The Quantum Thief
by Hannu Rajaniemi · first published 2010
62% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Dense, immersive post-human heist story set in a future Solar System, with mind-copying, uploaded minds and exotic computing as themes. Suits sci-fi readers who like ideas-heavy worldbuilding left unexplained.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A breathtaking joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people who communicate via shared memory, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as an MMORPG guild.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I'm pretty sure anyone who thinks sci-fi doesn't deliver good characters isn't reading the right sci-fi. Go read Blindsight and The Quantum Thief and see if you can still tell me that with a straight face.
on “Dark Futures: What happens when literary novelists experiment with Sci-Fi” ↗…able to handle this, not because I agree with the implicit sentiment. Personally it would be fascinating to see a real world implementation of the "Oubliette" as given in Hannu Rajaniemi's novel "The Quantum Thief."
on “Ask HN: Deleting HN comments” ↗For higher dimensional mind bending his Diaspora book is a must read! For mind games: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. Plus for a related rabbit hole: the idea that a random pattern can just pop into existence and have consciousness is basically the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain concept.
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗I would definitely suggest giving Gregg Egan a shot (start with diaspora maybe?) and Hannu Rajaniemi’s Quantum Thief. Neither are dark but I loved the ideas they mess around with. Same goes for Cicin’s third body problem for how far he takes his ideas.
on “Blindsight (2006)” ↗…Malone Scott (interesting) 3. Black & Decker Complete Guide to Wiring (VERY helpful during my home renovation, did most of my electrical) 4. Pitch Perfect - Bill McGowan (helpful for communication) 5. Quantum Thief/Fractal Price/Causal Angel [Jean le Flambeur series] - Hannu Rajaniemi (I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy the best, the third was too difficult for me to understand! Very hard Sci-fi) 6. Lord…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. It's chock full of ideas that any technologist would find fascinating. A post-singularity society in which those who "got there first" ascended to technological godhood, and the rest…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗Reads like science fiction becoming reality. In particular, the science fiction series by Hannu Rajaniemi (Quantum Thief, Fractal Prince, Causal Angel) has 'natural computational substrates' as one of its themes. This all seems to exist on the borderland between discrete and continuous mathematics, which is a pretty fascinating…
on “Physicists are building neural networks out of vibrations, voltages and lasers” ↗Then definitely also check out the Quantum Thief trilogy, by Hannu Rajaniemi.
on “Sandsifter: find undocumented instructions and bugs on x86 CPU” ↗…best one to start reading with; this is mine. He's also written many SF books outside that setting, and many non-SF books as 'Iain Banks'. Sadly he died recently so there will never be any more. The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi. An ultra-dense draught of future shock; a thief pulls off a complicated caper in a Solar System transformed into something alien and strange by Moore's Law. The Laundry Files, Charlie…
on “Entitlement issues (2009)” ↗Niven and Egan would be classic examples from different decades (Niven's post-1977 work, and his collaborations, not so much). I'd also point to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief trilogy, Peter Watts (for world-building -- see below) and the cultural/linguistic side of C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series (at least the first five or so books). One of the less well understood (especially…
on “Rational fiction” ↗…shouldn't be a stopper for further digitalization, cross-integration and overall efficiency tuning, putting it in the recipe should be done right now. I like the solution by Hannu Rajaniemi in his masterpiece Quantum Thief: every citizen in City of Mars had a complex "gevulot" (a complex set of a keychains, like in PKI), where he can decides what to share, with whom and for what time. There were news from Canada about designing…
on “An Inconvenient Truth about Smart Cities” ↗One Finnish scifi author that I've particularly enjoyed is Hannu Rajaniemi, who has a PhD in Physics and writes excellent speculative novels like The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannu_Rajaniemi
on “How Finland Rebranded Itself as a Literary Country” ↗I second The Quantum Thief. I would also put Revelation Space and, really, any Culture novel above it in terms of sheer novelty level. I've also heard good things about The Fifth Season in that respect. Not that I don't like Blindsight,…
on “Blindsight (2006)” ↗Also The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi. Excellent sci-fi, horrifying universe.
on “Lena” ↗If you like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson et al try the Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi. I wish he'd write more in that universe.
on “William Gibson is a literary genius” ↗