Status
Available
Call number
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: The Quantum Thief is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy title. One of Library Journal's Best SF/Fantasy Books of 2011 Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy- from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he's confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turnedsingularity lights the night. What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self-in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed. As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur.... Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut..… (more)
Pages
336
DDC/MDS
| 823.92 |
Language
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — First Novel — 2011)
SF Site Reader's Choice (5 — 2010)
RUSA CODES Reading List (Shortlist — Science Fiction — 2012)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2011)
Seiun Award (Nominee — 2013)
Locus Recommended Reading (First Novel — 2010)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Science Fiction and Fantasy — 2011)
Series
User reviews
LibraryThing member JollyContrarian
When I've had too much coffee by brain starts spinning out and I can't get to sleep: thoughts belt around like I'm watching five films simultaneously, all on fast forward. Nothing stays in focus for long, but thoughts - some profound, some funny, some scary and some downright weird ricochet off
Why do I tell you this? Because reading The Quantum Thief is a bit like having buzzy brain, or at any rate being hotwired into someone else's, and listening to it through a blanket.
Hannu Rajaniemi is fiercely intelligent (I read somewhere he's an actual quantum physicist) and he has some powerful ideas. But from the outset, you're expected already to be familiar with them (game theory and the prisoner's dilemma starts, without exposition, on page 1), and then to be nimble enough to follow Rajaniemi's fictional assemblages without any real help from the author. True, he's thereby refraining insulting his readers' intelligence, but at the same time parading his own, and I dare say it is only the most energetic, talented or disingenuous reader who claims to keep up. Many do.
One thing to draw from these confections: this isn't hard sci-fi, no matter how many name-checks there may be to Robert Axelrod or nanotechnolegy. I suspect Rajuaniemi is throwing round concepts and hoping they stick, and readers are blustered into pretending they do.
Personally I don't think hannu's impish ingenuity - and there is plenty of it, to be sure, is nearly enough to carry the day. I don't think he defies conventional narrative archetypes so much as is completely ignorant of them: Billy Sheehan once said, you have to know the rules before you can break 'em. This is a poorly plotted novel - there are far too many characters, significant ones are under-explained, and the characterisation is wafer thin across the board.
Science Fiction can do one of two things: either present a plausible alternative universe based on credibly worked out science (or alternative science) - this is "hard sci fi"; a spod's paradise, but has at least the merit of theoretical integrity - or it can function as a metaphor for an exploration of recognisably human dilemmas (as, for example, Philip K Dick's extraordinary body of work did). Or, optimally, both.
The Quantum Thief is neither: the "science" is way too airily thrown about (and under-explained) and the narrative is so confusing (and the baloney science too intrusive) for the story to have significant resonance as a morality tale.
What's left - all that's left, I think - is a buzzy brain. Now my own buzzy brain is exasperating enough; having a ringside seat at someone else's is a mite more than this koala can bear.
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each other like superheated pool balls - often, I've thought, illustrating Chomsky's famously unintelligible sentence "colourless green ideas sleep furiously". The wife calls it my buzzy brain phase. Why do I tell you this? Because reading The Quantum Thief is a bit like having buzzy brain, or at any rate being hotwired into someone else's, and listening to it through a blanket.
Hannu Rajaniemi is fiercely intelligent (I read somewhere he's an actual quantum physicist) and he has some powerful ideas. But from the outset, you're expected already to be familiar with them (game theory and the prisoner's dilemma starts, without exposition, on page 1), and then to be nimble enough to follow Rajaniemi's fictional assemblages without any real help from the author. True, he's thereby refraining insulting his readers' intelligence, but at the same time parading his own, and I dare say it is only the most energetic, talented or disingenuous reader who claims to keep up. Many do.
One thing to draw from these confections: this isn't hard sci-fi, no matter how many name-checks there may be to Robert Axelrod or nanotechnolegy. I suspect Rajuaniemi is throwing round concepts and hoping they stick, and readers are blustered into pretending they do.
Personally I don't think hannu's impish ingenuity - and there is plenty of it, to be sure, is nearly enough to carry the day. I don't think he defies conventional narrative archetypes so much as is completely ignorant of them: Billy Sheehan once said, you have to know the rules before you can break 'em. This is a poorly plotted novel - there are far too many characters, significant ones are under-explained, and the characterisation is wafer thin across the board.
Science Fiction can do one of two things: either present a plausible alternative universe based on credibly worked out science (or alternative science) - this is "hard sci fi"; a spod's paradise, but has at least the merit of theoretical integrity - or it can function as a metaphor for an exploration of recognisably human dilemmas (as, for example, Philip K Dick's extraordinary body of work did). Or, optimally, both.
The Quantum Thief is neither: the "science" is way too airily thrown about (and under-explained) and the narrative is so confusing (and the baloney science too intrusive) for the story to have significant resonance as a morality tale.
What's left - all that's left, I think - is a buzzy brain. Now my own buzzy brain is exasperating enough; having a ringside seat at someone else's is a mite more than this koala can bear.
