The Quantum Thief

Jean le Flambore is a criminal in a posthuman world, a mind-hacker, a trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his fame has spread across the world. Still, Jean made one mistake, and the beginning of the novel finds him in a huge virtual prison of the Archons (Archons)—the Dilemma Prison (Dilemma Prison)—where he is doomed to play infinite variations of a theoretical game situation against countless copies of himself, which is supposed to correct his character by implanting a love of mutual assistance. An endless chain of virtual deaths and failures is interrupted by the appearance of Mieli and her thinking ship Perkhonen. By abducting Jean, they give him a chance to regain freedom and his former power—in exchange for finishing one heist that he hasn’t managed to complete yet.

“Quantum Thief” is a brilliant example of hard science fiction taking place across the expanses of the solar system of a distant future. A novel about heists populated by strange post-human creatures, yet filled with very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy.