#quantum thief

I know like seventeen of these women irl

"Combat Autism" may be the coolest phrase I've read this year

THE GOOD NEWS: Now I'm reading QUANTUM THIEF by Hannu Rajaniemi, and I'm really enjoying it.

So, somewhere in the midst of studying for the bar, my brain somehow dredged up some thoughts from a book series I read months ago, because apparently they stuck with me so very hard. The TL;DR version of this is that the more I think about the universe in the series, the more I come to the conclusion that it's just about the most horrible, terrifying, and depressing cataclysmic view of humanities' future I've ever read. The Jean Le Flambeur trilogy, more commonly identified by the title of the first book, The Quantum Thief, is a science fiction series written by Hannu Rajaniemi. He is originally by trade a mathematical physicist, so it kind of goes without saying that he writes a very hard sci-fi style, grounded As much as is possible in real science and research going on today. Of course, it's highly extrapolated and speculative, but there's little to no "Space magic" required to make everything work, like dilithium in Star Trek, or eezo in Mass Effect. This same background, however, lends itself to very 'show don't tell' style which absolutely does not bother to go out of its way to explain anything to the reader. This is not to say that you a working knowledge of theoretical physics in order to make sense of the trilogy, but it certainly wouldn't hurt - and would in all likelihood speed up getting ahold of the universes concepts. I had only a vague background understanding of a lot of it - nothing deeper than abstracts in Scientific American - but there was still an almost Clockwork Orange type of learning curve to figuring out what a character was actually doing, let alone how. I mention this all because it relates to the biggest complaint (which is not why I decided to write about them) I have about the novels: Rajaniemi has obviously spent a great deal of time constructing the rules which motivate his universe, but has done so using his personal level of understanding of the concepts. This means that when the book says something, it doesn't describe or explain, it just says it: sink or swim; if you know about the concept the book is talking about before hand, you're good and get the nuance Rajaniemi is trying to convey, and if not, you're shit-outta-luck, because he certainly doesn't have the time to explain it to you. In effect, this means that the universe is presented but never examined, and you have to piece any real understanding of it together from bits and pieces sprinkled around the books, which is a shame, because it's way more interesting than the protagonists are. So! On to the universe which has me so troubled: The Quantum Thief is a post-human universe set in a future of our solar system. People's brains (called gogols afterward) are uploaded into computers and copied, modified, and moved about to different software environments and bodies pretty much at will. Because of this, most of the series plot revolves around what makes someone human, and since humans are software, what should be done with all of the gogols and copies and recursive iterations and minds stripped down to the razor fine functions of war. There are, of course, a few different factions fighting about this. Earth has been almost entirely abandoned to semi-biologic nanites mutated to utterly wild states. Mars has (apparently, we never find out more) gone through a civil war which left the planet in a grey goo scenario, leaving a single mobile city (the Oubliette) wandering around trying not to get absorbed and eaten. Venus was terra formed and then consumed by the Sobornost (more on them in a minute), as was Mars and Jupiter and I think Earth, while Saturn is controlled by the other major faction, the Zoku. There're some other smaller players but the Zoku and the Sobornost are the most important. Missing info #1: cataclysmic grey goo episode on terraformed Mars. I think they talk about human gogols being enslaved by something, and breaking free created the grey goo scenario, but I don't recall correctly. Missing info #2: Wild Code nanite insanity on earth. No clue, never explained. On to the Zoku. The Zoku are an essentially bodiless society - that is, the base line human body has been discarded - who are roughly based on MMORPG clans. They use a bunch of permissions (in the software sense) and small group processing to create small software worlds to inhabit and play in. The Zoku believe in a certain amount of freedom to Individuals, but certainly that a person is not copied and remains themselves. The Zoku are individualists, and given the essential limitless nature of computing power in this universe, this presents no real problems. There are, however, no children. There aren't really children in the whole solar system, really - other than the destroyed Oubliette on Mars. No biological bodies, no kids. Finally, the Sobornost. If there is a villain in this universe, it is the Sobornost. The word is actually a Russian term referring to a spiritual commune where good of the many is placed above the individual. So you can see the conflict a-comin' here. However, the Sobornost in actuality are much closer to a particularly harsh and deadly form of Russian communism, rather than any sort of socialist common-good ideal. The Sobornost are controlled by a group of roughly 7 founders, being the first people who uploaded their minds in the lead 21st-century. These founders have made millions upon millions of copies of their minds, groups of the same Gogol being known as copy clans, with degradation of personality to its most root and simplistic ideals, losing more and more of the ability to compromise and reason when those ideals are challenged as the copies go through iteration after iteration. The original uploads, known as primes, remain the most powerful and the most prized. It is worth noting that the primitive original upload process killed all of the founders as their brains were scanned. Somewhere in the midst of this, the Sobornost came upon the terrifying and horrifying idea of The Great Common Task, which is essentially a project to end death and create a new universe for all the people in the solar system. In effect, however, this means the forcible upload of every person to the Sobornost, where their minds are enslaved and personalities erased (and replaced with founder copy gogols) to help maintain and stabilize the burgeoning stress of the endless degenerative iterations of the founders gogols, and the destruction and consumption of those mind's bodies and entire planets in massive fusion explosions to create further massive planet-sized computer orbs (guberniya) to support the endless copies of the seven or so founders. Firestorm is the actual word used in the book, sweeping firestorm as a PLANET IS CONSUMED, DESTROYING EVERY BEING ON IT AS THEY ARE UPLOADED TO SERVE THE SOBORNOST AS SLAVES. The longer I've been away from the series the more the idea behind the Sobornost ignites in me a white hot rage. The whole universe is a childless, planet less, aging software mess of minds going recursive and weird. Nobody has the right answer - not the Sobornost who essentially murder you for their own uses; not the Zoku, who chain you down just as easily with permissions and societal missions. Not the protagonists, even. And you know what, Rajaniemi doesn't explain a bit of the terrifying morass he's created. I suppose the scary part is that it all, for some reason, feels all the more possible by being controlled by egomaniacal psychotics lacking any sense of empathy, just strict ideals. Oh sure, there's some sort of 'love redeems' theme that pops up in the end game, but that's not what this book is about: it's about the horrible things humans do to themselves.

Hannu Rajaniemi in The Quantum Thief

Check out this interview with Hannu Rajaniemi!

And now, onto the final part.