The Quantum Connection (Hardcover)

by Travis Taylor (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In the tradition of Golden Age SF author E.E. "Doc" Smith, Taylor's amped-up sequel to Warp Speed (2004) explodes with inventive action. When nebbishy computer repairman Steve Montana wakes up in a flying saucer, about to be dissected by alien Grays, he starts behaving like the video-game warrior he's only imagined being until now. He slays the aliens, gets rid of their brain implant that's been causing his emotional instability, liberates fellow captive Titania, uses nanomachines to make the two of them superhuman and races back to a secret base on Earth's moon, where Americans are plotting strategy against the Grays. What the story lacks in characterization, it more than makes up for in plot complications. The scenes of hand-to-hand combat are mind-boggling. Thanks to their enhanced physiques, Steve and Titania can move their bodies so fast that they create sonic booms. Even more dazzling is the imaginative playfulness with which Steve creates new tactics, suggesting new cutting-edge scientific possibilities, which lead to even more revelations. Beneath the comic-book exuberance, there's plenty of stimulating and satisfying speculation. (Apr.)
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Review
"In the tradition of golden age science fiction... THE QUANTUM CONNECTION explodes with inventive action... dazzling... cutting-edge scientific possibilities." - Publishers Weekly." --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Baen (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743498968
• ISBN-13: 978-0743498968
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #737,244 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not your father's hard SF, April 15, 2005

By	J. R. BOATRIGHT - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, and foremost, I liked this book. It was a fast read, was gulped down, and was enjoyable eye candy.

It is also very hard SF. Solid science, reasonable workability of all the science-y stuff. Well done that.

But if you're thinking you're going to get "Dragon's Egg" or "Mission of Gravity" think again. If you're looking for a modern equivalent, it's Robert Forward's "TimeMaster".

It's an action oriented adventure tale, but again, you're NOT getting Varley's "Red Thunder." The details of how they do things are VERY glossed over in this book. You can't "see" the spaceships, the nano-technology happens off stage, no one explains it, it just suddenly, near-magically works.

On the other hand, NO ONE has been writing high-tech space opera lately. The tradition once firmly held by Doc Smith is an open void in the SF arena amoung major publishers. Fans of this sort of story have had to claw through the tables at the SF conventions and browse the on-line catalogs of minor publishers.

I hope this experiment of Baen's succeeds. Hard SF action-adventure romps are FUN to read. Just don't expect the good guys do have a lot of angst or suffer a lot of moral quandries. (Neither did Kimball Kinnison much, or Star Jones.)

Doc Taylor has attempted to carve himself a niche in the modern SF market. I hope he succeeds.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The White-Trash Justice League, February 28, 2006

By	M. A. Plus "Advanced Atheist" (Mayer, Arizona) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While from a certain perspective this novel makes for good brains-on-vacation reading, I have to express disappointment that Taylor doesn't explain how the super-technologically advanced aliens he imagined never understood the full potentials of the stuff they invented, apparently centuries or millennia ago, whereas his slacker human hero, the smart but not genius-level Steven Montana, could grasp them in short order. I would have found it helpful if a character conjectured something along the lines that technological species don't necessarily develop universally competent intelligence, but instead display differing abilities based on the problems they had to solve in their respective evolutionary histories. They can seem really smart in some areas and dumb in other areas, in other words. Otherwise how do you account for the fact that the Grey aliens didn't have firewalls against hackers and don't go around with AI-augmented and nanotech-hardened bodies?

The leader of the other advanced alien species could at least put up a real fight in bodily combat against enhanced humans, but Montana admits that the rumble resembled the comic-book battle between Superman and Doomsday. It just solves way too many problems for humanity when the upgraded Montana and his Russian girlfriend show up on the moon base and turn some of the characters from Taylor's previous novel, "Warp Speed," into Green Lantern-like superheroes, with the added bonus that they no longer experience aging.

I would also add that I didn't care for the vengeance fantasies in both novels. Taylor apparently suffers from the white Southerner's irrational touchiness about "honor," and he feels the need to have his characters take out his anger on both evil foreigners and meddling aliens.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost but not yet, February 9, 2006

By	D&S Pete "Like find wine" (Northern British Columbia) - See all my reviews

This book starts off very good, and continues to keep the reader's attention for almost three quarters of the book. I think the problem is that this story line is long enought for three or maybe four books and not two. The end of the book is rushed and the developing story line (that keeps your attention very well) is giving a Reader's Digest ending. It was disapointing to see a very good book have such a poor ending.