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The Causal Angel
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So, I just got done reading the Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi. This is the third book in his Jean le Flambeur trilogy, the other two being The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince. I did a review on the other two books in V:FT and plan to do a review on this one in the next issue. Not to replicate what I'm going to say there, but I've got to say...

I swear that Zar Rajaniemi must read Orion's Arm, or at least reads a lot of the same stuff we do. The Fractal Prince has a scene with ufog mediated flight and calls it an angelnet. There's picotech and even femtotech in all the books, more so in The Causal Angel. There's 'Supra City' a mass beam supported complex around Saturn. There's a direct mention of 'zeusbrains', planet sized chunks of computronium that sounds an awful lot like Anders' original description of a 'Jupiter brain' from his paper. There's quantum dot tech, computation using black holes, mention of branes and dyson trees and comet dwellers and starlifting and superhuman intelligences. All of it woven into a fascinating story - I'm frankly envious of the skill and ability to weave together so many concepts into a coherent story.

I wish we could persuade the author to both drop in and maybe write a story or two set in OA. If you're listening Hannu...please drop in and say 'Hi'. We'd love to talk with you, either in general or about some kind of collaboration.

Like I said, I'll be doing a formal review on the book in the next V:FT. But just wanted to mention it in a less formal context as well.

On a somewhat different note, since we're talking books - the sequel to Blindsight is showing on Amazon for pre-order - so should be coming out in the next few weeks or months. And there's a short story/novella set in the same universe and available for the Kindle for 99 cents. Probably going to buy it this weekend.

Ok, please feel free to go back to what you were doing.

ToddSmile
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