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The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur, 1) Paperback – August 19, 2014

by Hannu Rajaniemi (Author)

4.2 2,197 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Jean le Flambeur

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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.

Book 1 of 3

Jean le Flambeur
Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

August 19, 2014
Dimensions

5.72 x 0.76 x 8.24 inches
ISBN-10

0765375885
ISBN-13

978-0765375889
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“The next big thing in hard SF. Hard to admit, but I think he's better at this stuff than I am.” ―Charles Stross

“Spectacularly and convincingly inventive, assured and wholly spellbinding: one of the most impressive debuts in years.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review

About the Author

Born and raised in Finland, HANNU RAJANIEMI lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is a founding director of a financial consultancy, ThinkTank Maths. He is the holder of several advanced degrees in mathematics and physics. Multilingual from an early age, he writes his science fiction in English. He is the author of The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince and The Causal Angel.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; Reprint edition (August 19, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765375885
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765375889
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.72 x 0.76 x 8.24 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #520,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,459 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #6,836 in Space Operas
- #10,748 in Science Fiction Adventures

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4.2 2,197 ratings

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Jeff the Zombie

Finding the "human" in "post-human"

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2011

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For years, I've tried to get through novels in the post-human, post-singularity, "New Space Opera" genre of science fiction, but found each book a chore. Not so much for the arcane and convoluted visions of the future presented by the authors, but because of the lack of humanity in the post-human characters. I just had a difficult time relating to or caring for characters so distantly removed from us. Sure, I was impressed with the "big ideas" inside the books (see: Stross, Charles), but I could give a damn about the plots or characters found inside.

Given my history with the genre, one would expect that Hannu Rajaniemi's debut novel, The Quantum Thief, would leave me feeling much the same way, but this is not the case. The Quantum Thief, while presenting a radically alien post-human future described in an obtuse new vocabulary, has the one quality his peers lack -- humanity. Yes, his characters are post-human, yes they exist as software iterations of themselves, and yes they are far removed from us, but despite their change in form, they are still driven by desires and ambitions and fear and love and all the things that make us human. In effect, by turning themselves into gods, the inhabitants of Rajaniemi's novel have become like classic mythical gods -- omnipotence crippled by human weakness and emotional frailties, their human foibles ever more present the less human they become.

And no character is more flawed than the novel's protagonist, master thief Jean le Flambeur, broken out of a software prison by a female warrior named Mieli and set on a mission by a distant higher power to steal something of great value in the Oubilette, one of Mars' moving cities. Le Flambeur has lived so many lives that he's intentionally forgotten most of them, but reclaiming his Martian memories is one of the key points the novel hinges on. There are so many genres at work here, and so many excellent characters and co-protagonists (such as amateur detective and student art historian, Isidore, and his MMORPG-derived girlfriend, Pixil), that it's difficult to keep track of them all.

And as dense and challenging as the material is, the climax of the book and the amazing ride and fractal puzzle that unfolds is worth all the heavy lifting. The book is surprising, clever and deeply felt -- easily the best science fiction novel of 2011, and the final pages only point to more to come.

2 people found this helpful

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G

Your gogol must read this before serving as Quiet

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2013

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Picking up The Quantum Thief reminded me a lot of the first time I read A Clockwork Orange, where there is so much unexplained slang that at first it seems barely comprehensible. But it's amazing how quickly you can pick up concepts from context, and pretty soon I was all over gevulot, exomemory, the quiet, gogols, and much more. As an aside, while Burgess drew heavily on Russian, Rajaniemi pulls words from Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, and there is a glossary if you get stuck. I was rather surprised to encounter the word Yggdrasil again, having just read it in the Hyperion series.

While I'm on comparisons, don't expect any exposition. On a scale from Ready Player One to Neuromancer, it's jammed right up at the Neuromancer end. It is disorienting, confusing, challenging and awesome. This is definitely a book that benefits from being read in large chunks. I was nibbling at it and had to constantly backtrack a few pages to pick up the story again.