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LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
Jean is an exceptionally good thief. At the beginning of The Quantum Thief, he is rescued from a particularly nasty prison by someone who needs his skills. Isidore is an amateur detective, whom we meet as he solves a case. Of course, this novel will bring these two together, in a complex plot, made
However, The Quantum Thief is not only a mystery, but science fiction, set in a post-Singularity solar system. Human minds run as software on artificial substrates, possibly as many simultaneous copies, wearing bodies varied in shape and capability. Minds far beyond human intelligence exist. Humanity has splintered into subcultures that might as well be different species; one subculture runs what amount to LAN parties as religious rituals. Jean’s prison is virtual, confronting many copies of himself and other prisoners with an endless round of prisoner’s dilemma games, which always eventually end in death for the losing copies. Minds enslaved to carry out work are called gogols, dead souls, whose plight is feared and, in some places, forbidden, so that other means to do the work must be found.
The novel is a mystery, dense with clues, revelations and double-crosses, where what Jean’s rescuer wants him to steal is a larger mystery to them both than how; the story is largely Jean’s rediscovery of his earlier life. That life, and most of the plot, are set on an attractive, partly terraformed Mars, a relative backwater in the solar system, where gogol slavery has been replaced by periodic stretches of community service by minds who are free the rest of the time. Time away from such service is the Martian currency. Society is mediated by a software network called gevolut, which gives citizens fine, almost fractal control over who has access to information about themselves, in what contexts and for how long. Gevulot is like Facebook would be, had it been designed by some guardian angel of privacy, but universal and ubiquitous. It is this system that Isidore must negotiate, in his first chapters, in order to catch a - well, not killer, exactly, because the victim can be revived, after a fashion. The workings of Mars and gevulot were the most interesting parts of the book for me. Rajaniemi seems very up to date on speculations about mind uploading, online privacy, and the singularity.
By contrast, he is weaker on physical science, with much of the exposition on such subjects feeling as though he were asking the reader “do you want quantum sauce on that?” Other flaws include using standard SF tropes without definition, e.g. “utility fog” - routine for me, but a reader unused to SF would find the going very rocky. I’m not sure all the many moving parts of the plot really fit together. Revelations about Rajaniemi’s solar system are held until late in the book, often for no real plot purpose, making reading the book harder than it needed to be.
This is Rajaniemi’s first novel, and has received a great deal of hype. The Charles Stross blurbs on the cover compare him to Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds and Ted Chiang. I disagree in the Egan case - he’s not that interesting on physics and philosophy, Egan’s specialties, and I also disagree in the Chiang case - he’s not nearly Chiang’s equal as a writer. Reynolds - perhaps; I haven’t read that much Reynolds. Most mysteries are not to my taste, and I found the book overly busy. Rananiemi comes up with a great many clever ideas, many more than I’ve noted here, but except for the intriguing gevulot material, these ideas felt to me as though nothing but cleverness was really at stake - unlike Stross or Bruce Sterling, for example, where cleverness serves an original, interesting take on the world. The book’s story has a real ending, but with a coda promising further adventures, so perhaps the second and third books of the promised trilogy will take us further into the more cosmopolitan parts of the author’s solar system, and fulfill the great promise of this fine debut.
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more complex by Jean’s partial amnesia.However, The Quantum Thief is not only a mystery, but science fiction, set in a post-Singularity solar system. Human minds run as software on artificial substrates, possibly as many simultaneous copies, wearing bodies varied in shape and capability. Minds far beyond human intelligence exist. Humanity has splintered into subcultures that might as well be different species; one subculture runs what amount to LAN parties as religious rituals. Jean’s prison is virtual, confronting many copies of himself and other prisoners with an endless round of prisoner’s dilemma games, which always eventually end in death for the losing copies. Minds enslaved to carry out work are called gogols, dead souls, whose plight is feared and, in some places, forbidden, so that other means to do the work must be found.
The novel is a mystery, dense with clues, revelations and double-crosses, where what Jean’s rescuer wants him to steal is a larger mystery to them both than how; the story is largely Jean’s rediscovery of his earlier life. That life, and most of the plot, are set on an attractive, partly terraformed Mars, a relative backwater in the solar system, where gogol slavery has been replaced by periodic stretches of community service by minds who are free the rest of the time. Time away from such service is the Martian currency. Society is mediated by a software network called gevolut, which gives citizens fine, almost fractal control over who has access to information about themselves, in what contexts and for how long. Gevulot is like Facebook would be, had it been designed by some guardian angel of privacy, but universal and ubiquitous. It is this system that Isidore must negotiate, in his first chapters, in order to catch a - well, not killer, exactly, because the victim can be revived, after a fashion. The workings of Mars and gevulot were the most interesting parts of the book for me. Rajaniemi seems very up to date on speculations about mind uploading, online privacy, and the singularity.
By contrast, he is weaker on physical science, with much of the exposition on such subjects feeling as though he were asking the reader “do you want quantum sauce on that?” Other flaws include using standard SF tropes without definition, e.g. “utility fog” - routine for me, but a reader unused to SF would find the going very rocky. I’m not sure all the many moving parts of the plot really fit together. Revelations about Rajaniemi’s solar system are held until late in the book, often for no real plot purpose, making reading the book harder than it needed to be.
