[Aptorian]

Let me just start out by saying I don't think I have been this impressed and so thoroughly captivated by a science fiction universe since I first encountered Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos. These books are simply amazing in their ability to flawlessly mix hard science fiction and fantasy tropes.

I finished the Fractal Prince last weekend, with some 3 or 4 month delay since I read the first book, Quantum Thief. In the time that passed between the two I think I think I managed to forget half the stuff I learned in the first book, so I want to run some questions by people who've also read these excellent books.

SPOILERS.
SPOILERS!
OH GOD THE SPOILERS!
THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!
I GOT SOME SPOILERS IN MY EYE!
OH GOD THESE SPOILERS BURN!!!
WHY DIDNT I LISTEN!
SPOILERS!

Right so, it's some time into a distant post human solar system. Do we know the age? I think I remember some reference to the year 2600 in The Quantum Thief in relation to the Mars City but for all we know this could be set 10,000 years into the future I guess.

There are two big factions the Sobernost and the Zoku, right? Of which the Sobernost seem to be the most dominant... or just the most aggressive? From what I remember in Quantum Theief the Zoku seemed formiddable in a "what the hell are these guys" kind of way but I never got the impression that they were a force to be reckoned with across the system. I thought they were some kind of "between the laws of reality" kind of things. But in Fractal Prince they are set up as being practically all that stands between the Sobernost and complete and utter "tyranny".

The Sobernost control the inner system, by which I assume The Sun, Mercury and Venus.

Earth is a neutral sort of place, ravaged by Wild Code. Is there any other civilizations left on the planet than the Muhajasomethingsomething? Or is it all just one big wasteland of chaos?

Mars is also pretty fucked up becase of those genetic killing machines and only has... one?... walking city left?

Jupiter got fucked into nothingness some time ago?

What about the rest of the planets?

Am I right in assuming that there is no contact with other solar systems than our own? Alpha Centauri, etc. are not a factor in the grand scheme of things or are too far away to be a threat? Of interest? They don't FTL technology so direct communication sounds unrealistic... except for that whole quantum technology business... I guess.

And yet apparently the Oort cloud is populated by post humans? And as far as I recall the Oort cloud extends to something like half way between Sol and Alpha Centauri.

Back to the Sobernost.

Who are they? From the Fractal Prince I got the assumption that the Primes are the founders of the Sobernost. And yet, it would also seem like mere "mortals" can become a prime by getting a founder code?

There's Matjek Chen who it sounds like was the one who created the Sobernost? The Prime of the Chen's. But when did he start this fight against death? In the year 2050? Or 2500?

There's the Hsien Ku's - Sort of eccentric, nostalgic historians and archeologists obsessed with the details of history.

Sumanguru - Seems like the martial equivalent of the Inquisition. Anything that strays from the true path is heresy and scheduled to be consumed by a dragon or something similar.

Then there's that scientist founder guy who wants to be alone? Can't remember his name.

Pelligrini seems to just be a self-absorbed bitch.

Who are the rest of the founders?

Then there's the all-defector. I thought this thing was just a flaw in the Dilemma prison's design but it seems to be force/personality outside the prison as well.

Finally, am I the only one who suspects that Jean le Flambeur was only in that prison to start with because it was his plan to begin with? The true Jean le Flambeaur is probably still out there. Or a copy of him anyway.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 30 January 2013 - 04:37 PM

[Pig Iron]

Amazing books. This was helpful for me at least:

http://en.m.wikipedi...Thief#section_3

The zokus are evolved MMORPG guilds, and more or less heroes compared to the nowadays inhuman collectivist Sobornost. Bet Jean's long game is breaking the Sobornost even though he's a founder.

[polishgenius]

Aptorius, on 30 January 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

Then there's the all-defector. I thought this thing was just a flaw in the Dilemma prison's design but it seems to be force/personality outside the prison as well.

Finally, am I the only one who suspects that Jean le Flambeur was only in that prison to start with because it was his plan to begin with? The true Jean le Flambeaur is probably still out there. Or a copy of him anyway.

I can't claim to have fully understood half of what was going on in either book, but I think it distinctly possible that these two go together, and Le Flambeaur was in there for the All-Defector, either to find a way to destroy it which may be a universal threat to uploaded minds, or to use it to bring the Sobornost down.

