{"id":1416,"date":"2012-07-02T16:17:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T16:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2012-07-03T16:27:04","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T16:27:04","slug":"the-quantum-thief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1416","title":{"rendered":"The Quantum Thief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Quantum Thief<\/em> by Hannu\u00a0Rajaniemi<\/h2>\n

The reading group met at the North Village Library on July 3 to discuss Hannu Rajaniemi\u2019s The Quantum Thief<\/em>. \u00a0Billed as the first in a trilogy, it was published in 2010 and The Fractal Prince<\/em> is scheduled for next September. \u00a0The author is a Finn with a PhD in mathematical physics. \u00a0This first novel received many laudatory reviews. \u00a0The comments of the ten members at the meeting, however, were extremely varied.<\/p>\n

The tale begins with Jean le Flambeur, a famous \u201cpost human\u201d thief and mind manipulator, although there are several viewpoint characters in this extremely complex story. \u00a0Jean is in a sort of virtual prison where he is condemned to a daily gun duel with himself which he always loses. \u00a0The goal is to work out a way to cooperate with himself\u2014a sort of virtual prisoners\u2019 dilemma\u2014but it is clear that this will never happen. \u00a0Then he is broken loose by Mieli and her flirtatious spaceship Perhonen<\/em>. \u00a0It gets more complicated from there, with a sort of embedded detective story and countless variations of highly technical mind- and memory-sharing ideas. \u00a0Much of the action takes place in \u201cthe Oubliette,\u201d a virtual place inhabited by a number of races\/interest groups. \u00a0One of the features of the Oubliette is that time really is money.) \u00a0The terminology is complex and some members advocated looking up the glossary in Wikipedia before actually trying to read the book. \u00a0Suffice it to say that Jean has stored a number of parts of himself in different places and needs to somehow get them back in order to carry out his mission from Mieli and her bosses.<\/p>\n

All 10 present had started the book and 5 finished it, with three more intending to do so. \u00a0One member really liked the fact that so much was left unexplained and believed the characters were perfect products of the world, but thought \u201cone might need to be a real SF fan to read it.\u201d \u00a0Another enjoyed it as a very ambitious and confident and well-written book. \u00a0He especially liked the detective story in it. \u00a0In some ways, though, he felt that Jean was a MacGuffin. \u00a0Another commented that the editor did a marvelous job of translating from Finnish into English but looking up the glossary in advance would have helped. One liked the fact that the book, unlike many, was short enough to be readable. \u00a0Another read the book through twice and commented that the second reading helped him understand the story.<\/p>\n

Others were less complimentary. \u00a0One tried to like it but couldn\u2019t; because it was not very entertaining in spite of the interesting concepts that were introduced such as alternating life and \u201cquiet\u201d periods. \u00a0She thought there were a number of contradictions introduced by the conflicting concepts of everything being recorded while still some obvious actions were missed. \u00a0Another person kept changing her mind about whether the book was interesting or not. \u00a0She didn\u2019t understand the end at all, and felt there was only one sympathetic character (a \u201crich guy\u201d named Unruh. \u00a0In relation to that, another member thought the only sympathetic character was the detective and another liked the spaceship.)<\/p>\n

Then there were those who didn\u2019t like the book at all. \u00a0One who didn\u2019t finish said she might eventually give it another try, but it was a \u201ctough read.\u201d \u00a0Another read the first 15 pages and reacted like Pratchett\u2019s Foul Old Ron. \u00a0He didn\u2019t like post-singularity novels. \u00a0Finally one reader who forced himself to finish the book (admitting that he only scanned the last 30 pages) thought it was overly complex, designed to appeal to an intellectual in-group, and could visualize the author thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve a PhD in string theory and you don\u2019t, nyuk, nyuk.\u201d<\/p>\n

–Tom Sciance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Quantum Thief by Hannu\u00a0Rajaniemi The reading group met at the North Village Library on July 3 to discuss Hannu Rajaniemi\u2019s The Quantum Thief. \u00a0Billed as the first in a trilogy, it was published in 2010 and The Fractal Prince is scheduled for next September. \u00a0The author is a Finn with a PhD in mathematical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}