Explanation of the emotional core of The Quantum Thief’s exploration of the trap of persistent personal identity and seeking freedom.
Review of The Quantum Thief trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi 2014 (★★★★★): uncompromising hard-SF space-opera—so uncompromising and in media res that most readers missed the point of its exploration of transhumanist themes of personal identity and radical freedom from constraints, even the constraints of the physical universe.
The Quantum Thief trilogy follows an amnesiac gentleman jewel-thief as he seeks to escape prison and becomes embroiled in a multi-way war between the competing powers of a far future Solar System, where the goal is the left-overs from a past Singularity which grant the victor the power to rewrite the laws of physics.
But underneath all of the wonderfully speculative SF ideas and cutting-edge science—so cutting-edge that many readers mistake the science for the fiction—for our protagonist, the real goal is an escape from his immortality: the burden of too many heists, too many witty quips, too many centuries of being forced to be himself rather than becoming someone else (which is the only way to maintain a persistent identity in a world where minds are trivially copied & modified).
As the Solar System collapses and reality is rewritten, our hero pulls off the greatest escape act ever, escaping our universe; for, as every transhumanist believes at heart when they look at our all-too-flawed world, if you are clever and hard-working and lucky enough, sooner or later… there is always a way out.