This is Rajaniemi’s first novel, and has received a great deal of hype. The Charles Stross blurbs on the cover compare him to Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds and Ted Chiang. I disagree in the Egan case - he’s not that interesting on physics and philosophy, Egan’s specialties, and I also disagree in the Chiang case - he’s not nearly Chiang’s equal as a writer. Reynolds - perhaps; I haven’t read that much Reynolds. Most mysteries are not to my taste, and I found the book overly busy. Rananiemi comes up with a great many clever ideas, many more than I’ve noted here, but except for the intriguing gevulot material, these ideas felt to me as though nothing but cleverness was really at stake - unlike Stross or Bruce Sterling, for example, where cleverness serves an original, interesting take on the world. The book’s story has a real ending, but with a coda promising further adventures, so perhaps the second and third books of the promised trilogy will take us further into the more cosmopolitan parts of the author’s solar system, and fulfill the great promise of this fine debut.
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LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
Most books of the distant future are surprisingly unfuturistic. If I'm not fairly disoriented with a story set thousands of years in the future, I'm disappointed. The Ancillary series is a good example of what I mean.
The Quantum Thief is the opposite. It's not clear how far in the future it is, but
The downside is that it's hard to know what is and what is not possible. When dire things happen, or threaten to happen, all you can do is wait and see what rabbit is pulled out of what quantum crypto genetic hat.
The result is a book worth reading for the experience. It's helpful afterwards to visit the Wiki to get some more bits of the background. But don't expect much in terms of dramatic tension or resolution.
The Quantum Thief is the opposite. It's not clear how far in the future it is, but
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disorientation is the name of the game. The boundary between reality and virtual reality is never clear, after the first chapter, which is clearly in a virtual environment. The various powers at play and their history is complex and never filled out. The downside is that it's hard to know what is and what is not possible. When dire things happen, or threaten to happen, all you can do is wait and see what rabbit is pulled out of what quantum crypto genetic hat.
The result is a book worth reading for the experience. It's helpful afterwards to visit the Wiki to get some more bits of the background. But don't expect much in terms of dramatic tension or resolution.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
One of my favourite thought experiments is to stand slightly back, look at our present-day world, and wonder "How would I explain this to a person from the 16th Century?" Because so much of our lives today would be incomprehensible to even a reasonably well-educated (by the standards of the day)
Still, that's what I started reading science fiction for, and so I wasn't disappointed. Most of what Rajaniemi puts into the book becomes clear with time; what doesn't come clear is most likely a setup for the next novel in the series. What we have here is a post-human heist caper, mainly set in a mobile city on the surface of Mars. A lot of the city's style and habits seem lifted from 19th Century Paris, but there are elements of Russian folklore and a few nods to the author's own Finnish heritage as well. The story switches between Jean le Flambeur, the thief of the title, and a detective, Isidore Beautrelet, whose stories become interlinked; it moves along at a fair pace, although about three quarters of the way in, a new character was introduced almost out of nowhere and I did stumble slightly. But the pace soon picked up again, and we were led to a spectacular, if slightly confusing, climax. (Well, confusing if you haven't been paying attention, or weren't aware of the meaning of words like 'panopticon' or 'oubliette'...)
It's not a book that will be to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed it.
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person, I find this an intriguing exercise. And so I looked at the utter weirdness of so much of the setting of 'The Quantum Thief' and I felt like that 16th Century person.Still, that's what I started reading science fiction for, and so I wasn't disappointed. Most of what Rajaniemi puts into the book becomes clear with time; what doesn't come clear is most likely a setup for the next novel in the series. What we have here is a post-human heist caper, mainly set in a mobile city on the surface of Mars. A lot of the city's style and habits seem lifted from 19th Century Paris, but there are elements of Russian folklore and a few nods to the author's own Finnish heritage as well. The story switches between Jean le Flambeur, the thief of the title, and a detective, Isidore Beautrelet, whose stories become interlinked; it moves along at a fair pace, although about three quarters of the way in, a new character was introduced almost out of nowhere and I did stumble slightly. But the pace soon picked up again, and we were led to a spectacular, if slightly confusing, climax. (Well, confusing if you haven't been paying attention, or weren't aware of the meaning of words like 'panopticon' or 'oubliette'...)
It's not a book that will be to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed it.
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LibraryThing member Hectigo
Hannu Rajaniemi's debut is mind-blowing in its ideas and in the singular universe it creates. It might be the best exploration of posthumanity in fiction yet, and a terrific example of what sci-fi as a genre should represent. Of course, introducing a complex and completely new world in a mere three
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hundred pages is not an easy task, and Rajaniemi occasionally stumbles: reading the book sometimes feels like pretty hard work. Leaving explanations for later might make the story a tighter package, but also quite confusing at first. The convoluted plot doesn't help much. Still, the book is well worth a read for the concepts alone, and I suppose it might get better on a second reading. A real diamond in the rough if I've ever seen one, and I'd expect great things from Rajaniemi a bit further down the road. Show Less
LibraryThing member felius
Others have already written much better reviews, so I'll keep mine brief.
I enjoyed this - it was great fun, with a frantic pace and some great characters. If you've not read much post-singularity hard-sf, then you may find yourself hitting a bit of a barrier with some of the terminology and
The (gushing) praise on the jacket from Charles Stross compares Rajaniemi's writing with Greg Egan, Ted Chiang and Alastair Reynolds. If you've read and enjoyed Alastair Reynolds then you'll love this - conversely, if you enjoy this and haven't read any Alastair Reynolds, you probably should. (Of course you should read Greg Egan and Ted Chiang too, but to me this felt much more like AR than either of those.)
I look forward to the sequel, and other works exploring this universe.
