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Base Emitter posted:One thing's already clear from this thread - I need to carve out some time to reread both books and see what all I missed or misunderstood. Even modern lithography has to take into account quantum effects, so I think the Sobornost's problem is more with long-lived quantum states rather than quantum mechanics full stop.
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Nov 21, 2012 03:28
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Watching an interview from last year and the dude speaks like he's on amphetamines. Or just really really enthusiastic. Pretty funny.
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Nov 24, 2012 21:29
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Ok I just read both these books. They were good? I guess? But what the gently caress happened? Clarity, people! If the reader doesn't receive your story, you haven't told it!
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Nov 24, 2012 21:42
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok I just read both these books. They were good? I guess? But what the gently caress happened? Not sure I agree with this. I'd claim that if your target reader can't deduce your story then you haven't told it. Also there isn't much in the series that isn't laid out explicitly, but the explicit bits are usually a sentence long and appear some time after you first asked the relevant questions, so if you're a fast reader they're very easy to miss. Which plot points are you confused about?
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Nov 25, 2012 10:31
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coffeetable posted:Not sure I agree with this. I'd claim that if your target reader can't deduce your story then you haven't told it. Actually I think I understand most of the bare bones, at least, except for the last five or ten pages of Fractal Prince. At the end there I lost track of who was/had been in whose/which body talking to exactly which/who exactly when again? How much of Jean's narrative was just the mimic? etc.. TouretteDog posted:
The funny thing seems to be that each "side" seems to act as if the other side's viewpoint is correct, at least to some extent. The Sobornost have "prime" identities and then progressions of less and less "authoritative" copies; Mieli gets incredibly freaked out by the idea of the Sobornost making a copy of herself. Do we get any clues as to who Mieli's "real" parents are? It's interesting that she was raised apart. I think it's going to be clear that she was engineered for every aspect of this, all along. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 00:23
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Finished the Fractal Prince yesterday on the plane home from London. It was a good read, although I'm not a big fan of too abstract sci-fi. His Finnish heritage shows every now and then, like Mieli's sauna. He has also taken some things from the Finnish national epos, the Kalevala, specifically then for Mieli's ancestors that sang a ship into being. Am I the only one that thinks Rajaniemi have been quite influenced by Planescape Torment? The main character with lost memory, factions fighting across space and universes...
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Nov 26, 2012 12:03
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The amnesiac protagonist is pretty much a classic trope; see Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber or John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy for examples. (I don't mean that as a knock -- Amnesiac protagonists are probably my single favorite SF trope period. I don't think I've ever read a book with an amnesiac protagonist that I didn't like).
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 16:02
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These are books that elevate sci-fi as a whole. That makes you think about the possibilities of mastering quantum physics and how loving weird and alien that world and their conflicts would be. loving amazing. I also enjoyed the introduction of alien concepts and jargon, being expected to at least think about them and in due time, trust the author to give you at least some kind of infodump about it.
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Dec 3, 2012 17:11
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I finished the Quantum Thief last week and just started The Fractal Prince, but something about the ending of TQF has been bugging me. Why did Jean tell Isidore that he wasn't his father? It was heavily implied (especially at the end, when Isidore stole the watch) and explicitly spelled out (by Jean and Raymonde's mutual friend) that he was. Did he mean that body wasn't physically Isidore's father? Did he just not remember, since he only recovered a fragment of a memory from his memory palace? I guess it doesn't really matter, but it's just been in the back of my mind, bugging me.
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Dec 8, 2012 19:44
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Xenix posted:I finished the Quantum Thief last week and just started The Fractal Prince, but something about the ending of TQF has been bugging me. Why did Jean tell Isidore that he wasn't his father? It was heavily implied (especially at the end, when Isidore stole the watch) and explicitly spelled out (by Jean and Raymonde's mutual friend) that he was. Did he mean that body wasn't physically Isidore's father? Did he just not remember, since he only recovered a fragment of a memory from his memory palace? I guess it doesn't really matter, but it's just been in the back of my mind, bugging me. Because he wasn't. Jean le Flambeur was in the memory prison and got out. The King of Mars was an earlier copy who was sent to mars before this, and probably participated/led in whatever revolt against the prison happened. This Jean, le Roi, was Isidore's father.
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Dec 8, 2012 22:57
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Velius posted:Because he wasn't. Jean le Flambeur was in the memory prison and got out. The King of Mars was an earlier copy who was sent to mars before this, and probably participated/led in whatever revolt against the prison happened. This Jean, le Roi, was Isidore's father. If that's true then why were Raymonde and Gilbertine so pissed at Jean-who-was-Paul instead of Le Roi?
