gevulot which permits the setting of mind privacy limits. Life would be ordinary, except for the danger of a race of beings called the Sobornost, whom no one knows much about but they seem scary. There are also the phoboi, things let loose on Mars during a civil war which definitely can be scary.
Some of the plot:
Isidore, while pursuing a murder case, becomes aware something much scarier is brewing in exomemory, and while pursuing leads, becomes involved with Mieli and the thief. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Pixil, a member of the race called the zoku, who are immigrants who were permitted to move to Mars after a war which was perhaps with the Sobernost as the enemy, a war which destroyed their home world, is showing elements of her race's social beliefs that are very disturbing to Isidore. Plus, the zuko know more than they are telling.
Speaking for myself, I think I'll pass when the Singularity is here. The only way I'd be convinced to participate is if I get Engineering skills.
I used Google to find out the meanings of some words and names because they are non-English. Plus, I read the first 100 pages, then I went back and started reading from the beginning once more.
Speaking for myself, if I hadn't studied programming and database concepts in college, and currently maintain a subscription to New Scientist magazine, I would not have understood most of this book. Not only does it throw you bodily and without apology or explanation into a future world of digital life akin to living within the Internet, it does so with author-created language and theoretical physics made into actual plot design. I suggest you also bone up on the latest black hole hologram/information articles for the general reader, not because you'll need that, but just because. Knowing something about myths and a little game theory is helpful. Basically, if you have picked up a little bit of this and that in the years you have read science magazines, this novel is cool.
That said, I loved this book! It projects itself as a mystery/science fiction mixed genre, but underneath it's a playful literary novel written by a Ph.D. who holds a doctorate in string theory. The author certainly doesn't talk us down or talk down to us - but it is a fully-fleshed novel with the digital world as the stage and quantum mechanics setting the rules.
Yikes!
However, difficult it is to start, I found the novel worth the effort. It is so full of ideas, the kind of ideas that give you that breathlessness similar to standing at the edge of an airplane's door preparing to jump, or looking down from a mountaintop just before you ski off several cliffs.
Some of the characters:
Archons are gleeful Prisoner's Dilemma game creators who barely understand that they maintain prisons here and there in space. Mieli, an extremely teched-out winged beauty, rescues a certain thief, called Jean le Flambeur, from such a punishment prison. Mieli's ship, Perhonen, grown from coral, is sentient. Isidore Beautrelet is a Martian city detective. The tzaddiks are a League of superheroes, patrolling the city of Oubliette. Oubliette is a Martian city with legs and it walks about. In it resides thousands of citizens, connected to the exomemory system, which is sort of an advanced Internet, but fortunately everyone also possesses an internal gevulot which permits the setting of mind privacy limits. Life would be ordinary, except for the danger of a race of beings called the Sobornost, whom no one knows much about but they seem scary. There are also the phoboi, things let loose on Mars during a civil war which definitely can be scary.
Some of the plot:
Isidore, while pursuing a murder case, becomes aware something much scarier is brewing in exomemory, and while pursuing leads, becomes involved with Mieli and the thief. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Pixil, a member of the race called the zoku, who are immigrants who were permitted to move to Mars after a war which was perhaps with the Sobernost as the enemy, a war which destroyed their home world, is showing elements of her race's social beliefs that are very disturbing to Isidore. Plus, the zuko know more than they are telling.
Speaking for myself, I think I'll pass when the Singularity is here. The only way I'd be convinced to participate is if I get Engineering skills.
February 17, 2012
Sometimes in the matter of a sentence or two, a book can achieve a moment of pure beauty, which can elevate it to something beyond just a heist novel, Hard SF or any other conservative branding. Example:
I take her hand. She embraces me. She beats her wings and we rise up, through the glass sky, away from guns, memories and kings.
Similar sentences and passages of great beauty and wonder pepper this the narrative of this debut novel-which would be a great debut novel, if the people the sentences are about were half as interesting.
Yes, I give the author this: this is one hell of a world you have made up. The concepts, in accordance to Hard SF tradition, are all singularly brilliant. But if I am to actually sit down and really get into a story in which a thief escapes from a Dilemma prison to do a heist job breaking into the Oubliette for a Sobornost lady which involves endless entanglements with the Tzaddikim, the phoboi and the Cryptarchs, then you better open your damn gevulot a little bit more, that is, give the reader a little bit more information. For enormous stretches of the text, I'm just witness to action that I cannot understand, which is understandable when it happens on page 25 or page 50, but when you're having a problem figuring out what on earth is going on page 300, then you have a problem. I'm impressed by Rajaniemi's imagination and his undeniable intellect, but his storytelling skills need a bit of polish, I'd say. There are ideas here that I can ponder about for months, but getting through this book-which has the most elementary of pulp thriller plots, mind you-was a bit of a chore. It's not fun, even though there is always somebody shooting at somebody else.
Now that the world-building is done, hopefully the sequel will be an improvement.
I take her hand. She embraces me. She beats her wings and we rise up, through the glass sky, away from guns, memories and kings.
Similar sentences and passages of great beauty and wonder pepper this the narrative of this debut novel-which would be a great debut novel, if the people the sentences are about were half as interesting.
Yes, I give the author this: this is one hell of a world you have made up. The concepts, in accordance to Hard SF tradition, are all singularly brilliant. But if I am to actually sit down and really get into a story in which a thief escapes from a Dilemma prison to do a heist job breaking into the Oubliette for a Sobornost lady which involves endless entanglements with the Tzaddikim, the phoboi and the Cryptarchs, then you better open your damn gevulot a little bit more, that is, give the reader a little bit more information. For enormous stretches of the text, I'm just witness to action that I cannot understand, which is understandable when it happens on page 25 or page 50, but when you're having a problem figuring out what on earth is going on page 300, then you have a problem. I'm impressed by Rajaniemi's imagination and his undeniable intellect, but his storytelling skills need a bit of polish, I'd say. There are ideas here that I can ponder about for months, but getting through this book-which has the most elementary of pulp thriller plots, mind you-was a bit of a chore. It's not fun, even though there is always somebody shooting at somebody else.
Now that the world-building is done, hopefully the sequel will be an improvement.
April 5, 2022
Every so often I like to escape into a sci-fi novel. A problem though that I have with them is that underneath all the ingenious new world building and soaring flights of imagination there often sits a hackneyed plot, culminating in a war between the good guys and the bad guys. This unfortunately falls into this category. The writing though is great and so are many of the set-pieces. Most of the science went over my head but on the whole an enjoyable read.
March 14, 2020
3.5 stars. Rajaniemi creates a deeply fascinating far future cyberpunk world just exploding with crazy advanced technology including near magical nanotech, transferable consciousnesses, virtual realities, ultra sophisticated embedded privacy and memory sharing constructs and so much more. Clearly he has a wonderfully rich imagination. Yet the plot, with it's many layers of intrigue and large cast of characters and shifting factions feels thin in places, the connections often tenuous. The character development also comes up short. All this, and frequent, abrupt transitions creates a rushed pace and incoherence that made for a story that just didn't come together enough to realize it's full potential.
January 13, 2024
So, I thought this was pretty fun. High octane, manly, philosophical in the extreme but also...fun. It wasn't trying to be more, it wasn't preaching at me, and it didn't quite go so far as to see all women as blow up dolls that pushed back. They did have their own agendas, even if part of that invariably included sex with the MC.
CONTENT WARNING:
Things to love:
-Mystery heist explosion! Prison breaks! Mystery solving! Serial kleptomania! Cabals! Heists! All in one orgiastic whodunnit!
-Worldbuilding. This is so funky. It reminds me of many things, with groups colonizing different places and imbuing it with the social ideals of the colonizers. Mars has 2 quirks: privacy is paramount, and the cities move at random so that attackers can't predict where the city will be at any given time. There are games-crazy folk who theory craft their physical construction for min-max capabilities. There are cults who worship game devs. Essentially, this universe is built on the theory that all of us are simulations, and then expands that to extremes, and I think that was extremely well done.
-Broken boy. We've got a thief who's literally lost his mind and is also literally dominated by a war priestess. I mean. Am I meant to be immune to that?
-Just the right pace. Super impressed as the author is Finnish and this is in English. There's no fat here. It's fast without intrusive writing gimmicks. Is EVERYTHING spelled out for me? No, I still don't understand many things. But I understood everything I needed to make this particular drama dramatic without cringing at info dumps, rants, or leaps of faith.
Things I didn't love:
-Boys will be boys. This was still for boys. Where the dick went was terribly important in this book, and was only omitted when someone yanked our hound dog's leash. At certain points, to reference Family Guy, le Flambeur did conduct with his penis.
-A lot I don't understand. There are cultures here with orders of magnitude more post-human ability than others. I don't follow the power spike and how it works for this society.
I'm gonna read on, so it's definitely less obnoxious than many I've read with these literary motifs, but I would not encourage to read this with much in the way of expectation other than "a fun ride," double entendre intended.
CONTENT WARNING:
Things to love:
-Mystery heist explosion! Prison breaks! Mystery solving! Serial kleptomania! Cabals! Heists! All in one orgiastic whodunnit!
-Worldbuilding. This is so funky. It reminds me of many things, with groups colonizing different places and imbuing it with the social ideals of the colonizers. Mars has 2 quirks: privacy is paramount, and the cities move at random so that attackers can't predict where the city will be at any given time. There are games-crazy folk who theory craft their physical construction for min-max capabilities. There are cults who worship game devs. Essentially, this universe is built on the theory that all of us are simulations, and then expands that to extremes, and I think that was extremely well done.
-Broken boy. We've got a thief who's literally lost his mind and is also literally dominated by a war priestess. I mean. Am I meant to be immune to that?
-Just the right pace. Super impressed as the author is Finnish and this is in English. There's no fat here. It's fast without intrusive writing gimmicks. Is EVERYTHING spelled out for me? No, I still don't understand many things. But I understood everything I needed to make this particular drama dramatic without cringing at info dumps, rants, or leaps of faith.
Things I didn't love:
-Boys will be boys. This was still for boys. Where the dick went was terribly important in this book, and was only omitted when someone yanked our hound dog's leash. At certain points, to reference Family Guy, le Flambeur did conduct with his penis.
-A lot I don't understand. There are cultures here with orders of magnitude more post-human ability than others. I don't follow the power spike and how it works for this society.
I'm gonna read on, so it's definitely less obnoxious than many I've read with these literary motifs, but I would not encourage to read this with much in the way of expectation other than "a fun ride," double entendre intended.
