[Book Review] The Quantum Thief

The Quantum Thief (Jean le Flambeur #1) / Hannu Rajaniemi

At it's core, The Quantum Thief is a heist story, but within its post-human setting the object of the heist is nothing so simple as something like the Hope Diamond or a Casino vault.  Instead we journey through theft and reclaiming of time and memory.

All-in-all, it makes for a blistering smart and layered hard sci-fi adventure.

This book had a little less specific discussion questions for me to draw out, but it was a fantastic and fascinating read.  Should I actually sit down with other people who've read it, there's definitely a lot to knock about, but the questions and discussion prompts themselves are harder for me to quantify.

Discussion Fodder:
  • Let's talk about the Prisoner's Dilemma.  What is it, and in what ways is it used in this story?  What do you think of the Dilemma Prison?
  • What are the different ways humanity and cultures manifest in the story?  How are they shaped by technology (or vice versa)?
  • An Oubliette is a dungeon with an opening only at the top or a place of forgetting.  What is the Oubliette in this story?  What are the roles of memory and privacy in this society?  How do they interact?  How do they shape the culture?
  • In this setting, what counts as human? 


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