I enjoyed this - it was great fun, with a frantic pace and some great characters. If you've not read much post-singularity hard-sf, then you may find yourself hitting a bit of a barrier with some of the terminology and
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concepts; the author just assumes you're familiar with the potential implications of ubiquitous nanotech, post-scarcity economies, quantum entanglement and the like and moves on from there.The (gushing) praise on the jacket from Charles Stross compares Rajaniemi's writing with Greg Egan, Ted Chiang and Alastair Reynolds. If you've read and enjoyed Alastair Reynolds then you'll love this - conversely, if you enjoy this and haven't read any Alastair Reynolds, you probably should. (Of course you should read Greg Egan and Ted Chiang too, but to me this felt much more like AR than either of those.)
I look forward to the sequel, and other works exploring this universe.
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LibraryThing member TadAD
For all that it is shelved as science fiction, this seemed more like a mystery to me. A mystery set in the far future in a society…or, rather, three societies…that are quite imaginative and intriguing, but a mystery nonetheless. Given that a Google of Rajaniemi shows him to possess of doctorate
However, I can see how other commenters were overwhelmed by the neologisms and half-explained social concepts; the book is chock-a-block with them. For me, that was part of what made it interesting. It's a book that makes you work. Until the explanations come, you have to pay attention and think about what you're reading. The experience is very immersive. That said, I think Rajaniemi did go a bit overboard and made the reader work a little too hard. The story would not have been harmed by a couple of clues as to what the heck was going on in the background so that there were a few less moments of, "Oh, that's what he meant!" after the fact. Keeping the details of the central mystery close to the vest does not require keeping the details of the entire universe there.
The plot moves at a decent clip and the central mystery is certainly no worse than many I've seen that were explicitly in that genre. The characters range from interesting to bizarre, but they certainly grab your attention.
All in all, as a first novel, it shows a lot of promise. I'll pick up his next one to see where he's going to go with his writing.
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in mathematical physics, the story is relatively undemanding in terms of hard science. Most of it is simply hand-waving at some concepts and new terms. This may be a positive or negative depending upon your tastes: if you want to know how privacy management can make one individual invisible to another, you're out of luck. If you just want to enjoy the social implications without laboring through a lot of "stuff", you're good to go.However, I can see how other commenters were overwhelmed by the neologisms and half-explained social concepts; the book is chock-a-block with them. For me, that was part of what made it interesting. It's a book that makes you work. Until the explanations come, you have to pay attention and think about what you're reading. The experience is very immersive. That said, I think Rajaniemi did go a bit overboard and made the reader work a little too hard. The story would not have been harmed by a couple of clues as to what the heck was going on in the background so that there were a few less moments of, "Oh, that's what he meant!" after the fact. Keeping the details of the central mystery close to the vest does not require keeping the details of the entire universe there.
The plot moves at a decent clip and the central mystery is certainly no worse than many I've seen that were explicitly in that genre. The characters range from interesting to bizarre, but they certainly grab your attention.
All in all, as a first novel, it shows a lot of promise. I'll pick up his next one to see where he's going to go with his writing.
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LibraryThing member blodeuedd
he author is Finnish so of course I had to read it, he has also got a Phd in mathematical physics, which shows. I was truly confused by this book at times, but do not get me wrong, it is a well-written book and it shows that it is written by someone who masters the genre. It is wondrous.
I truly do
Later I found the thing I had been missing on wikipedia, a glossary of all those terms I had no idea about. Yes he sure made up a lot of things and I did not always understand what they were. So an advice would be, check wikipedia. It will help a bit. Rajaniemi knew his world, and better than I did for sure. But if you just go with the flow you will be alright.
But do not ask me what the book is about, there are twists and turns, Mieli who has kidnapped our thief does not explain what she needs either. So we are thrown into a world and Jean needs to find his memories from before so he can figure things out. And just as he is confused what is going on, so are we. And at the end things starts coming together and secrets are brought out in the open, and I was surprised.
I also liked that he used a few Finnish words as names, and more. Yes, I truly liked that. Not to mention that it gave me more insight since they had a meaning too.
Conclusion:
I have confused you all now haven't I? Just let me say that this is a sci-fi book to read, the world is pieced together masterfully and you get a detective/adventure story all in one. It would make one kicking movie.
I truly do
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not know where to begin. It was made up from words, and I was lost at times. I felt like I was trapped in a surreal dream. And still it was one of the best sci-fi books I have read, because of the way he wrote. It is a masterful novel and if he continues to write like he does then he will be remembered. Later I found the thing I had been missing on wikipedia, a glossary of all those terms I had no idea about. Yes he sure made up a lot of things and I did not always understand what they were. So an advice would be, check wikipedia. It will help a bit. Rajaniemi knew his world, and better than I did for sure. But if you just go with the flow you will be alright.
But do not ask me what the book is about, there are twists and turns, Mieli who has kidnapped our thief does not explain what she needs either. So we are thrown into a world and Jean needs to find his memories from before so he can figure things out. And just as he is confused what is going on, so are we. And at the end things starts coming together and secrets are brought out in the open, and I was surprised.
I also liked that he used a few Finnish words as names, and more. Yes, I truly liked that. Not to mention that it gave me more insight since they had a meaning too.
