“Interview: Hannu Rajaniemi; SciFiNow Sits down With a Rising Star of Science Fiction”, 2010-11-03 (; backlinks):
…Talking to Hannu Rajaniemi about his rapid career, it’s quickly apparent he’s no stranger to being compared to other sci-fi rising stars, having first seriously begun writing in 2002 while studying his PhD as part of writing group called Writers Bloc—which includes authors Charles Stross and Alan Campbell. “It is, and always has been a place with quite a harsh level of criticism”, he says. “But in a healthy and professional way, of course, so it was a good group of people and environment in which to develop.”
…His early writing tenure included several attention-garnering short stories, including ‘Shibuya No Love’ in 2003, but it was his inclusion in Nova Scotia (a collection of Scottish speculative fiction) with ‘Deus Ex Homine’ that led to his meeting with literary agent John Jarrold in 2005. An overzealous spam filter would delay their collaboration until 2008, when Jarrold asked if he had any novel ideas. Like most writers, Rajaniemi had spent 3 years or so tinkering with a novel that he returned to.
At the time, Rajaniemi was finishing his PhD and co-founding Think Tank Maths, a consultancy company that works with organizations like the UK Ministry of Defence, and writing had been put on the back burner. He returned to it with gusto, but found it wasn’t easy. “I kept pounding my head on an old manuscript for a while and then got fed up with it.” It prompted him to take an old idea “out of a drawer”, which became the first written chapter of The Quantum Thief, which Jarrold presented to publisher Simon Spanton of Gollancz as the basis of his 3-book deal.
“Of course getting the book deal was a little intimidating at first”, he admits. “I think one response to getting the book deal was to come up with an outline that had every single idea I could cram into it, because I wanted to be worthy of what had happened.” The solution was to expand the outline into 3 parts, the first of which became The Quantum Thief.
…Another function of sci-fi, he believes, is to comment on the past, not by predicting the future, but showing alternate possible futures or reflecting upon the present as a kind of funhouse mirror…“One thing I tried in Quantum Thief along those lines was with the Oubliette—expanding the idea that we live in an environment where we are generating enormous amounts of data that can be collected and possibly used for nefarious purpose, so could there be a society where privacy was the centrepiece of technological design?”