Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, by Hannu Rajaniemi
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Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, by Hannu Rajaniemi
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Inside the firewall the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, and hyperintelligent pets run wild in the streets.With unbridled invention and breakneck adventure, Hannu Rajaniemi is on the cutting-edge of science fiction. His postapocalyptic, postcyberpunk, and posthuman tales are full of exhilarating energy and unpredictable optimism. How will human nature react when the only limit to desire is creativity? When the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines—or as large as the universe? Whether the next big step in technology is 3D printing, genetic alteration, or unlimited space travel, Rajaniemi writes about what happens after.
Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, by Hannu Rajaniemi - Amazon Sales Rank: #718238 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.10" w x 6.10" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 240 pages
Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, by Hannu Rajaniemi Review Praise for Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected FictionAn NPR 2015 Great ReadLocus 2015 Recommended Reading List: Best Collection“This is a collection of dexterous, loving, beautifully optimistic work that left me breathless and delighted.... Hannu Rajaniemi's magnificent science fiction — as is paradoxically appropriate — is pure magic.”—Amal El-Mohtar, NPR.com“...the best and most original debut anthology since Angela Carter’s “Fireworks” 40 years ago.”—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal“This delightful trip into imaginative worlds brings a fresh take to timeless ideas.”—Publishers Weekly“Every story in the collection is a gem, one that delights in playing with expectations before simultaneously dodging and exceeding them. To read Collected Fiction is to be shown something new and wonderful at every turn.”—Green Man Review“The stories are all magnificently written, and you should absolutely seek out a copy for yourself. You won’t regret it.”—The WarblerA May 2015 Buzzfeed pick“You may already know Rajaniemi from his buzzy Jean le Flambeur series (The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, The Causal Angel); if that’s the case, rest assured that his Collected Fiction offer the same fantastical quality, but in a dozen different flavors. If you’re new to his charms, this is an excellent place to start: Rajaniemi writes post-singular fairy tales about computer-dragon romances, technologically-uplifted cats and dogs, and haunted space stations. If you like your science fiction lavish and the science part a little outlandish, this is definitely the book for you.”—Barnes & Noble.com“Rajaniemi combines incredible technological expertise with such a vast imagination that many of his stories leave me overwhelmed by the worlds he creates. This collection demonstrates his breadth as well, involving everything from his invention of neurofiction to his stories of algorithmic romance to his tales that invoke ancient Finnish gods. Whatever the genre or subject, Rajaniemi’s stories are guaranteed to be interesting, unique, and utterly captivating. If a science fiction author’s job is to “think of impossible things,” then I can’t imagine anyone who does it better.”—Bookaneer“SF and Rajaniemi’s fiction in particular impart a sense of glamour, otherness, and estrangement.... the best stories are up there with the best.” —Booklikes“An excellent and versatile collection.... If you want originality, creativity, imagination and style from your stories, you can't go wrong by reading these stories.”—Risingshadows“Nano-jacked super-beings, carnivorous emergent technologies, the doors of perception yanked wide and almost off their hinges… put the barrel of Rajaniemi’s fiction in your mouth and blow your mind.”—Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon and The Dark Defiles“These are beautifully crafted, sometimes cutting, sometimes consoling, but always mesmerizing tales of what comes after what comes next.”—So I Read This Book Today“[Rajaniemi’s] fiction is a vortex where the science and strangeness of the future meet, exploding in ferris wheel fireworks of bold ideas, narrative complexity and damned good writing.”—My Biochemical Sky “If you enjoy surfing the edge of mindspace and occasionally dipping into a wormhole of true otherness, I highly recommend this collection of stories, as well as his previous Jean Le Flambeur series. Take along your exocortex and reserve a few spare cloud cycles, to forestall brain overload.”—Undiscovered Country“There is something sublime, poetic and playful about how Rajaniemi blends mythology and technology in near (and far) future scenarios.” —Paper Wanderer“For fans of science fiction or science fantasy, or even readers looking for a well written excursion from their usual reading material, I’d highly recommend Hannu Rajaniemi’s Collected Fiction—it’s a fantastic experience.”—Open Book Society“Rajaniemi's stories form not only one of the best and most consistent collections of sci-fi and fantasy writing I've had the pleasure of reading but one of the best collections of fiction of any kind published so far this century.”—The Book Table “If you haven't read any Rajaniemi, it's time to start.”—Bookishly Witty“...I strongly recommend this collection. Sit back, strap yourself in, and enjoy some first-class storytelling.”—There Are Inkspots on my Page“This isn’t a book for your grandfather. This isn’t a book for a Star Wars fan. This isn’t a book for someone just getting into reading sci-fi. But if you’ve read Greg Egan, Charles Stross, Richard Morgan, Daniel Suarez, Vernor Vinge, or if you’ve read “The Quantum Thief” trilogy, pick this up as soon as possible.”—The Daily“Rajaniemi is a physicist with the heart of a poet (and vice-versa) who takes data packets, social networks, saunas, and the sea, and weaves them all together into completely unique experiences.”—Fantasy Literature“In both fact and fiction, it’s fair to say, Rajaniemi is without doubt on the cutting edge” —Interzone“... little gems of high-concept, high delivery prose.”—Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviews
From the Inside Flap "Hard to admit, but I think he's better at this stuff than I am."—Charles Stross, author of Accelerando Inside the firewall, the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, hyperintelligent pets rebel. Hannu Rajaniemi (The Quantum Thief) is always on the cutting edge. His postapocalyptic, postcyberpunk, and posthuman tales are full of extraordinary beings and unpredictable optimism. With his remarkable agility at merging science with storytelling, Rajaniemi makes the impossible possible—or even probable. Rajaniemi’s much-anticipated first collection contains seventeen stories, with two original tales, a neurofiction experiment, and his Twitter microfiction. Journeying deep into inner and outer space, he asks us, 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? So whether you think the next big leap in technology might be genetic engineering, unlimited energy, or space travel, know this: Hannu Rajaniemi the arbiter of what happens after.