Conclusion:
I have confused you all now haven't I? Just let me say that this is a sci-fi book to read, the world is pieced together masterfully and you get a detective/adventure story all in one. It would make one kicking movie.
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LibraryThing member Pjc57
Once you get your head around the opening few chapters and the complicated science fiction concepts (for a non-science fiction fanatic)this settles into being a fast moving story with enough twists and turns to keep you wanting to read more. Enjoyed it.
LibraryThing member tenacious_nixie
Don't you hate the “As You Know” trope? They are always so clunky, those paragraphs about ...insert SF tech name here..., they feel like quotes from some bad textbooks. I know I hate them, so I can't join the other reviewers in the whole “you don't understand what's going on for 50% of the
“The Quantum Thief” is clever, but not too clever, so there's no point in being afraid of it. As it happens with all references, you'll enjoy the book much more if you get them (and in this case, the references are from cryptography, for example), but you won't die if you don't get every single one.
The book rushes you through countless action scenes, peppering them with interludes and pieces of ideas. It would be silly to expect deep characters here, and there indeed aren't any, but that's fine.
I'd say this book is a good entertainment for a few hours and it leaves you with a little something to think about or discuss.
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book” rant. Then again, I liked “Dive into Python” much more than any other book on any other programming language ever, so...“The Quantum Thief” is clever, but not too clever, so there's no point in being afraid of it. As it happens with all references, you'll enjoy the book much more if you get them (and in this case, the references are from cryptography, for example), but you won't die if you don't get every single one.
The book rushes you through countless action scenes, peppering them with interludes and pieces of ideas. It would be silly to expect deep characters here, and there indeed aren't any, but that's fine.
I'd say this book is a good entertainment for a few hours and it leaves you with a little something to think about or discuss.
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LibraryThing member Literate.Ninja
I really enjoyed this book. It was unique, creative, and expansive. The action scenes were well written, and the descriptions were so eloquent and immersive that I could almost taste the fabbed chocolate and smell the dust kicked up by the Quiet. I fully intend to read the second book, The Fractal
That said... this book was really rather confusing. A lot of invented language (which I just sort of take as a given in Sci-Fi anymore) and a lot of puzzling physics and suspend-your-disbelief science (humans living on Mars have developed a privacy organ in their brains, really?). If you are not really paying attention, you can miss a lot of the little context clues that allow you to follow what the heck is going on. A lot of the motivations and histories of the characters are only hinted at in this work, which I'm hoping will be cleared up later in the series.
I would recommend this book to people who like deep, thought-provoking works and aren't put off by having to re-read passages several times to get a handle on the content.
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Prince, if only to figure out a bit more of what was going on in the first book. That said... this book was really rather confusing. A lot of invented language (which I just sort of take as a given in Sci-Fi anymore) and a lot of puzzling physics and suspend-your-disbelief science (humans living on Mars have developed a privacy organ in their brains, really?). If you are not really paying attention, you can miss a lot of the little context clues that allow you to follow what the heck is going on. A lot of the motivations and histories of the characters are only hinted at in this work, which I'm hoping will be cleared up later in the series.
I would recommend this book to people who like deep, thought-provoking works and aren't put off by having to re-read passages several times to get a handle on the content.
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LibraryThing member gregandlarry
The worlds they inhabited were so different from ours that I times I found it hard to relate.
LibraryThing member david_c
To be consistent with other rankings this should be a 5/5.
I have just re-read this book, having mostly forgotten what it is about, and really really enjoyed it.
At the science level, humanity is still confined to the solar system (if one calls the Oort cloud part of the solar system). Some humans
At the political level, there are multiple factions, one of which may or may not be responsible for the disappearance of Jupiter. Mars is a reasonably closed world, unwelcoming to foreigners, although there is a colony of zoku, political refugees from inter-planetary war, descended from a colony of gamers.
At the personal level, Mieli is a native of Oort, extorted into rescuing Jean le Flambeur from prison. Jean himself is a legendary thief and once resident of Mars. To earn his freedom, he has to help Mieli find something that he has hidden from himself, for reasons that he has forgotten. Meanwhile on Mars, Isadore helps the Gentleman solve a murder involving the taste of chocolate. Little do any of them expect to become entangled with each other, and with conspiracies that extend throughout Martian society and possibly even beyond.
I have just re-read this book, having mostly forgotten what it is about, and really really enjoyed it.
At the science level, humanity is still confined to the solar system (if one calls the Oort cloud part of the solar system). Some humans
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are wildly augmented, but most are still DNA based biological forms as nearly as I can tell. Most of the story takes place on Mars. The book is heavy on mathematics and physics: prisoner's dilemma, quantum entanglement, and cryptography all add to the plot.At the political level, there are multiple factions, one of which may or may not be responsible for the disappearance of Jupiter. Mars is a reasonably closed world, unwelcoming to foreigners, although there is a colony of zoku, political refugees from inter-planetary war, descended from a colony of gamers.
At the personal level, Mieli is a native of Oort, extorted into rescuing Jean le Flambeur from prison. Jean himself is a legendary thief and once resident of Mars. To earn his freedom, he has to help Mieli find something that he has hidden from himself, for reasons that he has forgotten. Meanwhile on Mars, Isadore helps the Gentleman solve a murder involving the taste of chocolate. Little do any of them expect to become entangled with each other, and with conspiracies that extend throughout Martian society and possibly even beyond.
