The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi
The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Quantum Thief

Author: Hannu Rajaniemi

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 10 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/10/2011

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

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.

About Hannu Rajaniemi

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.

About Scott Brick

Scott Brick first began narrating audiobooks in 2000, and after recording almost 400 titles in five years, AudioFile magazine named Brick a Golden Voice and “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy.” He has read a number of titles in Frank Herbert’s bestselling Dune series, and he won the 2003 Science Fiction Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Brick has narrated for many popular authors, including Michael Pollan, Joseph Finder, Tom Clancy, and Ayn Rand. He has also won over 40 AudioFile Earphones Awards and the AudioFile award for Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense 2011. In 2007, Brick was named Publishers Weekly’s Narrator of the Year. Brick has performed on film, television and radio. He appeared on stage throughout the United States in productions of Cyrano, Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays. In addition to his acting work, Brick choreographs fight sequences, and was a combatant in films including Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has also been hired by Morgan Freeman to write the screenplay adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Petrik on June 27, 2018

3.5/5 stars No spoonfeeding, nil exposition, bizarre, high concept, and compelling. Jean Bizarre Adventure, this should be the title of the series. Let this review be an example of the author’s storytelling style; zero exposition and fast-paced. This is a short book, around five hours read because it......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on May 06, 2024

Re-Read 5/6/24: Now on my fourth read, and I'll be honest: few novels truly GET me the way this does. High speed plotting enmeshed in post-Singularity thievery that includes mind, time-theft, truly high-tech baubles, bodies, AI ships, and Game Theory. Add that to truly erudite writing, clever confabu......more

Goodreads review by Doc Opp on January 04, 2013

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take a class on quantum physics from the Swedish Chef? If so, this is the book for you. It almost reads like English. You can almost understand it. There are tantalizing glimpses of incredibly creative ideas and memorable characters. And then you get s......more

Goodreads review by nostalgebraist on June 29, 2013

There Will Be Invisibility Lotion For Ugly Lovers This belongs to the "post-singularity" sub-genre of science fiction. "The singularity" was originally a name for a conceivable point in the future beyond which science fiction writers cannot extrapolate. Basically, the idea is that if we come to under......more

Goodreads review by Megan on May 19, 2014

The Quantum Thief is bursting with so many ideas that it is an exhilarating read. What it needs is just a little more finesse, a slightly better pace for doling out information, for letting us play in this wonderful playground he's created. It is so complete, but so alien, and I needed just a little......more


Quotes

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

“Many an anglophone author would kill to turn out prose half as good as this…. Reminiscent of the work of Alfred Bester, who produced two of the finest American SF books of the 1950s, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination. ” —The Financial Times

“A brilliant first novel. The Quantum Thief, like so much of the best space opera of this century, is a prodigy house, where propositions are instant heritage, and arguments are eyeclick.” —John Clute


Awards

  • Locus Awards - Nominee