I have to admit to mostly ignoring the physics, I'm sure the references are exciting for quantum physicists, but I'm not particularly interested in constantly running to Google while I'm reading fiction. But there are plenty of other things to focus on, Rajaniemi has packed so many innovative ideas into the novel it's like he has been bottling them up for decades and had to get them all out in this debut novel.

I particularly liked gevulot, this idea of crypto-backed privacy where, even during ordinary conversations, people exchange contracts with each other to govern how the other party sees you and how much of the conversation they are allowed to remember, made possible since all memory is stored in the city-wide exomemory.

"Even though the park is an open space, it is not an agora, and walking down the sandy pathways, they pass several gevulot-obscured people, their privacy fog shimmering...
Their Watches exchange a brief burst of standard shop gevulot, enough for her to know that he does not really know much about chocolate but has Time enough to afford it - and for him to glimpse public exomemories about her and the shop."

All residents of the Oubliette, the walking Martian city where the novel is set (!), are required to serve time as 'Quiet' where their virtual reality personality (gogol) is transferred into a machine and used in service to the city. As a result, time as a regular citizen becomes currency, there's a vaguely described but sinister threat outside the city, high-tech superheroes come-police, posthuman warrior clans descended from MMORPG clans, and a powerful collective with a universal proletarian Great Common Task. Not to mention a modern day Sherlock holmes and a heist. Like I said, lots of great ideas.

Vague spoilers coming.

So what's not to like? There's a point towards the end of the novel where the artful sequence of plot reveals steps out of mazes and shadows into an action-packed climax. This transition felt a little clumsy to me, and seemed fairly shallow after the mysterious build-up. The "Luke, I am your father" (and this is your mother and we're one exciting family) moment should have been cut entirely. Compared to the clever reveals earlier in the novel it was clumsy and cheesy.

4.5 stars. Read more of my reviews at g-readinglist.blogspot.com

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Paul Heskett

Hannu Rajaniemi: The Sibelius of Science Fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2023

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Futuristic rococo baroque world building, if that’s not too contradictory or paradoxical, engaging characters and a clever plot structure. A challenge to read at times due to the strangeness of the intricately imagined world - but isn’t that what many of us who love the genre want, to have our imaginations challenged? This is one of those rare books I shall want to reread at some point, and I look forward to reading the next books in the trilogy of Jean le Flambeur and the other works of this remarkably gifted author.

Thierry

Great book

Reviewed in Brazil on October 20, 2019

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Great book innovative story. A little hard to get sometimes for non native English speakers. Cannot wait to read the sequel

FeydRautha

hard-SF de haute vollée

Reviewed in France on May 15, 2018

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Dans The Quantum Thief, le lecteur est brutalement propulsé vers une époque lointaine dans un univers post-singularité, post-humanité, post-histoire, post-terrestre, post- tout ce que vous voulez, où fleurissent les néologismes et les idées nouvelles au détour de chaque phrase sans que rien ne soit jamais expliqué. Les premières pages sont difficiles d’accès et le seul moyen d’aborder sereinement ce roman est de se laisser porter par le flot. Les choses s’éclairent progressivement et on finit par oublier le traumatisme de la naissance pour prendre possession de ce monde qui fleure bon l’étrangeté quantique.

Le voleur

Jean le Flambeur (en français dans le texte) est un voleur. Du genre légendaire à travers tout le système solaire. Un Arsène Lupin de la post-humanité. Il s’est fait attrapé et est aux mains des Archons, gardiens et concepteurs d’un simulacre de prison dans lequel il rejoue à l’infini le dilemme du prisonnier.Mieli, guerrière Oortienne et capitaine du vaisseau le Perhonen, s’introduit dans la prison et fait s’échapper Jean,. En contrepartie, et sans laisser de place à la négociation, elle exige de lui qu’il vole un artefact. Mais pour cela, il lui faut d’abord retrouver sa personnalité et sa mémoire qu’il a préalablement caché dans la cité martienne de l’Oubliette.

