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The Quantum Magician
The Quantum Magician
The Quantum Magician
Audiobook13 hours

The Quantum Magician

Written by Derek Künsken

Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

The breathtaking debut from acclaimed short story writer Derek Kunsken. Belisarius is a quantum man, an engineered Homo quantus who fled the powerful insight of dangerously addictive quantum senses. He found a precarious balance as a con man, but when a client offers him untold wealth to move a squadron of warships across an enemy wormhole, he must embrace his birthright to even try. In fact, the job is so big that he'll need a crew built from all the new sub-branches of humanity. If he succeeds, he might trigger an interstellar war, but success might also point the way to the next step of Homo quantus evolution.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 2, 2018
ISBN9781980011910
The Quantum Magician

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Reviews for The Quantum Magician

Rating: 4.020000048 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is outstanding. Although it's incredibly dense, the characters and con are impeccable.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4.5 stars actually! I may bump it up to 5 though. An excellent heist in outer space.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Outstanding book, great universe, would like to see more books in it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Surprising.Genetic modification AIs love but mainly a caper story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of the better Storybundle offerings a clever working of the crime/con genre into an SF setting. I never quite got mu head around the geography of space, but it never really mattered. Some time in the past humanity splintered into various factions which modified themselves (not always willingly) along the ethos that appeared to best suit them at the time. But as always the future never heard the message and now there's a melange of tribes some of whom are more 'normal' and some accepting of their status, and other less so. And with all such modifications, some are more successful than others. Our hero is one such dissatisfied construct, intended to be a mathematical genius to help the banking corporations run their sphere of influence none of the community really grasp the importance of their tasks preferring to study the mysteries of the universe, but he struggles to engage in the trance states required, but uses his powers to run complex confidence tricks requiring every bit of his grasp of multiple variables. These have usually been somewhat small scale, casino scams and the like. But he's approached by someone from an african collective offering him the most complex job he's ever run - rather than scamming a few people here and there, they need to move 12 spaceships across a border without anyone knowing. They've discovered a clever technological trick and need to get the invention home without alerting the other powers. This requires a bigger team and a good third of the book is just gathering the appropriate troops and introducing the lines of subterfuge he's going to be running. This is where is loses it's way a little, as the author knows where the betrayals will happen and co-incidentally that's just where there is a back-up i place. It doesn't actually come across as a heist particularly because there's a lot of focus on the technology and interactions between the characters. The initial single character focus is occasionally lost which detracts form the effectiveness. But it's well paced and cleverly put together. The religious AI is a particularly nice touch. Enjoyable that I may seek out other books in the universe, this one came to a full closure, so they aren't sequels as such.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this serialized in Analog. The far-future human race is subdivided into several subspecies. They make sense in context and fill the novel with some strange and disturbing images. Homo Quantus is like an attempt to make super-Vulcans out of people. When Arjona goes into the fugue it is clearly a different experinece but rendered in familiar terms to make it real. The other subspecies are given their own voices as well. The sfnal elements don't detract from the story.
    It is a fun world to visit.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A Quantum brain! I don't think evolution would have ever be able to produce such a complex computer, made of tissue. Think about how a Quantum computer work; it's happening in our heads! I swallowed a transformer toy back in the eighties so I'm ahead of the curve on this one.Roughly speaking, quantum information is unique: you cannot destroy it, you can teleport it, but you cannot clone it. The superposition of quantum states has a range from zero to fully entangled in the context of many measurements. The states are associated with the range of energies. The superposition speaks about the collective, correlated dynamics of the states in the context in which the energies of the states are defined. A thing or two on the unknowns: sometimes, physicists don't know what these particle really do from the mechanics perspective, but they have energy levels and fall to the lowest states. A correlated state may be additionally unstable (more dynamical). The description of that dynamics (the system as a whole) is so huge, that this amount of information cannot be used by itself. Finally, when an interaction occurs, randomness is combined with the states of particles, so you may not obtain any relevant calculation from the quantum computer. In addition, entanglement goes beyond the classical space and time, while this window into weirdness closes exponentially nonetheless. Künsken, uses the Copenhagen Interpretation notion that the full information at the micro-level doesn't even exist until nature has to commit to a choice regarding whether a classical bit is 1 or 0 (experiments by Anton Zeilinger, too busy to look it up now). There are some ideas on recovering "full determinism" even with QM (papers by t'Hooft of all persons), but these hurt my philosophical feelings: Künsken’s take on QM explores, in a SFional, Nature's way of having to avoid dealing with an