In the city, people use an exomemory – which is exactly as the name suggests. The murder leads Isidore into what appears to be a conspiracy which has ramifications for all of Oubliette’s citizens. Meanwhile, student and detective Isidore Beautrelet is involved in solving a murder for the tzaddikim, Oubliette’s vigilantes, and the nearest it has to any formal overt authority. Before he can do this, however, he must recover something of his from the Martian city of Oubliette. He is broken out by Mieli, a human from the Oort cloud, who wants le Flambeur to steal something for her. Jean le Flambeur is a celebrated thief in a future solar system, but he is currently languishing in the Dilemma Prison, a virtual gaol. BSFA members are not afraid of “difficult” novels – witness Anathem in 2008 and Yellow Blue Tibia in 2009. That The Quantum Thief did not make it onto the British Science Fiction Association Award short-list is more of a surprise. But then the Clarke judges have a habit of confounding both the industry’s and sf readers’ expectations. Certainly the Clarke judges felt it didn’t number in the best six books of the year. I don’t actually read each new sf novel as it is published, so have no real way of judging it against other sf novels published last year. The Quantum Thief is certainly a good sf novel, and for a debut novel, it’s very polished. The answer, of course, is both yes and no. So… is The Quantum Thief as good as Gollancz claim? Was it the best sf debut novel of 2010? Was it one of the best sf novels of 2010? The actual quality of the novel in question often seems immaterial – in fact, there are frequently so many opinions out there, in magazines and on the Internet, declaiming greatness that it’s hard not to feel you should be just as laudatory. The problem with hype is that it sets up expectations that are rarely met.
However, when and where Spanton will chow down on some headgear has yet to be revealed. Even the publisher was convinced of its greatness: in the introduction to the ARC, Simon Spanton, Deputy Publishing Director at Gollancz, declared that if “this novel isn’t at least shortlisted for the Clarke I’ll eat someone else’s hat”.
As a result, expectations for Rajaniemi’s debut novel were high. Rajaniemi’s few prior fiction sales had garnered much praise – three stories published in English since 2003, two of which were picked by Gardner Dozois for his The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies. Almost a year before it appeared, it was being said Gollancz had bought it based solely on a synopsis and a single chapter.
The science fiction debut of 2010 was apparently Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief.
0 kommentar(er)