May 27, 2024
The book opens with “a thief” musing on how many times he has died in the prison and how it follows an almost finite pattern, which includes a form of resurrection. In short order, we are presented with: a prison escape; a clash in space; musings on sexual experiences impossible for the current generation of humans; a dead body; a reference to “brain piracy;” and a very unusual detective working with what seem to be multiple alien and human species.
The wife of the victim asks: “Why would they want him? He was nothing special…”
The detective answers: “I think your husband was exactly the kind of person the gogol pirates would be interested in, a specialized mind…The Sobornost have an endless appetite for deep learning models, and they are obsessed with human sensory modalities, especially taste and smell.”
A short while later the detective takes his leave and we are told: “As he leaves, he can’t help whistling: he has the full shape of the mystery now. He runs his finger along it in his mind, and it makes a clear sound like a half—full glass of wine.” (And we readers hardly have a clue to grapple with.)
The jump-shifts are often fast and furious and we don’t get the usual introductions. Here is a typical start for a new character: “The King of Mars can see everything, but there are places where he chooses not to look. Usually, the spaceport is one of them. But today, he is there in person, to kill an old friend.”
Yes, people can read others’ minds and extract material and prevent their mind from being “open.” For example: “…secrecy is on of the mission parameters. So she wears the temporary gevulot shell…(that) keeps her metacortex and q-stone bones and the ghostguns and everything else in camouflage mode…” No explanation of these terms offered when they (and many others) are presented. As my GR friend, Monica, noted a decade ago: The reader is challenged by the language and by the number of characters thrown into the mix without much introduction or explanation. I had to keep a notepad handy.
On a future Mars, where some of the action takes place, we meet the zoku who are recent refugees. “We were among the first who experimented with quantum economic mechanisms for collaboration. In the beginning, it was just two crazy otaku, working in a physics lab, stealing entangled ion trap qubits and plugging them into their gaming platforms, coordinating guild raids and making a killing in the auction houses. It turns out that you can do fun things with entanglement. Games become strange. Like Prisoner’s Dilemma with telepathy. Perfect coordination. New game equilibria. We kicked ass and drowned in piles of gold….We’ve done a lot of things since. Survived the Collapse. Built a city on Saturn. Lost a war to Sobornost. But every now and then, it is good to remember where we came from.”
This is a strange, almost dystopian take on the future with wild machine descriptions interspersed with dream-like sequences. I liked this “run through the fun house full of mirrors” but I suspect that many of those quoted in reviews simply don’t want to admit that they didn’t understand all that was happening around them. If you are not prepared for follow paths through a fractal world which may have more that four dimensions, then there is a greater challenge to getting through what Rajaniemi is offering.
I get that a new author wants to demonstrate their relevance and talent but the challenge of describing what goes on inside a person who has a selection of pirated “brains” of various species is mammoth. “I don’t want to think about how those (memories) have been obtained….Being about to become someone else is a thrilling feeling, a tickle of possibility in my gut. There must have been times when I flicked from one identity to another, posthuman, zoku, baseline, Sobornost. And that makes me want to be the god of thieves again, more than anything.”
That Rajaniemi can convey a good measure of this is amazing and challenging. However, I was into this because the concept of “quantum thievery” intrigued me---not sure I got all I wanted.
4
Some of the key names/terms that you will come to understand:
Perhonen – Oortian spidership A.I.
Archons – The Immortals, The Founders
Sobornost – a collective that rules the inner solar system; enemy of The Oubliette
Oubliette – a society of “perfect privacy”
The Quiet – a stage of The Oubliette
Noble – an opulent stage of The Oubliette
The Protocol War
Mieli - Oortian warrior
Jean Le Flambeau – The Thief
Isidor – The Detective and aspiring Tzaddik (Isidore Beautrolet)
Pixel – Isidor’s “girlfriend”
The Gentleman – One of Oubliette’s vigilants, a Tzaddik
Heian Kyo “influencers”
Tendai – Sect
The Goddess
The Chocolatier - a victim
Gevulot – degrees of privacy
Zoku – a species on the move
Gogol – a dead soul, a shell with an uploaded mind
The wife of the victim asks: “Why would they want him? He was nothing special…”
The detective answers: “I think your husband was exactly the kind of person the gogol pirates would be interested in, a specialized mind…The Sobornost have an endless appetite for deep learning models, and they are obsessed with human sensory modalities, especially taste and smell.”
A short while later the detective takes his leave and we are told: “As he leaves, he can’t help whistling: he has the full shape of the mystery now. He runs his finger along it in his mind, and it makes a clear sound like a half—full glass of wine.” (And we readers hardly have a clue to grapple with.)
The jump-shifts are often fast and furious and we don’t get the usual introductions. Here is a typical start for a new character: “The King of Mars can see everything, but there are places where he chooses not to look. Usually, the spaceport is one of them. But today, he is there in person, to kill an old friend.”
Yes, people can read others’ minds and extract material and prevent their mind from being “open.” For example: “…secrecy is on of the mission parameters. So she wears the temporary gevulot shell…(that) keeps her metacortex and q-stone bones and the ghostguns and everything else in camouflage mode…” No explanation of these terms offered when they (and many others) are presented. As my GR friend, Monica, noted a decade ago: The reader is challenged by the language and by the number of characters thrown into the mix without much introduction or explanation. I had to keep a notepad handy.