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LibraryThing member oscillate_wildly
Overall, an excellent book. The action is fast-paced, the characters are enjoyable, and the future societies are delightful. It's so refreshing to see a book that posits very different technology, and that technology is actually the foundation of an equally different society, with different ways
My only quibbles are relatively minor. Firstly, the pacing was a little too fast; I felt I was still towards the middle of the book at the last page. Another thing is that the characters always felt just a little removed -- there were several emotional arcs that seemed to fade in and out a little, and a couple of emotional payoffs/gut-punches that didn't have the right impact, as they didn't feel earned.
That being said, I enjoyed the book and I'm very much looking forward to the sequel.
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for individuals to interact. And this isn't wooly science -- I felt like I was in the right mind-frame for this book after having picked up Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos and reading a couple of chapters on the basics of quantum mechanics.My only quibbles are relatively minor. Firstly, the pacing was a little too fast; I felt I was still towards the middle of the book at the last page. Another thing is that the characters always felt just a little removed -- there were several emotional arcs that seemed to fade in and out a little, and a couple of emotional payoffs/gut-punches that didn't have the right impact, as they didn't feel earned.
That being said, I enjoyed the book and I'm very much looking forward to the sequel.
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LibraryThing member drardavis
I like to know the meaning of the sentences I read and the definitions of all the words in them. That is not possible in this book, and at first I did not like what I was reading, but resistance was futile and I wandered on. I am very glad that I did. The chaos of fantasy physics and undefined
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terms pulls you in to a matrix of fascinating complexity and mystery. This is not a Perry Mason tale translated onto an alien planet. It is pure poetry and serious sensory overload. After I catch my breath, I’ll try the second book in the series. Show Less
LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
I expected to like this more than I did. Maybe it's that I'm not familiar enough with quantum theory to really appreciate aspects of it. I felt somewhat the same way regarding Catherine Asaro's "The Quantum Rose" - the plot is supposed to illustrate the behavior of quantum particles, but to me it
Still, I don't think my issues with the book really had to do with the math. I found the continual present tense it's written in distancing.
It's also an introduction to a very complex world, with tons of interesting and very alien tech, different cultures, even different levels of reality. It has a lot of characters. Introducing all of these smoothly; letting a reader slide into the world without didactic explanations, while still letting the reader know the essentials, is a difficult task - and one that I didn't feel was always successfully executed. I like the lack of overt explanation, but there were moments where I was confused, or just couldn't fully picture what was going on due to lack of information. This also applies to the main character, a man who can't remember significant portions of his memory and past. It can be hard to get to know a character who doesn't even know himself. More in-depth characterization in general would have been good, especially considering that so much of the plot has to do with questions of identity (who are "you" if who you are can be downloaded, edited, transferred...?)
These things aside, this is still quite a good book, especially for a debut novel. Once I started to get to know the world and its functioning, it got pretty interesting. I assume a sequel is on the way...
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just seemed like a fantasy novel.Still, I don't think my issues with the book really had to do with the math. I found the continual present tense it's written in distancing.
It's also an introduction to a very complex world, with tons of interesting and very alien tech, different cultures, even different levels of reality. It has a lot of characters. Introducing all of these smoothly; letting a reader slide into the world without didactic explanations, while still letting the reader know the essentials, is a difficult task - and one that I didn't feel was always successfully executed. I like the lack of overt explanation, but there were moments where I was confused, or just couldn't fully picture what was going on due to lack of information. This also applies to the main character, a man who can't remember significant portions of his memory and past. It can be hard to get to know a character who doesn't even know himself. More in-depth characterization in general would have been good, especially considering that so much of the plot has to do with questions of identity (who are "you" if who you are can be downloaded, edited, transferred...?)
These things aside, this is still quite a good book, especially for a debut novel. Once I started to get to know the world and its functioning, it got pretty interesting. I assume a sequel is on the way...
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LibraryThing member DebbieBspinner
Brilliant. I had to read this one in small bites, carefully, because so many concepts were dense and contextual. Very glad there's a sequel.
LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
This novel starts off at a feverish pace and never lets up. There are two main threads. One centres on Jean le Flambeur, a thief, who, at the start of the novel is incarcerated in a 'Dilemma Prison', an instantiation of the mathematical model of the Prisoners Dilemma', in which separated criminals
In the Oubliette, Isidore Beautrelet, an architecture student, is building a reputation as a dectective. A chocolatier is murdered and Isidore unpicks what appears to be a straightforward case into something more complex and sinister. 'The Gentleman', a kind of policemen, introduces Isidore to the 'millenniaire' Christian Unruh, who has had an unpleasant experience while reading in his private library. Time spent alive is currency and even though he is time-rich, Christian must return to the Slow (a kind of community service). He is holding a party to mark this transition and he is upset that someone called 'Jean le Flambeur' has left a note in his library to say that he would be attending this party...
The above is just the bare bones of the plot. Also left out are explanations (or sometimes just guesses about) the blizzard of characters, cliques, places, devices and technologies that this novel mints names for and relentlessly throws at the reader. I tried hard to pay attention and keep up but had to 'go with the flow' in parts. I hope the next novel is slower paced and makes more use of the usually evil practice of 'info-dumping'. For all its obscurities and frenetic plot, as a first novel this is a cracking start.