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Dec 8, 2012 23:42
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Might have been using a similar body. It's pretty heavily implied by two things (aside from Jean telling the detective he isn't his dad): (1) Le Roi tells Jean he was jealous of Jean's relationship with... Ah... What's her name. The Gentleman tzaddik. And states he ended up getting her too. (2) Jean saying when he meets with the Gentleman's friend, as she confronts him about how badly he treated the Gentleman, something to the effect of 'No. I'd remember a child.'
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Dec 9, 2012 07:40
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Just finished the fractal prince. I didn't have much trouble with jargon or following the plot and character relationships in the first book, but I definitely lost my grip on things at the end of book two. 1) Sumanguru's performed some operation after leaving the box while interrogating Jean that required employing his codes? Not realizing he was inside a vm of all reality meant it was captured then by Jean, yes? Thus the impersonation. I guess he's just on ice after that? 2) The jewel allows one control over the inherent randomness of quantum reality? So it's invaluable for matjek in his goal to eliminate randomness and create a universe of perfect order and deathlessness. But, since advancing his interest that way leads to his domination of humanity the zoku algorithm of total utility for all members is what makes it inoperative for him? How would his innocence change that? 3) Where did the all defector come from at the end? How did they get matjek's Codes (did they?). Is that even what they were after? Did they do it through a story bootstrap? Was that the book from the bookstore, or was the seaside vir a setup? Or rather was it always just young matjek's environment in the cannon apparatus' environment? What did Pellegrini do there?
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Dec 11, 2012 06:16
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Just finished The Quantum Thief. drat that was good. However I do have one question that I am too tired to go read over and answer myself. Who the hell is Le Roi, and what was the whole point of the whole Walking City/Panopticon? And one more thing: What the hell did that gun do? The 9 chamber one. Dean of Swing fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Dec 12, 2012 |
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Dec 12, 2012 08:56
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Anyone know if there's a plan for a Fractal Prince audio book?
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Dec 14, 2012 15:45
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Dean of Swing posted:Just finished The Quantum Thief. drat that was good. However I do have one question that I am too tired to go read over and answer myself. Who the hell is Le Roi, and what was the whole point of the whole Walking City/Panopticon? The Walking Cities were prisons, and used their convict labour to slowly terraform Mars. Le Roi was a copy of Jean that was incarcerated before the singularity, and who later helped subvert the gevulot and stage a prison break/revolution. My memory's hazy about the gun though
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Dec 16, 2012 18:17
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coffeetable posted:My memory's hazy about the gun though The gun had nine bullets, each tied to his friend's watches. When they were fired, he stole their remaining Time and they turned into Quiet that brought together the (stolen zoku?) machinery that built his memory fortress.
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Dec 16, 2012 18:40
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Xenix posted:The gun had nine bullets, each tied to his friend's watches. When they were fired, he stole their remaining Time and they turned into Quiet that brought together the (stolen zoku?) machinery that built his memory fortress. Ohhhhhhh!
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Dec 17, 2012 04:36
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Xenix posted:The gun had nine bullets, each tied to his friend's watches. When they were fired, he stole their remaining Time and they turned into Quiet that brought together the (stolen zoku?) machinery that built his memory fortress. Correct me if my chronology of events is wrong, but wasn't the gentleman cracking heads after the fort got built, or did she go quite like everyone else (I can't find my copy to check)?
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Dec 21, 2012 06:00
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Dean of Swing posted:Correct me if my chronology of events is wrong, but wasn't the gentleman cracking heads after the fort got built, or did she go quite like everyone else (I can't find my copy to check)? Jean says that nine friends were given watches, she was given the key (gun) to unlocking everything. I thought the same thing when I made it to the end.
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Dec 21, 2012 06:22
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Loving Life Partner posted:I did appreciate the more thorough and flagrant info dumping he did in TFP. I thought TQT was a lot more interesting because of the lack of said info dumping. TFP felt more mundane and I wish it was at least twice longer to compensate :/
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Dec 22, 2012 21:43
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Watching Adventure time before reading this made all the king of mars bits weird because I kept imagining him as Abe Lincoln. While both books were good things just got very muddled at the end of tfp.
