Hannu Rajaniemi

Jean le Flambeur gets up in the morning and has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. Just another day in the Dilemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isidore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur... Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burgler, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds 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. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed. The Quantum Thief is 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. But for all its wonders, The Quantum Thief is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, jealousy, and revenge.

With his infectious love of storytelling in all its forms, his rich characterisation and his unrivalled grasp of thrillingly bizarre cutting-edge science Hannu Rajaniemi has swiftly set a new benchmark for SF in the 21st century. And now with his third novel he completes the tale of his gentleman rogue, the many lives and minds of Jean de Flambeur.Influenced as much by the fin de siecle novels of Maurice leBlanc as he is by the greats of SF Rajaniemi weaves, intricate, warm capers through dazzling science, extraordinary visions of wild future and deep conjecture on the nature of reality and story.And now we find out what will happen to Jean, his employer Mieli, the independently minded ship Perhonen and the rest of a fractured and diverse humanity flung through the solar system.

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.” A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution. And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not. Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time. In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.

Your future is bright! After all, your mother is a robot, your father has joined the alien hive-mind, and your dinner will be counterfeit 3D-printed steak. Even though your worker bots have staged a mutiny, and your tour guide speaks only in memes, you can always sell your native language if you need some extra cash. The avant-garde of science fiction have arrived in this space-age sequel to the 2018 award-winning anthology, The New Voices of Fantasy. In The New Voices of Science Fiction you'll find the rising stars of the last five years: Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Rich Larson, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker, Alice Sola Kim, Darcie Little Badger, Nino Cipri, S. Qiouyi Lu, Kelly Robson, Suzanne Palmer, and more. Their extraordinary stories have been hand-selected by cutting-edge author Hannu Rajaniemi (The Quantum Thief) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (Invaders). So go ahead, join the starship revolution. The new kids have already hacked the AI. --back cover Contents: - Introduction by Jacob Weisman - Foreword by Hannu Rajaniemi - Openness (2016) by Alexander Weinstein - The Shape of My Name (2015) by Nino Cipri - Utopia, LOL? (2017) by Jamie Wahls - Mother Tongues (2018) by S. Qiouyi Lu - In the Sharing Place (2018) by David Erik Nelson - A Series of Steaks (2017) by Vina Jie-Min Prasad - The Secret Life of Bots (2017) by Suzanne Palmer - Ice (2015) by Rich Larson - One Hour, Every Seven Years (2017) by Alice Sola Kim - Toppers (2016) by Jason Sanford - Tender Loving Plastics (2018) by Amman Sabet - Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ (2017) by Rebecca Roanhorse - Strange Waters (2018) by Samantha Mills - Calved (2015) by Sam J. Miller - The Need for Air (2018) by Lettie Prell - Robo-Liopleurodon! (2018) by Darcie Little Badger - The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi (2019) by E. Lily Yu - Madeleine (2015) by Amal El-Mohtar - Our Lady of the Open Road (2015) by Sarah Pinsker - A Study in Oils (2018) by Kelly Robson

Inside the firewall, the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, hyperintelligent pets rebel. This much-anticipated first collection from one of the world's hottest SF authors contains seventeen stories, a neurofiction experiment, and a selection of his Twitter microfiction. How will human nature evolve when the only limit to desire is creativity? What happens when the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines or as large as the universe? Journeying deep into inner and outer space the stories collected here explore the future in all its complexity.

Loss is a thing of the past. Murder is obsolete. Death is just the beginning. In 1938, death is no longer feared but exploited. Since the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, a metropolis for the recently deceased. Yet Britain isn’t the only contender for power in this life and the next. The Soviets have spies in Summerland, and the technology to build their own god. When SIS agent Rachel White gets a lead on one of the Soviet moles, blowing the whistle puts her hard-earned career at risk. The spy has friends in high places, and she will have to go rogue to bring him in. But how do you catch a man who’s already dead?