[stone monkey]

I think I was one of the people raving about The Quantum Thief back when it was published. It was pretty much a day one purchase for me, as I'd seen some of Rajaniemi's short fiction in the past and was very interested to see what he would do at novel length.

Okay... Not sure about the date myself. 2600 seems a fairly good guess. We know The Great Common Task is nowhere near completion yet and I don't think the Founders are thinking in terms of geological time.

To the Zoku and the Sobornost we probably need to add the Oort People as well... and whatever the hell was happening on Venus. Earth wasn't so much neutral, I think, as beneath the notice of the Sobornost. We saw what happened when one of the Founders gave it a significant amount of attention.

My take on the All-Defector is not so much he was a flaw of the Dilemma Prison, more a consequence of it. I should think that if you play out the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma enough times you'll end up with a sequence where constant defection is the optimum strategy. And given we're talking post-singularity beings here, you'd have to be pretty formidable just to succeed at that. I think he's basically an emergent property of that system.

We do know that Jean is not just a Founder. His origin as a Trickster Archetype is a result of the memes that were inhabiting the earth before the Chens did their work. If he was in the Dilemma Prison as part of a long con, he's playing a very game indeed. I actually don't think he is. I think he does have some long term plans going on, but those were insurance for if he got caught and dismantled. I'd say he's been winging it since we met him - fitting into his archetype. It should be no surprise to anyone that he's terribly good at it, though.

[Aptorian]

Pig Iron, on 30 January 2013 - 05:32 PM, said:

Amazing books. This was helpful for me at least:

http://en.m.wikipedi...Thief#section_3

The zokus are evolved MMORPG guilds, and more or less heroes compared to the nowadays inhuman collectivist Sobornost. Bet Jean's long game is breaking the Sobornost even though he's a founder.

Interesting. I had not realised (Or I had forgotten from QT) that the various chens, hsien-ku's, etc. are actually copies of the founders one and all. I thought they were simply the people that the Sobernost were uploading, dedicated to serving what ever founder. That's kind of scary. One thing is for a God like post human to be able to control everything around it, a whole other one is for there to be millions of copies of that mind.

I wonder, in case of a prime's death, will one of the lesser ascend or is that impossible because they don't posses the founder code?

polishgenius, on 30 January 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

Aptorius, on 30 January 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

Then there's the all-defector. I thought this thing was just a flaw in the Dilemma prison's design but it seems to be force/personality outside the prison as well.

Finally, am I the only one who suspects that Jean le Flambeur was only in that prison to start with because it was his plan to begin with? The true Jean le Flambeaur is probably still out there. Or a copy of him anyway.

I can't claim to have fully understood half of what was going on in either book, but I think it distinctly possible that these two go together, and Le Flambeaur was in there for the All-Defector, either to find a way to destroy it which may be a universal threat to uploaded minds, or to use it to bring the Sobornost down.

I don't know. From the ending played out it looked like the All-defector was a card the Pelligrini played to win. And considering how dangerous this guy appears to be that also shows how desperate the woman is.

stone monkey, on 30 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

I think I was one of the people raving about The Quantum Thief back when it was published. It was pretty much a day one purchase for me, as I'd seen some of Rajaniemi's short fiction in the past and was very interested to see what he would do at novel length.

Okay... Not sure about the date myself. 2600 seems a fairly good guess. We know The Great Common Task is nowhere near completion yet and I don't think the Founders are thinking in terms of geological time.

Good point. One of the people from earth remarks that it is hard to keep relations with the Chen's because inside their simulations they run through countless generations in the span of what is probably days, minutes or seconds to us.

stone monkey, on 30 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

To the Zoku and the Sobornost we probably need to add the Oort People as well...

Do we? They seem to be regarded as some what "primitive", or maybe backwards is a better word, by others. The way they are referred I think of them as having little power or technological advancements in comparison to the Zoku and Sobornost.

They are probably more in the level of the Oubliette from Mars or the earth people. Advanced, surely, but not to the point that they couldn't be wiped out in a manner of minutes if a founder wanted them gone.

stone monkey, on 30 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

and whatever the hell was happening on Venus.

I think that Venus was sort of at the same stage as Mars. Big floating cities. Some level of autonomy while the people who volunteer slowly get absorbed by the Sobernost.

stone monkey, on 30 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

Earth wasn't so much neutral, I think, as beneath the notice of the Sobornost. We saw what happened when one of the Founders gave it a significant amount of attention.