Oubliette

La cité martienne est l’une des grandes et belles créations de ce roman. Cité mouvante historiquement créée par le Roi de Mars dans le cadre d’un projet privé de terraformation de la planète, puis détournée de sa fonction d’origine lors du grand collapse de l’économie mondiale, Oubliette est devenue l’un des derniers refuges des humains de base (c’est à dire des humains comme nous les connaissons, nous lecteurs). Les habitants y protègent jalousement leur intimité derrière le gevulot, principe de cryptographie leur permettant de n’échanger avec autrui que les informations sensorielles, intellectuelles, et mémorielles, qu’ils souhaitent au moyen de clefs publiques et privées. La société est gouvernée par la Voix, une sorte d’e-démocratie constituée sur le consensus des habitants. Le fonctionnement de la société repose sur deux concepts. Le premier est l’exomémoire : une conscience collective des habitants, sorte d’internet accessible par tous tout le temps, support d’échanges des informations, de mémoires, d’expériences. Ainsi à Oubliette, on n’apprend pas une information, on s’en « souvient » en y accédant sur l’exomémoire. Le second est le Temps qui sert de monnaie : chaque habitant porte une montre qui indique le temps qu’il lui reste à vivre. Ce temps révolu, le citoyen devient alors un Quiet, un silencieux, une conscience muette téléchargée dans un des robots qui assurent le bon fonctionnement de la cité, son entretien, sa défense. Cela permet à chacun d’apprécier la valeur de la vie, et de racheter du temps en participant aux tâches collectives. Une fois ce service accompli, le citoyen peut être ressuscité et retrouver sa personnalité et son autonomie. Un crime sera ainsi puni par une mise en Quiet prématurée. La justice est assurée par les Tzaddiks.

Le détective

Isidore Beautrelet est un natif d’Oubliette, âgé de 10 années martiennes (soit près de 19 ans terrestres). Etudiant en architecture, il est surtout un génie qui aime résoudre les problème insolvables et auquel les Tzaddiks font régulièrement appel pour ses talents, tout en lui refusant l’accès à leur organisation. Isidore est le Sherlock Holmes de l’histoire. Après avoir résolu quelques affaires tordues, Isodore est engagé par Christian Unruh, riche et mystérieux philanthrope martien, qui lui demande d’empêcher qu’un certain voleur célèbre ne crash sa soirée Carpe Diem.
A partir de là, les deux enquêtes de Jean le Flambeur et Isidore Beautrelet vont se croiser pour devenir une sorte d’Arsène Lupin VS Sherlock Holmes post-futuriste.

The Quantum Thief est un roman brillant d’inventivité, que j’ai personnellement adoré, mais dont la lecture pourrait dérouter le lecteur non féru de hard-SF de haute voltige. La fin appelle à une suite et de fait ce roman constitue le premier chapitre d’une trilogie dont les deux volumes suivants sont les romans The Fractal Prince et The Casual Angel, publiés respectivement en 2012 et 2014.

Vous pouvez lire une critique plus complète sur mon blog dont le lien se trouve sur mon profil.

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Srikanth K

Enthralling read

Reviewed in India on October 22, 2017

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As sci-fi novels go this one is certainly not of the usual kind. You are put into a world without explanations and you have to figure out for yourselves what each word means. I am told there is a wiki page for the glossary. It is basically a conspiracy plot with multiple realities. It is reasonably fast paced without much philosophical asides. The author does concentrate on telling the story. The implications of each technology and system are not expanded upon. Occasionally the suspension of disbelief does break but fortunately it is not frequent to out you off completing the book. All in all, an enjoyable book.

Daniel Magyar

excellent read with a flavor all it's own in sci fi

Reviewed in Canada on September 8, 2014

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Plot 5*
Characters 4*
Originality 5*

I read several reviews prior to reading this book, many of which said good book but hard to follow for some time. Perhaps because I was prepared for immediate immersion and unveiling through story telling, I didn't find this a problem and could follow everything well enough.

Definitely a book I recommend. Rajaniemi offers us a view into a future that combines high end physics with virtual reality. The story is solid and the characters are endearing.

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