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Dec 26, 2012 03:39
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Thanks, goons, for introducing me to these books. They were amazing, can't wait for the next one. The endings are definitely the hardest bits to get through: TFP First, where did the All-Defector come from? I know he was with them all along/was taken out of the Dilemma Prison as well, but where was he stored? In Jean? Second, where did the Kaminari Jewel on Perhonen come from? The note at the end was a beautiful touch, btw. Finally Poor Matjeck-Prime. Actually, all things considered, poor everyone, everywhere.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:06
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I have read both of these, really enjoyed them. I have to admit, I haven't read that much SF, but I the way I approached it was I let it all wash over me and hope it sorts itself out in the end. To me, these books felt like the ideas introduced in Willian Gibson's Sprawl trilogy taken to their logical conclusion. For example, the liquid relationship between physical and virtual: In Gibson's books, the first steps towards completely crossing from one to the other are just being taken. In Rajaniemi's books both states are just different expressions of the same information, and one can easily be translated into the other. It is interesting to read about Rajaniemis ideas for the consquences this has for identity. What happens when you can live in viruality and make copies of yourself? Really interesting questions. I also read Altered Carbon, and I was struck by the differences between AC and QT/FP in their approach to the relationship between virtual and physical. Altered Carbon seems stuck in what feels like an old-fashioned idea: A mind requires a physical body. And so peaople are endlessly being "decanted" back and forth into bodies from virtual storage. When in storage, Altered Carbon people don't seem to do that much, whereas in Rajaniemi's books, people often seamlessly move between one state and the other depending on their requirements.
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Jan 8, 2013 14:24
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I know most times I read sci-fi, I'm bent on understanding and gorging myself on the details of the vision and technology. With these two books, I feel way more like I'm reading a good poem, or listening to a great song by a strange artist/lyricist. You don't have to get that big moment of clarity so much as enjoy what the author is doing, he really is elevating the genre, or at the very least taking a step onto some fresh ground.
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Jan 8, 2013 14:43
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Oh precious katana posted:I have read both of these, really enjoyed them. I have to admit, I haven't read that much SF, but I the way I approached it was I let it all wash over me and hope it sorts itself out in the end. Regarding the requirement for a body in Altered Carbon: (Alterec Carbon and A Land Fit For Heroes spoilers) the far far future, where Kovacs and some other Envoys appear to be ethereal gods.
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Jan 8, 2013 15:27
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Sil posted:First, where did the All-Defector come from? I know he was with them all along/was taken out of the Dilemma Prison as well, but where was he stored? In Jean? Yeah, if you go back to the prison break out scene I'm pretty sure it's noted that there's a stowaway on Perhonen. The pelligrini then programmed the hunters to retrieve All-Defector rather than Jean, which is how it gets to be in front of Matjek. quote:Second, where did the Kaminari Jewel on Perhonen come from? The note at the end was a beautiful touch, btw. This confuses me too. The only thing that I can come up with is that since Matjek's jewel is a fake, and since Jean has had no opportunity to steal it from him anywhere in the books, the switch must have been made before the series began. So I think that the real one is the plain old Zoku jewel Jean stole from the Martian collective, that he professes to cart around for sentimentality's sake. coffeetable fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 8, 2013 |
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Jan 8, 2013 19:42
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coffeetable posted:Yeah, if you go back to the prison break out scene I'm pretty sure it's noted that there's a stowaway on Perhonen. The pelligrini then programmed the hunters to retrieve All-Defector rather than Jean, which is how it gets to be in front of Matjek. Ahhhh...I still don't get the All-Defector stuff...So Perhonen had a stowaway (the All-Defector) the whole two books and pelligrini somehow captured it/made a deal with it to consume Matjek? Also at the end there, did the All-Defector consume Matjek Prime? Is that The End of the Matjeks??
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Jan 16, 2013 23:06
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Wow. This loving book. It is beautiful, breathtaking. Seriously that sounds hyperbolic and due to how it's written, I'm guessing some people will absolutely hate it. But I think it is beautiful and I am going to love reading the rest of this. It reminds me of Gene Wolfe, it's not just genre fiction, it's literature, if it clicks with you, you will find yourself rereading passages just to savour them before moving on.
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Jan 25, 2013 05:25
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Rajaniemi was speaking in local bookstore here in Finland now that his books have been translated to Finnish. Despite being native Finnish speaker he writes in English and they get translated to Finnish later on by someone else. He talked about what inspired the books; mathematics, quantum mechanics, consciousness, Arsène Lupin, Arabian nights, etc. He didn't want to talk too much about third book yet but said it will revolve around identity and gaming, how you assume one identity as gamer and how that assumed identity interacts with your real persona and identity and obviously Zokus will be major part of last book. Hopefully, it should also tie all the various plot ends together.
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Feb 12, 2013 17:42
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I just finished TQT last night - and maybe I missed something, but the bit I'm confused on is how Jean was hanging out with Perhonen watching himself meet Raymonde, then all of a sudden she and Mieli are trying to kill each other in Raymonde's apartment?
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Feb 28, 2013 21:38
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I just finished both books and absolutely loved them but the final pages of the Fractal Prince were pretty drat confusing. That being said, I hope this setting goes beyond the le Flambeur story because it's really interesting. I haven't been this excited about a sci-fi series in a long time.