On a future Mars, where some of the action takes place, we meet the zoku who are recent refugees. “We were among the first who experimented with quantum economic mechanisms for collaboration. In the beginning, it was just two crazy otaku, working in a physics lab, stealing entangled ion trap qubits and plugging them into their gaming platforms, coordinating guild raids and making a killing in the auction houses. It turns out that you can do fun things with entanglement. Games become strange. Like Prisoner’s Dilemma with telepathy. Perfect coordination. New game equilibria. We kicked ass and drowned in piles of gold….We’ve done a lot of things since. Survived the Collapse. Built a city on Saturn. Lost a war to Sobornost. But every now and then, it is good to remember where we came from.”
This is a strange, almost dystopian take on the future with wild machine descriptions interspersed with dream-like sequences. I liked this “run through the fun house full of mirrors” but I suspect that many of those quoted in reviews simply don’t want to admit that they didn’t understand all that was happening around them. If you are not prepared for follow paths through a fractal world which may have more that four dimensions, then there is a greater challenge to getting through what Rajaniemi is offering.
I get that a new author wants to demonstrate their relevance and talent but the challenge of describing what goes on inside a person who has a selection of pirated “brains” of various species is mammoth. “I don’t want to think about how those (memories) have been obtained….Being about to become someone else is a thrilling feeling, a tickle of possibility in my gut. There must have been times when I flicked from one identity to another, posthuman, zoku, baseline, Sobornost. And that makes me want to be the god of thieves again, more than anything.”
That Rajaniemi can convey a good measure of this is amazing and challenging. However, I was into this because the concept of “quantum thievery” intrigued me---not sure I got all I wanted.
4
Some of the key names/terms that you will come to understand:
Perhonen – Oortian spidership A.I.
Archons – The Immortals, The Founders
Sobornost – a collective that rules the inner solar system; enemy of The Oubliette
Oubliette – a society of “perfect privacy”
The Quiet – a stage of The Oubliette
Noble – an opulent stage of The Oubliette
The Protocol War
Mieli - Oortian warrior
Jean Le Flambeau – The Thief
Isidor – The Detective and aspiring Tzaddik (Isidore Beautrolet)
Pixel – Isidor’s “girlfriend”
The Gentleman – One of Oubliette’s vigilants, a Tzaddik
Heian Kyo “influencers”
Tendai – Sect
The Goddess
The Chocolatier - a victim
Gevulot – degrees of privacy
Zoku – a species on the move
Gogol – a dead soul, a shell with an uploaded mind
June 10, 2022
"The Quantum Thief" is the brightest example of the intellectual mainstream, hard-SF, futurology, the era of post-singularity, This is the debut novel of the Finnish writer, who instantly made him a cult author. A complex multiverse where the Earth, as we know it, no longer exists, and people are not quite human either. It would be more correct to say - not people at all.
A mix of Finnish mythology, Gogol, the aesthetics of Arsene Lupin's Guignol, Fedorov's philosophy of Common Cause and the most difficult to understand realities of the brave new world. I did not accidentally remember about Gogol, the local Gogols, which are naturally attributed to Google as the prototype of the artificial intelligence universe and the number "Googol" (one with a hundred zeros) actually originally comes from the name of the author of the novel "Dead Souls". That's it, literary centrism is our everything.
A reader's quest, which is not easy to overcome alone, but easier with the feeling that you are not going through it alone. I listened to Igor Knyazev's audiobook, I try not to miss anything in his performance, it coincided here: a novel that I had been thinking about for a long time, but I never dared to make acquaintance and a favorite reader. When you go through a difficult path with a reliable friend, the road will be mastered by those who walk.
The book is really very complex, with a huge number of conceptual blocks that you need to learn as you read. If there are various kinds of gogols and zoku (something like a new aristocracy with possibilities unthinkable for an ordinary person), even an animated ship and even, perhaps, the concept of finite time - the universal currency of wandering Martian cities — if I was more or less prepared for all this. That notion of "calm" — a delightful translation find by Irina Savelyeva - is something unthinkable, unexpected and cool.
The coolest quest. An unprepared reader is better not to try. But if you like intellectual fiction, you can test yourself.
Квант немилосердия
— И вы так просто позволили им делать все, что они хотели?
— Нет. Когда мы увидели, что получилось, мы испытывали... сожаление.
Странно вспомнить, что еще совсем недавно, до ковида и событий-которые-нельзя-называть, нас всерьез занимали темы глобальных изменений климата и сингулярности-которая-вот-вот-наступит. Читали непростые книжки про нее, пытались представить, как это будет выглядеть.
Вот Морган, у него просто и отчасти похоже на "Матрицу": клоны, пересадка разумов, межзвездные путешествия и космические колонии, а внутри все та же коррупция и социальные противоречия. Вот Гибсон: соединение человеческого разума с искинами, экзоскелеты, хакерство, злачные места по окраинам, криминал.
Вот Дукай, страсть как любит пространственное и биомоделирование с разного рода психоделикой. Вот Стивенсон: киберпространства, наноботы, сращение человека с машиной. Вот Юн Ха Ли: клановость постсингулярного общества, бесконечные войны, подсадка разумов. Вот Аркади Мартин: счастливая эстетствующая империя, куча клонов на все случаи жизни, а где-то на промышленной окраине изобрели и вовсю пользуются репликаторами личности.
