David Katzman's Reviews > The Quantum Thief

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.