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Mar 1, 2013 03:58
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I think I have a pretty good understanding of this series except for the Aun and the firmament vir. I still don't get what the Aun are. Are they literally human myths somehow made real or that generated into the spimescape? It seems like Matjeck somehow created them but then Jean became one/joined them (temporarily?). My next question is about the firmament vir, in TFP the firmament vir is stated to be the rules for the actual virs. I take this to mean the firmament vir is the blue print for all the actual instance virs and as such dictates their behavior. This then says to me that the firmament vir is basically just a piece of software but that is used universally. Like if VMware were to win out and be the only virtualization software left. Matjeck seemed to think it was super great/awesome/fun/exciting when Jean proved he could hack the firmament vir. It almost seems like somehow the firmament vir was "god given" if even the founders didn't think it was possible to alter? Then I just wanted to copy paste a quote from TQT which I think is super interested. It might have just been a throw away line or it might have just applied to the contraption at the end of TQT but either way, "‘Maybe,’ Paul says. ‘I did something very stupid.’ ‘I’d expect no less,’ Isaac says. ‘Want me to punish you? Want God to punish you? I’ll gladly oblige. Come here so I can smack you.’ He tries to get up, but his legs refuse to cooperate. ‘Look, you daft bastard. One reason I did not smash your face in the first time we met was that I saw the addiction. I don’t know what it is that you crave, but you can’t hide from it. For me, it’s memes: brain worms, religion, poetry, Kabbalah, revolutions, Fedorovist philosophy, booze. For you, it’s something else.’ Isaac looks for the flask in his jacket pocket, but his hands feel clumsy and large, like mittens. ‘Whatever it is, you are about to throw away a good thing because of it. Get rid of it. Don’t do what I did. Cut it out.’ ‘I can’t,’ Paul says. ‘Why not?’ Isaac says. ‘It’ll only hurt once.’ Paul closes his eyes. ‘There is this … thing. I made it. It’s bigger than me. It grew around me. I thought I could get away from it but I can’t: whenever I want something, it tells me to take it. And I can. It’s easy. Especially here.’ Isaac laughs. ‘I don’t pretend to understand any of that,’ he says. ‘This is some offworld nonsense, isn’t it? Embodied cognition. Many minds and bodies and all that crap." I thought this part in particular was interesting and possibly could help explain the entire series. In TFP Jean claims to have always beaten Matjeck whenever they played a "game" and then going back to his ability to hack the firmament vir possibly. Did Jean somehow alter himself/the spimescape/reality in such a way as to make him "unbeatable" but at the cost of never being able to stop being the Thief or have real friends/a life? For instance his joining the Aun - it sort of felt like a Deus Ex Machina but if Jean himself had programmed that into reality/spimescape/whatever then it makes more sense. The machine on Mars then potentially becomes Jean's attempt to no longer be bound by his own rules etc. Hell maybe even getting caught by Matjeck was intentional.
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Mar 7, 2013 17:45
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I'm reading TQT, just finished Isidore's first chapter, and I really want some chocolate. Other than that, I have no loving clue what's going on. 
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Mar 8, 2013 21:40
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You're meant to feel that way. The book will make everything clear eventually. Just to get you started: "Gevulot" is basically privacy settings for your body and all your (real-world) interactions with other people. "Tzaddikkim" are superhero mercenary cops.
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Mar 9, 2013 01:12
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My understanding of the Aun is that they are general archetypes which Chen coded into the net as a child. Jean is a guy who was possessed by the Trickster in the same way the djinn possess people.
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Mar 9, 2013 05:58
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Started TQT last night thanks to this thread, half way through today and loving it. You really do need to already be fairly knowledgable about sci-fi to follow along, feels like the last few years of hard sci-fi & space opera has just been training to be able to follow the plot/references.
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Apr 10, 2013 11:42
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judenhauer posted:Started TQT last night thanks to this thread, half way through today and loving it. You really do need to already be fairly knowledgable about sci-fi to follow along, feels like the last few years of hard sci-fi & space opera has just been training to be able to follow the plot/references. Seriously, also having a strong feeling for technology/the internet and what might be possible in the future.
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Apr 10, 2013 21:34
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I just blew through both these books on two very long flights, and I was pretty excited to find a thread on it. I thought they were a fun read. I think I enjoyed The Quantum Thief a lot more than The Fractal Prince, as a constructed narrative. The Quantum Thief seemed like a lot tighter of a story, with Jean and Isodore's character arcs worked together a lot better. In The Fractal Prince, I had a lot of trouble with Tawaddud's story arc, and while there were some cool ideas, Sir didn't seem as unique (to me at least) as The Oubliette, with the straight up Arabian Night analogues. Did anyone else have this problem? Also quick question was the end of Fractal Prince straight up saying Jean is actually an Aun? Or did he just steal the guise of the flower prince? .
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May 9, 2013 03:49
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He's a guy who was possessed by an Aun, although he was a computer criminal before that, too.
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May 10, 2013 00:35
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