Вот моя любовь, Чарльз Стросс с Экономикой 2.0 и большинством упомянутых вещей в бесконечно меняющейся зыбкой картине мира, кто чего и у кого потянул вопрос не стоит, "Аччелерандо", если мне не изменяет память, написан в 2005. И вот наконец Ханну Райяниеми, случилась таки наша встреча.
"Квантовый вор" ярчайший образец интеллектуального мейнстрима, твердая НФ, футурология, эпоха постсингулярности, Это дебютный роман финского писателя, который мгновенно сделал его культовым автором. Сложная мультивселенная, где Земли, в том виде, какой ее знаем мы, больше не существует, и люди тоже не вполне люди. Правильнее было бы сказать - совсем не люди.
Микс из финской мифологии, Гоголя , эстетики гиньоля Арсена Люпена, федоровской философии Общего дела и труднейших для понимания реалий дивного нового мира. Про Гоголя не случайно вспомнила, здешние гоголы, которые естественно отнести к Гуглу как прообразу вселенной искусственного интеллекта и числу "гугол" (единица со ста нулями) на деле изначально происходит от имени автора романа "Мертвые души". Так-то, литературоцентризм наше все.
Читательский квест, который непросто одолеть в одиночку, но легче с ощущением, что проходишь его не одна. Я слушала аудиокнигой Игоря Князева, стараюсь не пропускать ничего в его исполнении, тут совпало: роман, о котором давно думала, да так и не решалась свести знакомство и любимый чтец. Когда проходишь трудный путь с надежным товарищем - дорогу осилят идущие.
Книга, в самом деле, очень сложная, с огромным количеством понятийных блоков, которые нужно усвоить по ходу чтения. Если разного рода гоголы и зоку (что-то, вроде новой аристократии с немыслимыми для обычного человека возможностями), даже одушевленный корабль и даже, возможно, концепция конечного времени — универсальной валюты блуждающих марсианских городов - если ко всему этому я более или менее была подготовлена. То понятие "спокойных" — восхитительная переводческая находка Ирины Савельевой - это что-то немыслимое, неожиданное и классное.
Крутейший квест. Неподготовленному читателю лучше не пробовать. Но если любите интеллектуальную фантастику, можете испытать себя.
A mix of Finnish mythology, Gogol, the aesthetics of Arsene Lupin's Guignol, Fedorov's philosophy of Common Cause and the most difficult to understand realities of the brave new world. I did not accidentally remember about Gogol, the local Gogols, which are naturally attributed to Google as the prototype of the artificial intelligence universe and the number "Googol" (one with a hundred zeros) actually originally comes from the name of the author of the novel "Dead Souls". That's it, literary centrism is our everything.
A reader's quest, which is not easy to overcome alone, but easier with the feeling that you are not going through it alone. I listened to Igor Knyazev's audiobook, I try not to miss anything in his performance, it coincided here: a novel that I had been thinking about for a long time, but I never dared to make acquaintance and a favorite reader. When you go through a difficult path with a reliable friend, the road will be mastered by those who walk.
The book is really very complex, with a huge number of conceptual blocks that you need to learn as you read. If there are various kinds of gogols and zoku (something like a new aristocracy with possibilities unthinkable for an ordinary person), even an animated ship and even, perhaps, the concept of finite time - the universal currency of wandering Martian cities — if I was more or less prepared for all this. That notion of "calm" — a delightful translation find by Irina Savelyeva - is something unthinkable, unexpected and cool.
The coolest quest. An unprepared reader is better not to try. But if you like intellectual fiction, you can test yourself.
Квант немилосердия
— И вы так просто позволили им делать все, что они хотели?
— Нет. Когда мы увидели, что получилось, мы испытывали... сожаление.
Странно вспомнить, что еще совсем недавно, до ковида и событий-которые-нельзя-называть, нас всерьез занимали темы глобальных изменений климата и сингулярности-которая-вот-вот-наступит. Читали непростые книжки про нее, пытались представить, как это будет выглядеть.
Вот Морган, у него просто и отчасти похоже на "Матрицу": клоны, пересадка разумов, межзвездные путешествия и космические колонии, а внутри все та же коррупция и социальные противоречия. Вот Гибсон: соединение человеческого разума с искинами, экзоскелеты, хакерство, злачные места по окраинам, криминал.
Вот Дукай, страсть как любит пространственное и биомоделирование с разного рода психоделикой. Вот Стивенсон: киберпространства, наноботы, сращение человека с машиной. Вот Юн Ха Ли: клановость постсингулярного общества, бесконечные войны, подсадка разумов. Вот Аркади Мартин: счастливая эстетствующая империя, куча клонов на все случаи жизни, а где-то на промышленной окраине изобрели и вовсю пользуются репликаторами личности.
Вот моя любовь, Чарльз Стросс с Экономикой 2.0 и большинством упомянутых вещей в бесконечно меняющейся зыбкой картине мира, кто чего и у кого потянул вопрос не стоит, "Аччелерандо", если мне не изменяет память, написан в 2005. И вот наконец Ханну Райяниеми, случилась таки наша встреча.