infinite number of bits (and maybe Nature computes using symbolic expressions using x's anyway; Even in a Newtonian Universe, "perfect information" could not be achieved even in principle).Künsken drives at setting up a SF novel a la Penrose and Hameroff, i.e., using quantum vibrations in microtubules. I don't see any problems with Penrose and Hameroff (“The Emperor’s New Mind” makes ample use of this) and when you look at photosynthesis, it's microtubules that help transmit information to the reaction sites via a quantum walk which makes it more efficient. I think this is a good thing as well because if you ask me quantum consciousness is a no brainer. Nature has figured out how to shield coherence long enough to use things like quantum superposition to be more efficient. Why would this efficiency be prohibited from the human brain? The too wet and warm excuse went out the door with quantum biology. The brain seems to work on a classical and quantum level. A few years back I read a very interesting book by James Tagg called “Are the Androids Dreaming Yet?” True artificial intelligence will need quantum circuitry added so A.I. can do what's called a quantum walk. So A.I. will need a quantum aspect to try and mimic the human brain. The idea is to label a set if molecules which later will propagate throughout the brain in order to transmit some information. If these molecules were tagged by binding with other molecules (i.e., just chemically), once these have propagated to different sites, any change in state of a single one will not affect the rest. And this is where quantum entanglement gets interesting, because if one of these changes its label, then the rest of the set also will change it, because of entanglement. There is no need for an explicit connection (axon, dendrite, APs code) to do that, what implies that quantum entanglement would propagate any change in state immediately. Thus, different mechanisms can be switched on or off almost instantaneously (assuming a two state entangled system). This adds another dimension to information processing in the brain, certainly worthwhile to investigate, and Künsken’s Homo Quantus takes form. Künsken built a novel around the concept of us being able to create our own reality through our thoughts, expectations, beliefs, intentions, desires, etc. But we are all "entangled", connected in some deep way, so that our desires, intentions, beliefs, etc. interfere and exert force on each other's realities? This may be what makes the next state of reality chaotic, indeterminate, and probabilistic. Is reality some type of de-coherence, in which one unified, coherent reality is de-cohering and experiencing the inevitable conflict? The problem is that some of Bayesianism and randomness overlap. So determinism, objectivity, and dependence become a choice. The solution won't be all-or-nothing. Some mechanisms of olfaction use quantum properties, yet some aspects of psychology probably just have noise. Now which Markov processes are bootstrapped or emulated because a more interesting inquiry. Where are maps, references, reactions, and faithful mirrorings of the territory used and for what kind of real time contexts are we still learning shortcuts? We are cognitively lazy in automation, yet forever curious and exploratory to the point of neuroticism...“’They’re entangled particles,’ Belisarius said. ‘They can be used to transmit one bit of information pretty much instantaneously, across any distance. When you signal me, this one bit will tell me that the warship made it through safely, that you’re free and we’ve received our down payment. That will be our signal to send the rest of the warships through.’”NO! NO! Why did you do that Künsken??? You took me out of the Story faster than lightning! There’s a bunch of theorems in QM that deal with this: “no-communication” theorem, “no-cloning” theorem, and so on. The one that interests us here is the first one. You cannot send information (qubits) by using two entangled particles. To be able to, it would imply FTL messaging… What entanglement means is if you measure the state of a variable of one of the pair, you know the value of that state for the other. No information at play here! Wham! This felt like a whack to side of the head! The actual rule is not that nothing can go faster than light, the rule is information can't go faster than light. The problem with entanglement is no information actually moves faster than light; I will not try to explain why this is; there are plenty of great books out there that explain it a lot better than I could; the fastest you can get any information is at the speed of light, even using entanglement. The biggest role for entanglement looks now to be in certain information processing. In a nutshell:1. We know the entangled particles must have undefined spins before we measure them because if they didn't they would sometimes give the same spin when measured in a direction perpendicular to their well-defined spins (and they never do);2. We know the entangled particles can't have hidden information all along about which spin they will give in different directions because if they did we would measure different results at the two detectors >5/9ths of the time and we don't - we only get different results 50% of the time;3. We can't use this behaviour to communicate faster than light because we can only pick the direction to measure in, we can't force the spin to be up or down - and it will be random with 50/50 probability. When the two detectors pick the same direction to measure in the results at one detector will be random but the opposite random of those measured at the other detector, which is a bit spooky.Bell's inequalities uses 3 directions, but let's use two for simplicity. Let's say spin up/down is one direction and spin left/right is another that is orthogonal (aka perpendicular). If you measure spin up, then any subsequent measure of up/down spin will always be up. If you then measure spin left, any subsequent measure will always be left. BUT, if you measure spin up, then measure spin left, then measure spin up/down again, the result will be 50/50 and random between up or down. This is true for any two (or more) properties that are subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. It isn't always 50/50, that depends