About the Author Hannu Rajaniemi, author of "The Quantum Thief," "The Fractal Prince," and "The Causal Angel" was born in Finland and completed his doctorate in Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. His works have received Finland s top science fiction honor, the Tahtivaeltaja Award, as well as the John W. Campbell Award for the best first science fiction novel in the United States. Rajaniemi lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and will be moving to San Francisco, California in 2015."
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Varied collection focusing on the f-f-f-far-future By Han Jie From cyberpunk’s focus on near-future political and technological concerns to the explosion of singularity/post-human texts which followed a decade or two later, science fiction has moved from one end of the temporal spectrum to the other. Cyberpunk generally more tactile, concrete, and relevant, post-humanism, by default, spends more of its time swimming in the waters of fantasy. Though Charles Stross is best known for conveying just how wacky the far-future can be, there are other writers who capture the incredible possibilities of super-futures in intensely aesthetic fashion. Hannu Rajaniemi is one, and his most recent collection Collected Fiction (2015, Tachyon) is one of the imaginative reasons why. Whether or not Rajaniemi’s short fiction as a whole was ready to be collected, however, remains another question.Rajaniemi has one minor collection under his belt (Words of Birth and Death, three stories), which essentially makes Collected Fiction his first. Bringing together nearly all the short fiction he has published to date, it confirms the title while adding three pieces not previously published. Totaling nineteen stories, none stretch into novella length; all are bite-sized vignettes of radically technical futures with a dash of mythic/pagan-ized fantasy.“Deus Ex Homine” (translated to ‘god from man’) sets the post-human tone for Collected Fiction.“As gods go, I wasn’t one of the holier-than-thou, dying-for-your-sins variety. I was a full-blown transhuman deity with a liquid metal body, an external brain, clouds of self-replicating utility fog to do my bidding and a recursively self-improving AI slaved to my volition. I could do anything I wanted. I wasn’t Jesus, I was Superman: an evil Bizarro Superman.”(1)Also Rajaniemi’s first published story, it tells of a man and woman separated by a godplague—an intrusion of post-humanism that destroyed the man’s corporeal humanity (he requires a head implant to tell him others’ emotional projections) and subsequently the relationship. The emotions are a bit forced, but informs the reader of the type of story to come. Following this story is perhaps Rajaniemi’s most celebrated short to date: “The Server and the Dragon.” A far-far-far future story of abstract dimension worthy of Iain Banks’ Excession, it’s about a world seeding by an AI computer that possesses significantly more mythic ambiance than hard sf. Mother Goose on post-human steroids, “Tyche and the Ants” is about a young girl cavorting on a fairy tale lunar landscape. But it isn’t before running into the Jade Rabbit, Moon Girl, Hugbear, and the Brain AI that she meets the miscreant little “ants”. This is the first ever post-human bedtime story for children I have ever read, and perhaps the best of this collection.Rajaniemi apparently having attended the school of writing that purports all short stories must lead with a catchy line, nearly every piece in Collected Fiction opens on a bizarre sentence (that only sometimes fulfills itself). “Before the concert, we steal the master’s head” is the opening of “His Master’s Voice”. Not a take on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, the story is about a technologically souped up dog and his equally styling partner, a cat, who attempt to rescue their owner from behind a supposedly impenetrable firewall. “Elegy for a Young Elk” is a vibrant, colorful story that exists between native life in the woods and the flashest, most cyberpunk city one can think of. Mythical quantum mechanics, it is the story of man living in a computer generated environment (I think) and the quest he is sent on to the city by an ex-girlfriend. The plot escalating exponentially, the ending closes a circle, but seeming one of far too great imaginative circumference for the length of the story. Would love to see this in novella length. “Invisible Planets” is a conversation between a generation starship and one of its sub-minds about the planets it passes and “The Jugaad Cathedral” is about a guy who plays a game similar to Minecraft called Dwarfcraft. Using an application called Frendipity to learn more about another person he plays with, he helps build a virtual Cathedral. Mixing hard sf with gaming, the guy is in for a surprise when he actually meets her.But beyond hard/far future sf, there is another vein to Collected Fiction: outright fantasy. “Fisher of Men” is the story of a man living in a remote cabin on the Finnish coast who is enticed by a mer-woman under the sea where a battle for love ensues. “The Viper Blanket” is about a pagan cult revived in modern times, just managing a slight chill in the spine.Of the stories original to collection, the first is “The Haunting of Apollo A7LB.” About a woman who met her astronaut husband while making his suit, when he dies in space and the suit comes back to live with her, she makes a special decision. The second original is “Ghost Dogs” and is not much more than the title indicates. And the third story is “Skywalker of Earth”. Also the longest of the collection, it shows scattered focus, limited coherency, but a purpose that doesn’t reveal itself quickly. All in all, the three originals feel more like rejected material resurrected for the collection rather than quality stories worthy of publishing.As mentioned in the intro, I remain unsure it was the best move to bring together all of Rajaniemi’s short fiction at this time, not to mention the never-before-published stories. Instead of “here is a selection of quality stories from a writer who has established himself in the field”, the reader is presented with “regardless of quality, here is nearly everything Rajaniemi, a budding sf writer, has published to date”. If this were a retrospective of someone like Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, or Theodore Sturgeon who has a long career fans may not be entirely familiar with, it would be understandable to publish everything from the beginning of their careers. But for an up and coming writer, one who has seen some success but has yet to fully establish himself, it means that a lot of the stories feature an author still trying to find their voice.This feeling-out translates into a couple problem areas. One is the lack of human elements. I don’t mean the spirit or intentions of humanity, rather the subtle realities that flesh out a story to make the characters and emotions concrete. In stories like “His Master’s Voice” or “The Server and the Dragon”, this is not an issue: it is only a question of how colorful Rajaniemi’s imagination can be. But for stories like “Deus ex Homine”, “Topsight”, “The Jugaad Cathedral”, or “Shibuya, No Love,” human interest forms the core of the story, and in order for the reader to develop full empathy, particularized aspects of existence must be present. In the case of these stories, however, they are usually glazed over—the plot moving forward, but the characters not developed in rich, convincing style.A second issue is a lack of self-awareness regarding tone. At times overly ambitious linguistically, Collected Fiction can be awkward. “The Server and the Dragon” and “Tyche and the Ants” explode off the page, but again, the non-far-far-future stories with relatively modern humans at their center sometimes show a similar bombasticism of language that doesn’t match the type of story attempting to be told. “The Jugaad Cathedral,” for example, is, amongst other things, attempting to be a touching piece of fiction about overcoming odds. Rajaniemi puts the story pieces in their correct places to achieve this, but due to lack of tone, fails to develop a full sense of emotion or empathy with the sub-narrative voice. All in all, the range of language in the collection varies nicely on a word by word basis, but the variety is indiscriminate and not always tailored to the story.In the end, Collected Fiction is not a lie. Bringing together almost every short Rajaniemi has published to date, plus a couple extras previously unpublished, it does what the title indicates. And sometimes it goes beyond, presenting a few of the author’s paintball, far-future specials. But was the collection brought out to quickly? I think, yes. Certainly there are a couple of stories key to the far-future movement of sf in the past decade, and there are a couple other intriguing selections which interest and give the collection its value. But at the same time, the overall quality suffers for having everything indiscreetly thrown into the same pot. The editors seemingly aware of this, the stronger stories are grouped closer to the front, the rear just hanging on. Were it me, I would have waited a couple of years until Rajaniemi had a few additional good, quality shorts under his belt, then published—not a “Collected Fiction,” but something with a snappier title that really captures the truly colorful and vividness of his imagination. If what exists in Collected Fiction is any indication, those stories will come.Published between 2004 and 2015, the following is the table of contents for Collected Fictions:Deus Ex HomineThe Server and the DragonTyche and the AntsThe Haunting of Apollo A7LBHis Master’s VoiceElegy for a Young ElkThe Jugaad CathedralFisher of MenInvisible Planets (with apologies to Italo Calvino)The Viper BlanketGhost DogsParis, in LoveThe Oldest GameShibuya no LoveTopsightSatan’s TypistSkywalker of EarthSnow White Is DeadUnused Tomorrows and Other Stories