"Квантовый вор" ярчайший образец интеллектуального мейнстрима, твердая НФ, футурология, эпоха постсингулярности, Это дебютный роман финского писателя, который мгновенно сделал его культовым автором. Сложная мультивселенная, где Земли, в том виде, какой ее знаем мы, больше не существует, и люди тоже не вполне люди. Правильнее было бы сказать - совсем не люди.
Микс из финской мифологии, Гоголя , эстетики гиньоля Арсена Люпена, федоровской философии Общего дела и труднейших для понимания реалий дивного нового мира. Про Гоголя не случайно вспомнила, здешние гоголы, которые естественно отнести к Гуглу как прообразу вселенной искусственного интеллекта и числу "гугол" (единица со ста нулями) на деле изначально происходит от имени автора романа "Мертвые души". Так-то, литературоцентризм наше все.
Читательский квест, который непросто одолеть в одиночку, но легче с ощущением, что проходишь его не одна. Я слушала аудиокнигой Игоря Князева, стараюсь не пропускать ничего в его исполнении, тут совпало: роман, о котором давно думала, да так и не решалась свести знакомство и любимый чтец. Когда проходишь трудный путь с надежным товарищем - дорогу осилят идущие.
Книга, в самом деле, очень сложная, с огромным количеством понятийных блоков, которые нужно усвоить по ходу чтения. Если разного рода гоголы и зоку (что-то, вроде новой аристократии с немыслимыми для обычного человека возможностями), даже одушевленный корабль и даже, возможно, концепция конечного времени — универсальной валюты блуждающих марсианских городов - если ко всему этому я более или менее была подготовлена. То понятие "спокойных" — восхитительная переводческая находка Ирины Савельевой - это что-то немыслимое, неожиданное и классное.
Крутейший квест. Неподготовленному читателю лучше не пробовать. Но если любите интеллектуальную фантастику, можете испытать себя.
May 9, 2024
My first book by this author (it turns out, this is a lie, but I only discovered that days after writing this review *lol*) and what an entrance Mr. Rajaniemi has made (this is still true)!
Jean le Flambeur is (or was) a master thief. In a post-singularity universe, his conscience is no longer tied to his body. At the outset of the book, it is imprisoned, in fact. A mind prison where he has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. A prisoner dilemma of sorts.
He's "rescued" by a girl named Mieli and her sentient spaceship, who actually is hilarious, especially when it's flirting with Jean. They take him to the Oubliette, a city on Mars, where he is supposed to help them with a mysterious task. In Oubliette, time is used as a currency and privacy of thought is treasured.
But not all is well in this world. For starters, there was a murder that is now investigated by someone who knows and hates Jean. Why? Good question, because Jean has lived many lives and has been many kinds of things - hurting and alienating many people.
And it doesn't help that he can no longer remember any of that.
I loved the aspect of the master thief who still had all his skills but none of his memories, trying to perpetually outsmart himself. Mieli, by contrast, wasn't quite as intriguing, but that was OK since the true star on her side of the story was the sentient ship anyway. ;P
The reveal was absolutely delicious despite me having 98% of it figured out in advance. I love mysteries and puzzles and this was that but with wonderful deep-scifi elements.
Moreover, the writing was tight and riveting and erudite like I've seen in only very few other books. Yes, yes, Scott Brick narrating the audio only helped in charming me, of course! Can't wait to dive into the next!
Jean le Flambeur is (or was) a master thief. In a post-singularity universe, his conscience is no longer tied to his body. At the outset of the book, it is imprisoned, in fact. A mind prison where he has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. A prisoner dilemma of sorts.
He's "rescued" by a girl named Mieli and her sentient spaceship, who actually is hilarious, especially when it's flirting with Jean. They take him to the Oubliette, a city on Mars, where he is supposed to help them with a mysterious task. In Oubliette, time is used as a currency and privacy of thought is treasured.
But not all is well in this world. For starters, there was a murder that is now investigated by someone who knows and hates Jean. Why? Good question, because Jean has lived many lives and has been many kinds of things - hurting and alienating many people.
And it doesn't help that he can no longer remember any of that.
I loved the aspect of the master thief who still had all his skills but none of his memories, trying to perpetually outsmart himself. Mieli, by contrast, wasn't quite as intriguing, but that was OK since the true star on her side of the story was the sentient ship anyway. ;P
The reveal was absolutely delicious despite me having 98% of it figured out in advance. I love mysteries and puzzles and this was that but with wonderful deep-scifi elements.
Moreover, the writing was tight and riveting and erudite like I've seen in only very few other books. Yes, yes, Scott Brick narrating the audio only helped in charming me, of course! Can't wait to dive into the next!
February 24, 2012
In a way this was more like a fast tour of the post singularity world rather than a story set in it. I’ve been reading science and science fiction for a very long time, but I often felt the need to hold up a finger and say, ‘Hang on Hannu, if you could explain –’ … but no, he’s gone like a tour guide on speed. The ideas hit you like cars in a motorway pile-up giving you no time to deal with them, absorb them. And, of course, while the ideas are hitting you like that you’re not properly processing the plot and can fail to engage with it. My feeling is that before he leapt through the next q-dot membrane to begin his next adventure in some gaming virtuality he needed an editor to catch hold of his collar and force him to stop and smell the roses, even if those roses were laced with an optogenetic virus.