on the details. I used the simplest example in which it would be truly 50/50 just to simplify the explanation. Randomness is key here...Adam Becker's book is a good place to start.For a purported Hard SF novel, this is all quite lame. It reminds me of Liu Cixin’s also supposed Hard SF (vide the “Issue with the Pendulum”: glaring physics mistake at the end of chapter 19 of "The Three Body Problem"; Liu Cixin said that when the moon was overhead the pendulum had less weight and when it was at the other end (underneath) the pendulum had more weight... but in both cases he should have said less. Anyone who understands basic gravity and tides should know this. This an unforgivable considering the book's topic. People describe the book as "science-oriented". But with simple mistakes like this and so much "fiction", I would not put it in the "hard science" category. I'd place it on the really-really-soft-SF-category like Künsken’s)…I had to dock another star…I read the rest of Künsken’s novel just for the heist itself…Greg Egan still reigns supreme when it comes to Hard SF (vide Schild’s Ladder).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this for review in Interzone (I wasn’t quick enough to get the new Anthony Burgess book, sadly). Given the title and plot, comparisons with Rajaniemi are inevitable – and The Quantum Magician, even though I didn’t really take to The Quantum Thief, doesn’t come off quite so well. The protagonist, Belisarius Arjona, is a homo quanta, a member of a genetically-engineered race who can disable their subjective consciousness in order to not collapse wave functions. And other superhuman stuff. Sigh. Arjona, however, grew disillusioned with the scientific research station where his people live, and became a con man. And now he’s been approached by members of the Sub-Saharan Union, who have invented a fantastic new stardrive and want to get their fleet through the stable wormhole controlled by the Puppet Federation to their home planetary systems. The puppets, like Arjona, were genetically-engineered, but as a slave race neurochemically fixed to worship a race of “Numen”. But they overthrew their masters and now keep those few who survive as captive gods. Arjona comes up with a complex plan which involves a member from each of the genetically-engineered human races but basically ends up as full-on frontal assault on the fortress guarding the wormhole entrance. As far as I know, I’ve never read anything by Künsken previously, but something about the puppets definitely tickled my sense of déjà vu – although I can’t work out where from. There’s some good stuff in The Quantum Magician, particularly in the worldbuilding, but the con which forms the plot isn’t really a con as such – this is no science fiction Ocean’s 11, for all that it wants to be – and the resolution is a bit of a letdown. Anyway, full review to appear in Interzone soon.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tries too hardAs much as I liked this book, I kept putting it aside to read other, less taxing ones. There is so much stuff going on that Quantum Magician becomes exhausting in the middle. Things clear up at the end but I wish Mr. Kunsken's beta readers had convinced him to cut the text a bit. The cons within cons within cons blend together and the narrative does not guide us strongly along the plot line so I could not figure out why each of the elements was needed. Arjonas team is too big, although the reasons for that are part of Arjona's character. Specifically, I don't think Arjona needed to add two team members and spend so much money and technology so a merman can create a diversion.I have a couple of doubts about some of the scientific explanations too. Here are three: In the book, the biome surrounding nerve endings has important effects on the functioning of the nerve. Conventional science does not include a biome around a nerve ending. Nerve endings are way tinier than the organisms of a biome. Nerve endings are sterile and buried inside tissue. If a biome were in there with the nerve ending, the tissue should rot. That being said, there is one very new and not yet replicated report of bacteria-like forms found in cadaver brains inside supposedly sterile environments but not touching nerves directly. They were seen around myelin sheaths. The authors are quick to say that they don't understand what they are seeing and that their samples might be contaminated. You can look this up on AAAS Science Newsletter for November. No one besides these researchers has suggested that actual bacteria can be or should be roaming around inside the body. I think this is too tenuous an observation to put forward in popular fiction as fact.Then there is the question of pressurizing water. Two physics issues here: 1) At one point the team is 23 kilometers under the surface of a planet looking at an ocean in which the genetically modified mermen are swimming around in (as I read it) about 800 atmospheres of pressure. If we are using Terran atmospheres (and nowhere does it say we aren’t) then 23 kilometers down would be 23000 meters / 10 = 2300 atm, not 800. If there is an explanation for the discrepancy in the text, I didn't see it. 2) The team needs to pressurize a tank of seawater to about 800 atm to move the merman from one place to another. They do it by putting more molecules of water into the tank. Well, that's not how water is pressurized. You can't compress water like a mattress. Water in the ocean is pressed down by the weight of water and air above it, so if you had a very tall column of water, the liquid on the bottom is pressurized and is a bit denser than the liquid at the top. How exactly is the team pressurizing the water in a relatively small space something like a bathysphere?Mr. Kunsken has created an extraordinary world with an exciting mix of cultures that he hopes to build into a series. But he has put so much into this book I worry that he has fallen into the fiction equivalent of the first-album trap. If musicians put all their best songs into their first album, no good ones are left for the second and momentum is lost while writing new ones of high quality. (Billy Joel is often mentioned in this context.)I received a review copy of "The Quantum Magician" by Derek Kunsken (Rebellion Publishing) through NetGalley.com.