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must guess what the other is going to do, to try to get the best outcome for themselves. Jean is not doing well at this game but he is sprung from the prison by by Mieli, a warrior, and her sentient ship, Perhonen. She takes him to Mars and the Oubliette, a moving city that he used to live in. In return for his freedom he must recover a set of memories he secretly stashed there before being arrested as they are of interest to Mieli's employer, the Pelligrini.In the Oubliette, Isidore Beautrelet, an architecture student, is building a reputation as a dectective. A chocolatier is murdered and Isidore unpicks what appears to be a straightforward case into something more complex and sinister. 'The Gentleman', a kind of policemen, introduces Isidore to the 'millenniaire' Christian Unruh, who has had an unpleasant experience while reading in his private library. Time spent alive is currency and even though he is time-rich, Christian must return to the Slow (a kind of community service). He is holding a party to mark this transition and he is upset that someone called 'Jean le Flambeur' has left a note in his library to say that he would be attending this party...
The above is just the bare bones of the plot. Also left out are explanations (or sometimes just guesses about) the blizzard of characters, cliques, places, devices and technologies that this novel mints names for and relentlessly throws at the reader. I tried hard to pay attention and keep up but had to 'go with the flow' in parts. I hope the next novel is slower paced and makes more use of the usually evil practice of 'info-dumping'. For all its obscurities and frenetic plot, as a first novel this is a cracking start.
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LibraryThing member reading_fox
This is not a novel that will please everyone. I found it fun, although possibly tries to be a bit too clever, and I'm not sure the conclusion is quite supported by the preceding work. But I did enjoy it nethertheless. There has been a few charismatic thief based fantasy novels in the last year or
As with many SF novels the backstory isn't explained and you're left to try an piece it together from the fragments referred to too infrequently. The basics seem to be that a paradigm sift happened on Earth allowing conciousness uploading to a major new technologies, but only some people had control over it, and there were divisions in the ranks. The story starts with our hero -one Jean Flambeau incarerated in a distant prision playing Prisoner's Dilemma for real over and over again. Then, just as he's about to lose for the last time he is rescued by someone who needs his specific thief skills for a quest that is never specified. First he has to regain his thieving skills by finding where he hid them. Or maybe where a copy of him might have hidden them - digitial personalities being what they are. This is likely to have been on Mars where there is a privacy obscessed society that mediates every personal interaction through a nanotech AI, allowing you to forget you've ever seen someone if both parties agree, or just prevent yourself from being seen to start with. Here we meet the other key character one Isodore, a member of this society and also somewhat of a detective, investigating anomolies in the exomemory. The game is afoot.
The focus switches between three main characters- Jean, Meili his rescuer and isodore. However only Jean is a first person voice, both Isodore and Meili take thrid person, which makes the switches very obvious to identify, if occasionally a little bit stilted. On hte whole I prefered this technique over other multiple POV novels which generally irritate me with unclear character jumps. Much of the plot remains deliberately opaque with quantum level re-writing ofthe past histories and memories possible, and then merged into multiple copies of a character. The Author does a very good job of keeping this clear! and you always know which characters are involved. The world building is very clever, and well used - a lot of thorugh has gone into te details of what has happened in the past and how that's effected what is experienced - even if the actual science is left unexplained. But you have to pay attaention and have some degree of understanding about cryptology and standard SF tropes at the very least.
I'm very interested to see where the sequel takes us.
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two, but this is the first I've come across in an SF setting. As with many SF novels the backstory isn't explained and you're left to try an piece it together from the fragments referred to too infrequently. The basics seem to be that a paradigm sift happened on Earth allowing conciousness uploading to a major new technologies, but only some people had control over it, and there were divisions in the ranks. The story starts with our hero -one Jean Flambeau incarerated in a distant prision playing Prisoner's Dilemma for real over and over again. Then, just as he's about to lose for the last time he is rescued by someone who needs his specific thief skills for a quest that is never specified. First he has to regain his thieving skills by finding where he hid them. Or maybe where a copy of him might have hidden them - digitial personalities being what they are. This is likely to have been on Mars where there is a privacy obscessed society that mediates every personal interaction through a nanotech AI, allowing you to forget you've ever seen someone if both parties agree, or just prevent yourself from being seen to start with. Here we meet the other key character one Isodore, a member of this society and also somewhat of a detective, investigating anomolies in the exomemory. The game is afoot.
The focus switches between three main characters- Jean, Meili his rescuer and isodore. However only Jean is a first person voice, both Isodore and Meili take thrid person, which makes the switches very obvious to identify, if occasionally a little bit stilted. On hte whole I prefered this technique over other multiple POV novels which generally irritate me with unclear character jumps. Much of the plot remains deliberately opaque with quantum level re-writing ofthe past histories and memories possible, and then merged into multiple copies of a character. The Author does a very good job of keeping this clear! and you always know which characters are involved. The world building is very clever, and well used - a lot of thorugh has gone into te details of what has happened in the past and how that's effected what is experienced - even if the actual science is left unexplained. But you have to pay attaention and have some degree of understanding about cryptology and standard SF tropes at the very least.
I'm very interested to see where the sequel takes us.
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LibraryThing member jerhogan
Breakneck pace, with the opposite of infodump. Concepts are introduced to the story and either not explained or explained at the end. I stuck with it and enjoyed the ride but not sure about the integrity of the plot.