Now for the however... This was all very enjoyable, bubbling with fascinating technology and its resultant life-styles, and a book that really does feel like a glimpse into a post Vingean singularity world. I found myself caught up in the author’s enthusiasm with it all and by the end of it wondered if someone has slipped amphetamines into the printer’s ink. For me it is a book I would like to read again, but with the Internet running so I can track down and nail all that glorious weirdness. And in the end, just like with the previous book I reviewed here (on my blog), the answers to the questions are mostly 'yes'.
Now for the however... This was all very enjoyable, bubbling with fascinating technology and its resultant life-styles, and a book that really does feel like a glimpse into a post Vingean singularity world. I found myself caught up in the author’s enthusiasm with it all and by the end of it wondered if someone has slipped amphetamines into the printer’s ink. For me it is a book I would like to read again, but with the Internet running so I can track down and nail all that glorious weirdness. And in the end, just like with the previous book I reviewed here (on my blog), the answers to the questions are mostly 'yes'.
May 28, 2023
The bit with panopticon and the prisoner's dilemma is clever. And I really did like how thoroughly the reader is dropped down in media res. But. The hyper-competent master thief, M. Le Flambeur, a neon, blinking invitation to self-insertion, comes complete with what's supposed to be charming suavity but comes across as what a teenager imagines would be suave: stealing an anklet off of someone you're attracted to and offering it back to them --twice! That's... cute.
But FFS: every. single. female-presenting character (including ~of course~ an AI shipmind) is a 2-dimensional trope-caricature. The thing they all happen to have in common is weird sexualization and finding our Mary Sue of a protagonist irresistible: there's an ice queen to be thawed, some flouncy backstabbery (the flirty, adolescent-presenting ship's AI is weirdly ready to go behind her captain's back because there's a cute stranger on board), haughty contemptuous dom, and don't even get me started on the Unknowable Riddle of Otherness that is Pixil, the petulant tantrum incarnate. Women, amirite?
Not even 20 pages in, after one adult woman (well, sort of a goddess-analog, but whatever) stroked another's cheek and called her, "naughty girl," I threw up a little, but then I thought, "You know, maybe this was written in the early 80s and I should just roll my eyes and bear it because this kind of thing was normalized in SFF at the time." Not remotely: this was published in 2010. I tried to forge ahead for a while, but ultimately even clever science was not enough to get me through this.
But FFS: every. single. female-presenting character (including ~of course~ an AI shipmind) is a 2-dimensional trope-caricature. The thing they all happen to have in common is weird sexualization and finding our Mary Sue of a protagonist irresistible: there's an ice queen to be thawed, some flouncy backstabbery (the flirty, adolescent-presenting ship's AI is weirdly ready to go behind her captain's back because there's a cute stranger on board), haughty contemptuous dom, and don't even get me started on the Unknowable Riddle of Otherness that is Pixil, the petulant tantrum incarnate. Women, amirite?
Not even 20 pages in, after one adult woman (well, sort of a goddess-analog, but whatever) stroked another's cheek and called her, "naughty girl," I threw up a little, but then I thought, "You know, maybe this was written in the early 80s and I should just roll my eyes and bear it because this kind of thing was normalized in SFF at the time." Not remotely: this was published in 2010. I tried to forge ahead for a while, but ultimately even clever science was not enough to get me through this.
July 28, 2020
Blew me away. Hits the ground running and drags you along a mad quantumly tangled (ok I made that up) space opera with wit and genuine originality.
Highly recommended for Banks, Hamilton, Herbert fans. And many more besides.
[2020 reread edit]
This really is one of my all time favourite High Concept SciFi novels. It's an unrelenting stream of far out tech and cultural experimentation taken to extremes. The Oubliette is by far my favourite future society. Their privacy laws are even more relevant than when I first tread this nearly a decade ago.
Highly recommended for Banks, Hamilton, Herbert fans. And many more besides.
[2020 reread edit]
This really is one of my all time favourite High Concept SciFi novels. It's an unrelenting stream of far out tech and cultural experimentation taken to extremes. The Oubliette is by far my favourite future society. Their privacy laws are even more relevant than when I first tread this nearly a decade ago.
August 18, 2015
What the hell even is this book.
Like, don't be fooled by the gorgeous cover and the sassy blurb on the back cover, or even the simplicity and witty intrigue of the prose if you happen to glance at the first page. This book is HELLA CONFUSING. But, like, in a super interesting and entertaining way? That I can't really explain?
This is not a book for the casual sci-fi reader, first of all. If you like heist stories and stories about con men, you will probably have an okay time, but so much of the story and world is built on freaky deaky sci-fi that is so cutting edge and ahead of it's time, it's hard to get a handle on, even with help.
About thirty pages in, I actually gave in and spoiled the hell out of myself just so I could feel more comfortable in the world Rajaniemi created. I'd been warned ahead of time that everything does become clear by the end of the book, that all the pieces fall into place, but since there is absolutely NO exposition to be found in this book, some of the key concepts of the worldbuilding aren't even revealed until about 75% of the way through. I figured it would be a fine trade-off to be spoiled if I could know ahead of time what was actually going on, and I was right.
I know this is not how most people will want to experience this book.