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Hannu Rajaniemi By Clare O'Beara The first few stories give a flavour of the writings which will linger as an uneasy sense that just maybe it will come to pass. Human-computer interfacing now occurs within the brain; a living symbiote interprets for a person; a vast computer server creates and manipulates a universe.If you enjoy experimental thinking about where our scientific advances are taking us, and what lives might be like if we walk these paths, the series of short unconnected tales will give you plenty of food for thought. You might think it would be ideal to absorb a computer and become a demigod. But what if that computer then takes over a college server system without your permission? When a tale has several new concepts presented at once, in a short account with no room for background, it can be difficult to keep up, as in TYCHE which is set on a Moon environment that has been altered in several steps. I suggest skipping a challenging read and coming back to it once you're more familiar with the flavour of the whole.Are all the people unfamiliar? Well, no. In THE HAUNTING OF APOLLO A7LB we meet a tired war widow, who is putting together old clothes for a church charity, alone with her grief. HIS MASTER'S VOICE is not the first tale to explore a spaceship from the perspective of a cat and dog, but it works well. In ELEGY there are still bears in the winter woods, though we shouldn't be surprised that they can talk. After all, those nanites get everywhere. Perhaps my favourite is the secretly smiling tale PARIS, IN LOVE of the simple Finnish farmer who visits Paris and brings home more than a souvenir.For a Pandora's box full of ideas, some fun, some outrageous, some just around the corner, speculative fiction fans can enjoy this dip-into book HANNU RAJANIEMI: COLLECTED FICTION. The Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi who lives in Edinburgh, has specialised in Twitter-length science fiction and created a 'choose your own adventure' storytelling game where the paths are determined by a computer reading the brain activity of the reader. Yes, he says that one is real.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Definitely unique By Yzabel [NOTE: I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]A few months ago, I read Hannu Rajaniemi’s first two installments of “The Quantum Thief”: not so easy to follow novels, but unique in their own right, because of their fascinating blend of science and, dare I say, poetry.These short stories are a little easier to follow, while retaining this quality, as well as first sentences that almost always manage to pique my interest, combining as they do totally different elements. Typical example: “Before the concert, we steal the master’s head.” We often hear or read that first sentences and first pages are important to grab a reader’s attention, and I think this author manages to do that very well here.Most of those stories kept me enthralled, although not always for the same reasons. Some of them were clearly set in a distant enough future that men had become digital gods, or launched starships meant to drop servers into spaces just like one would plant seends, aiming to create a network spanning entire galaxies. Other stories felt closer to contemporary times, while toying with Finnish myths and legends (Tuoni…). Not to mention the inclusion of Edinburgh: I very often derive pleasure just from reading about a city I know well and/or live in.Generally speaking, I would divide these stories into three (somewhat loose) categories:- The exploring of technology, pushed back to its limits and beyond, and what it means to be a sentient being in such a world. I use the words “beings” here on purpose, since not all protagonists are human: “His Master’s Voice” features two extremely enhanced and intelligent pets, and is narrated by the dog itself. Brilliant.The same applies to “The Server and the Dragon” (a lone server growing in space, questioning its own purpose), “Deux Ex Homine” (the story of one who briefly embraced a plague turning people into digital deities), “Elegy for a Young Elk”, or “Invisible Planets” (where the protagonist is, in fact, a ship).“Skywalker of Earth” has its own charm, in between a contemporary alien invasion adventure and a pulp serial—considering the people who initiated the conflict in it, and when they did it (1930s pseudo-science). I also really liked the idea of going open source in order to pool all resources available and fight back.Certainly closer to our own time period, “Topsight” deals with what’s left of people in the digital world after their death, while “The Jugaad Cathedral” explores the meaning of living in a digital world, most specifically a MMORPG, vs. embracing the “real” world, and blurs boundaries between both.The one I didnt like so much was “Shibuya no Love”, because its portrayal of Japan and its inhabitants felt too close to caricature. It was probably on purpose, but it didn’t work for me.- The mythical-tinged stories: “Fisher of Men” (includes Iku-Turso), “The Viper Blanket” (with its bizarre family following ancient rites), “The Oldest Game”…- The others: “Paris, In Love”, “Ghost Dogs”, or “Satan’s Typist”. The first one was close to urban fantasy, in that the City in it really took on a life of its own. The other two are more the horror-infused type—the ghost dogs especially echoed Gaiman’s wolves in the wall for me.Definitely a unique collection, one that I will recommend without fear of the science thrown in: maybe the concepts will be lost on some (I won’t pretend I understood absolutely everything either), but it doesn’t really matter. Context, feelings and ideas largely make up for it, allowing to mentally draw a bigger picture in every case.
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