Good point. One of the reasons why I suspect it is far, far into the future is the shocking lack of reverence for the birth planet of the human race. It is regarded as just a bump on the road for the Sobernost. You'd think that a handful of years into the future Earth would still have some kind of cultural impact.

stone monkey, on 30 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

We do know that Jean is not just a Founder. His origin as a Trickster Archetype is a result of the memes that were inhabiting the earth before the Chens did their work. If he was in the Dilemma Prison as part of a long con, he's playing a very game indeed. I actually don't think he is. I think he does have some long term plans going on, but those were insurance for if he got caught and dismantled. I'd say he's been winging it since we met him - fitting into his archetype. It should be no surprise to anyone that he's terribly good at it, though.

I thought all that stuff about The Flower Prince and the Prince of stories was really confusing. I didn't know if Jean really originated out of Chen's subconcious as the Flower Prince or if it was simple a mantle he took on later in life. The way this origin story goes it seems like Jean is a force of nature almost, where I'd originally imagined him as simply a very ambitious mortal.

[Pig Iron]

I took it Jean is a Founder, seems they all knew each other back in mortal form. Also the Jean we see is a limited copy (that even lacks a large part of his memory initially). There were strong hints of a larger plan, or that's how I read it. Must have missed or not understood lots, looking forward to a re-read.

[Abyss]

Just finished QUANTUM THIEF, haven't read FRACTAL yet so i'm skipping over those spoilers upthread tho they appear to be limitted to setting/faction discussion.

I liked this book. I wanted to love it, then i wanted to drop it, then finally around the 150-200 it caught my attention. That's a long ways in and with my monolithic TRP threatening to outlast my living years, frankly it was only forum recos that kept me going.

Part of my 'problem' with this book is that, for me, it treads very little new ground. Rajaniemi has a nice, almost 'light' style of prose that moves the story along, but at root his ideas... downloaded consciousnesses, mmpg based clans, AIs, even the relatively novel gevulot, have all been done by other authors... start with Stross and Reynolds and Asher and then back up to Phillip K Dick and it's all been done before... so up until page 150ish i was waiting for something to grab me and not finding it. The characters were for the most part familiar archetypes with little new... Leflambeur was a charming honorable rogue, Mieli a sullen warrior woman with her trusty AI ship, Isadore the ambitious yet naive detective. Seen it, seen it, seen it.

Then Isadore went to visit his Quiet father, which was a beautiful scene infusing a massive chunk of human emotion in what was by-the-digits futurescape until then.

Then Mieli unloaded a metric fucktonne of kickass on the gogol pirates and i decided to stick around to see if there was more of the same. Say what i will about the lack of originality in his ideas, Rajamieni writes a brilliant futurefuck of an action scene and i wanted more. Got it too, for the most part.

So i stuck around for that, human moments and action both, and there were more, and that carried me through the book searching for them. It was enough to keep FRACTAL PRINCE in my TRP, tho i can't say whether i'll jump into it stat or let it lie around for a while. There's certainly reason to get to it sooner rather than later if only to keep the characters and factions straight, and hope that the author gives me more of what i liked and less of what i've seen before.

Abou the factions, here was my take...

Sobornost - Collective of downloaded consciousnesses including multiple copies. more or less looking to rule the universe! Mieli's boss is one of these. Leflambeur may have been in a previous (pre-Sarnine) or separate identity.
Zoku - MMPG clans gone supertech, lost a war with the Sobornost and are hiding in various places, including Mars. Sponsored the...
Tzadikkim - Martian superhero/vigilantes, seemingly fighting criminal gogol pirates but actually dedidated to opposing and also pawns of the ...
Cryptarchs - Sobornost pawns who control the Queit interface and mess with people's minds as they move between Quiet and Nobel on Mars. May have hacked the gevulot too.
Gogol pirates - Collective download bad guys who steal consciousnesses, digitize and reprogram them into black market 'gogols', task-specific programs they resell.
Oort - Isolationist colonists in the Oort cloud.
Phoboi - self replicating terraforming AI machines gone rogue and rampaging across Mars.


So tell me, forumites... is FRACTAL much better?

[Aptorian]

I read the books with several months in between them, something I do not recommend doing by the way, so my memory is a bit fuzzy but I'd definitely say that Fractal is if not much better then at least a satisfying sequel. I mean this in the sense that it picks up right where things left off, you get a new unique post human world to discover, the background of the universe is expanded upon significantly and there is plenty of character development.