For those people, I recommend pushing through. And honestly, I could have done it. Rajaniemi's prose and his characters and the way he writes the book is SO readable, even if you're not sure what's going on. It's like, who cares! I'm having fun! It's honestly so bizarre how he can do that.
Jean le Flambeur is a great character, and even though it's a bit hard to find the emotional core of the stories at first because Rajaniemi is busy flinging you head first into zany sci-fi hijinks, it is there, and by the end, the part of me that craves emotional connection to stories was satisfied.
I really can't say any more about this without spoiling it. I mean, the book starts with Jean getting busted out of this prison where he's been forced to take part in a literal version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and then suddenly we're on Mars, and there's this weird thing with privacy and immortality and I JUST CAN'T EVEN.
It's also one of those rare books that can be read shallowly for fun, but if you stop to think about it on a deeper level, a whole mess of crap spills out. Stuff about identity and the panopticon and surveillance. Hannu Rajaniemi is an incredibly smart dude (which he wrote in his SECOND language).
Bottom line: this isn't a book for everyone, but if you like science fiction a lot, you definitely need to read this. Just know once you start it, you need to either spoil yourself like I did, or commit to finishing. This is not a book designed to DNF. You're missing the whole point if you do.
I'm not sure when I will get to the second and third books in the series. I hope by the time I do, they've released them in mass market paperback, otherwise my books aren't going to match each other and it will drive me insane when I look at them.
Like, don't be fooled by the gorgeous cover and the sassy blurb on the back cover, or even the simplicity and witty intrigue of the prose if you happen to glance at the first page. This book is HELLA CONFUSING. But, like, in a super interesting and entertaining way? That I can't really explain?
This is not a book for the casual sci-fi reader, first of all. If you like heist stories and stories about con men, you will probably have an okay time, but so much of the story and world is built on freaky deaky sci-fi that is so cutting edge and ahead of it's time, it's hard to get a handle on, even with help.
About thirty pages in, I actually gave in and spoiled the hell out of myself just so I could feel more comfortable in the world Rajaniemi created. I'd been warned ahead of time that everything does become clear by the end of the book, that all the pieces fall into place, but since there is absolutely NO exposition to be found in this book, some of the key concepts of the worldbuilding aren't even revealed until about 75% of the way through. I figured it would be a fine trade-off to be spoiled if I could know ahead of time what was actually going on, and I was right.
I know this is not how most people will want to experience this book.
For those people, I recommend pushing through. And honestly, I could have done it. Rajaniemi's prose and his characters and the way he writes the book is SO readable, even if you're not sure what's going on. It's like, who cares! I'm having fun! It's honestly so bizarre how he can do that.
Jean le Flambeur is a great character, and even though it's a bit hard to find the emotional core of the stories at first because Rajaniemi is busy flinging you head first into zany sci-fi hijinks, it is there, and by the end, the part of me that craves emotional connection to stories was satisfied.
I really can't say any more about this without spoiling it. I mean, the book starts with Jean getting busted out of this prison where he's been forced to take part in a literal version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and then suddenly we're on Mars, and there's this weird thing with privacy and immortality and I JUST CAN'T EVEN.
It's also one of those rare books that can be read shallowly for fun, but if you stop to think about it on a deeper level, a whole mess of crap spills out. Stuff about identity and the panopticon and surveillance. Hannu Rajaniemi is an incredibly smart dude (which he wrote in his SECOND language).
Bottom line: this isn't a book for everyone, but if you like science fiction a lot, you definitely need to read this. Just know once you start it, you need to either spoil yourself like I did, or commit to finishing. This is not a book designed to DNF. You're missing the whole point if you do.
I'm not sure when I will get to the second and third books in the series. I hope by the time I do, they've released them in mass market paperback, otherwise my books aren't going to match each other and it will drive me insane when I look at them.
November 1, 2015
This book was hard to define: I think cyberpunk may be the most apt classification. At heart, the novel is a mystery, but the reader is never quite sure who committed the crime nor for that matter, who are the good guys and bad guys. A thief, Jean Le Flambeur is rescued from prison, and brought to Mars to regain his memory and assist with a crime. Meanwhile, there is a brilliant detective (Isadore Beautrelet), who is brought on to stop Le Flambeur. Isadore, of course, has problems in his personal life, because he is so singularly focused on his career. Finnish author Rajaniemi creates a complex creative futuristic world, but the reader is left with too much work to understand his creations: terms and things. Zokus, spimes, gevulot, Archons, Sobornost, warminds, q-dot bubbles, goglas, Oorts, the Oubliette, and more. A glossary would be an excellent addition, if this gets republished and should be added immediately to the e-book version.
May 10, 2021
Fun caper book as master thief Jean le Flambeur is broken out from the Dilemma Prison and drafted into world saving. Can he recover his memory, determine the justness of his controller's cause, and come out with his skin intact?
This is The Stainless Steel Tea on steroids, with at least four post-singularity societies vying for a victory that would control the destiny of Mars' Oubliette city, and a romp through the possibilities of human civilizations when Time is the currency and computing is ubiquitous.
This is The Stainless Steel Tea on steroids, with at least four post-singularity societies vying for a victory that would control the destiny of Mars' Oubliette city, and a romp through the possibilities of human civilizations when Time is the currency and computing is ubiquitous.
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