He is trapped in a “Dilemma Prison”, a posthuman scenario where one literally acts out the Prisoner’s Dilemma all day, every day, earning points to avoid total, permanent oblivion. Jean le Flambeur is/was a renowned, brilliant thief. The story begins with a prison break and ends with a nearly apocalyptic scenario on Mars. Rajaniemi walks an extremely fine line between avoiding infodumps and exposition and entirely losing the reader-but it’s a line he walks well, and if you don’t mind that sort of thing, then this book is very enjoyable. I don’t entirely understand what’s happening here, and that is kind of the point. This is posthumanist SF that reimagines the limitations and extent of a human’s personal narrative in a very extreme, mind-bending way. It is a stunning debut.Īt the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.A long time ago I read The Dervish House and commented that it hacked my brain, and that’s what I feel like Hannu Rajaniemi is trying to do with The Quantum Thief. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. 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. 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.Īs 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. 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. 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. 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. Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. One of Library Journal's Best SF/Fantasy Books of 2011
The Quantum Thief is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy title.
0 kommentar(er)