[Abyss]

Aptorius, on 21 May 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

I read the books with several months in between them, something I do not recommend doing by the way, ...

meaning read sooner rather than later?

[amphibian]

Look, Stone Monkey and I like these books considerably (rating them among the best books of the last few years) and mentioned so in the other Rajaniemi thread. Aptorius raves about them in this thread.

Maybe it's an individual tastes thing, or maybe there's a bit of "not quite the right headspace to vibe right with the book". Either way is okay. I do think that the second book is very much worth reading.

[Abyss]

i AM going to read FRACTAL at some point. The question is whether i jump to it sooner rather than later.

I wouldn't usually hurry up to a sequel book just because the author has the potential to amaze me but hasn't quite nailed it, but it was good enough for me to consider it and yes, various forumites' love for the book is part of what prompts me because none of you are idiots and your opinions tend to be worthwhile. Well, except for Apt's, but the less said about the goatsex thing the better.

[Aptorian]

I'd definitely recommend reading it sooner rather than later because there are some names and places that are pretty important to be able to understand what the hell happens towards the end.

[Pig Iron]

Read Fractal ASAP, it's more complex and beautiful. Then please tell me what it's all about. It's not called Fractal by accident.

[Morgoth]

Do what they say or you wil be barred from future visits to the Love Dungeon.

[Abyss]

Fuck.

...ok fine but i'm finishing reTtH and probably Necessary Evil first.



Wait, hold on, what was that about a dungeon...?

[polishgenius]

Fractal is better, but it isn't AWESOMEAWESOME, imo. It does have more flair than the first one mostly does, which is good because flair is what the entire thing is built on.

It probably didn't help my appreciation of it that I read it just after Hydrogen Sonata though. Rajaniemi is good, perhaps very good, but he's no Banks (to be fair, who is?).

[Abyss]

FRACTAL was better. Fractal was WAY better.
Reasons...

- originality of setting (Sirr, the desert) and some neat twists on old tropes (wildcode as sentient feral AIs, corrupted Sobornost uploads, a city built on the fallen wreckage of old floating cities);
- much more interesting characters. Twaddud was sympathetic and evolved nicely, her family as well. Matjek Chen in all his aspects was fascinating. The other sobornost threads, the pelligrini, the hsien, the sumarguru were all interesting and nicely developed. Perhonen too;
- less action, but what we got was brilliant, especially Mieli. For all that she was less present in the book, when she finally acted it was stunning.
- the twists and turns of the Thief as Jean, the Flower Prince and the All-Defector was well hinted but well played. He was far more interesting in this book;
- the overall world grew a LOT, in fascinating ways. I particularly liked the sacrificial cities of Venus and how that was revealed as Sayad basically betrayed Mieli. The guberiniya were awesome, as were the dragons and the deepening history of conflict within the sobornost and against the zoku.

I'm utterly impressed with this book. Will jump on bk 3 when it surfaces.

[amphibian]

Rajaniemi, Reynolds, Morgan, Stover, Elizabeth Bear, Erikson/ICE and Lawrence are absolutely crucial for us SF fans to support financially by getting their books. Their writing pushes us as a collective of readers/writers/thinkers forwards and they are all rewarding our funds and faith by getting better and better as writers (although ICE really needs a better editing group).

People like Sanderson, Rothfuss and the like are important too, but they already have huge followings and will likely get more book deals on the strength of those sales.

And yes, Fractal Prince kicked butt, even if I thought Quantum Thief was pretty spectacular as well.

[Pig Iron]

amphibian, on 16 June 2013 - 01:17 AM, said:

Rajaniemi, Reynolds, Morgan, Stover, Elizabeth Bear, Erikson/ICE and Lawrence are absolutely crucial for us SF fans to support financially by getting their books. Their writing pushes us as a collective of readers/writers/thinkers forwards and they are all rewarding our funds and faith by getting better and better as writers (although ICE really needs a better editing group).

People like Sanderson, Rothfuss and the like are important too, but they already have huge followings and will likely get more book deals on the strength of those sales.

And yes, Fractal Prince kicked butt, even if I thought Quantum Thief was pretty spectacular as well.

Do you have any favourite by Elizabeth Bear? Never read her.

[amphibian]

The Jenny Casey/Wetwire books are what I've read of her thus far and they're terrific.