LibraryThing member Romis78
Maybe I'm too technophobic, but I found this quite confusing. It took quite a while to get in to the characters and even longer to sort them out, and the action was meager. On the plus side, it was interesting enough that I read it quite quickly, so there must be something there.
LibraryThing member nnschiller
Really impressive merging of a story of a thief and his relationships with an amazing world informed by the mergings of bits and atoms, the physical and the digital.
This book is hard sci-fi that is more about data than rockets and with a warm beating heart.
This book is hard sci-fi that is more about data than rockets and with a warm beating heart.
LibraryThing member nnschiller
Really impressive merging of a story of a thief and his relationships with an amazing world informed by the mergings of bits and atoms, the physical and the digital.
This book is hard sci-fi that is more about data than rockets and with a warm beating heart.
This book is hard sci-fi that is more about data than rockets and with a warm beating heart.
LibraryThing member Drakhir
The thief and his escape were a brilliant start. I was just beginning to become really engaged with the story when we switch perspectives to the 'detective'.
I could not care less for the story. Perhaps it was that this was an intro piece, only setting the scene and having nothing to do with the
But i suspect not. This is two stories, and the weight of one pulls the other from the sky. I stopped reading on page 57, when i entered yet another story. This one might only be a couple of pages, but it got me to check through, and i see more paper is covered by the detective, so no thanks.
Shame.
I could not care less for the story. Perhaps it was that this was an intro piece, only setting the scene and having nothing to do with the
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rest of the story. Now you can see how brilliant he is.But i suspect not. This is two stories, and the weight of one pulls the other from the sky. I stopped reading on page 57, when i entered yet another story. This one might only be a couple of pages, but it got me to check through, and i see more paper is covered by the detective, so no thanks.
Shame.
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LibraryThing member JeremyPreacher
You know, I like hard sci-fi much better when its obsessions are virtual worlds and their attendant social structures rather than rocketships and aliens. This is exactly that kind of sci-fi, and it makes me happy. If you like Charlie Stross's stuff, this will suit, I think.
Publication
Gollancz (2010), Edition: First Edition, 336 pages
Media reviews
Interzone 230
Rajaniemi’s pacy debut novel is set in a far future where both Jupiter and Phobos have been turned into suns in the aftermath of a war between the godlike Sobornost, who control most of the inner solar system, and the Zoku, now exiled to Mars from their Saturnian home.
On Mars all off-world
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tech is proscribed. The city called the Oubliette is constantly on the move, built on platforms which change their relative position as it is carried across Hellas Basin on vast articulated legs. Rajaniemi does not fetishise this creation as many another author would. Far from being almost a character in its own right the city is merely an exotic backdrop for his story, not its focus.
In the Oubliette, interactions between people (and buildings) are mediated by technology known as exomemory which captures every thought, dream and action. A filtering system known as gevulot acts as a privacy screen but is opened for speech and donation of information packets called co-memories.
The city’s inhabitants all carry Watches which store the Time they use as money. When your Time runs out, death follows. Resurrection Men decant memories and implant them in a new body in which to serve the city as one of the Quiet till enough credit has been accrued to live normally again. On occasion criminals dubbed gogol pirates deliberately kill in order to steal the deceased’s memories and enslave the minds. This is anathema to anyone from the Oubliette (but philosophically it surely differs from being Quiet only in degree.) Tzadikkim, a vigilante-type group with enhanced powers, act as an informal police.
The narrative is shared between the first person account of Jean le Flambeur, the quantum thief of the title, and the third person viewpoints of an Oortian, Mieli, who kicks the novel off by springing Jean from an unusual prison round Saturn, and the somewhat too intuitive detective Isodore Beautrelet. Both Jean and Mieli have (rarely used) Sobornost enhancements. In addition, several Interludes fill in backstory and -ground.
The text can be dense at times. Rajaniemi deploys technological terminology with a flourish; qdots, ghostguns, qupting, Bose-Einstein Condensate ammunition, quantum entanglement rings, qubits, but these can be allowed to wash over any technophobic reader prepared to follow the flow.
By implication Rajaniemi emphasises the importance of memory, not only in the idea of exomemory or the uploading/decanting of personality but also as a component of individual identity. Jean le Flambeur has hidden his past from himself and has no recall of it until others restore it bit by bit via gevulot exchanges.
Rajaniemi’s Finnish origins are most revealed by some of the names he uses. Mieli’s spidership is called Perhonen - butterfly - and he slips in a Finnish expletive in the guise of an Oortian god. There are also borrowings from Japanese, Hebrew and Russian and a subtle Sherlock Holmes reference.
“The Quantum Thief” is bursting with ideas and there are sufficient action/battle scenes to slake any thirst for vicarious violence but sometimes it seems as if incidents are present in order to fill in background rather than being necessary to the plot. The motivations of some of the characters are obscure and despite the prominence of gevulot in the Oubliette, conversations and interactions seem to be more or less unaltered in comparison to our familiar world, though had Rajaniemi presented them otherwise they may have been unintelligible.
The denouement brings all the threads together satisfyingly while the final Interlude sheds additional light on the proceedings and sets up possible scenarios for sequels - for which there will likely be an avid audience.
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Original language
English
Original publication date
2010-09-30
Physical description
336 p.; 9.45 inches
ISBN
0575088877 / 9780575088870