''The Fractal Prince'' is the second science fiction

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

Hannu Rajaniemi Hannu Rajaniemi (born 9 March 1978) is a Finnish American author of science fiction and fantasy, who writes in both English and Finnish. He lives in Oakland, California, and was a founding director of a commercial research organisation ThinkTan ...

and the second novel to feature the

post-human Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of ...

gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur. It was published in Britain by

Gollancz Gollancz may refer to: * Gollancz (surname), a Polish-Jewish surname * Victor Gollancz Ltd, a former British publishing house, now used as an imprint by the Orion Publishing Group See also * Gołańcz Gołańcz (german: Gollantsch) is a town ...

in September 2012, and by Tor in the same year in the US. The novel is the second in the trilogy, following ''

The Quantum Thief ''The Quantum Thief'' is the debut science fiction novel by Finnish writer Hannu Rajaniemi and the first novel in a trilogy featuring the character of Jean le Flambeur; the sequels are '' The Fractal Prince'' (2012) and '' The Causal Angel'' (201 ...

'' (2010) and preceding ''

The Causal Angel ''The Causal Angel'' is the third science fiction novel by Hannu Rajaniemi featuring the protagonist Jean le Flambeur. It was published in July 2014 by Gollancz in the UK and by Tor in the US. The novel is the finale of a trilogy. The previous n ...

'' (2014).

Plot summary

After the events of ''

'', Jean le Flambeur and Mieli are on their way to Earth. Jean is trying to open the Schrödinger's Box he retrieved from the memory palace on the Oubliette. After making little progress, he is prodded by the ship '' Perhonen'' to talk to Mieli, who turns out to be possessed by the pellegrini again. This time, Jean identifies Mieli's employer as a Sobornost Founder, Joséphine Pellegrini, and gets her to reveal how he got captured, thereby picking up the clues to make plans for his next heist. No sooner is that done than an attack comes from the Hunter. The ship and crew barely survived that, and Jean realizes that he has to find a better way to open the Box - fast. Mieli has been very quiet after they left Mars. She has given up almost everything to the pellegrini, even her identity, as she has promised to let the pellegrini make gogols of her in exchange for rescuing the thief. Yet, having to work with the thief is testing her, especially when the thief eventually does something even more unforgivable than stealing Sydän's jewel from her. In the city of Sirr, on an Earth ravaged by wildcode,

Tawaddud ''Abu al-Husn and His Slave-Girl Tawaddud'' is a story that is first attested in medieval Arabic (later appearing in the ''Thousand and One Nights'') that, besides being well known in itself, inspired spin-offs in Persian, Spanish, Portuguese, Maya ...

and

Dunyazad This is a list of characters in ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ''The Arabian Nights''), the classic, medieval collection of Middle East, Middle-Eastern Folklore, folk tales. Characters in the frame story Scheherazade Scheherazade or Shahraz ...

are sisters and members of the powerful Gomelez family. Tawaddud is the black sheep of the family, having run away from her husband and consorted with a notorious jinn, a disembodied intelligence from the wildcode desert. Now Cassar Gomelez, her father, hopes to get her to curry favor with a gogol merchant, Abu Nuwas, so that he has enough votes in the Council for the upcoming decision to renegotiate the Cry of Wrath Accords with the Sobornost. Soon, Tawaddud is embroiled in an investigation with a Sobornost envoy into the murder that triggered the need for her father to forge a new alliance in the first place, and forced to confront old secrets that will change Sirr forever. Somewhere else, in a bookshop and on a beach, a young boy is at play. His mother has told him not to talk to strangers, but there has never been anyone here before. Until now. Should he talk to them?

Influences

In the acknowledgments, Rajaniemi cites the influence of " Andy Clark,

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...

, Maurice Leblanc, Jan Potocki and ..'' The Arabian Nights''."

Self-loops

In the novel, the idea that the mind is a self-loop may have been influenced by the theories of the Professor of Philosophy, Andy Clark, and the book ''

I Am a Strange Loop ''I Am a Strange Loop'' is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a ''strange loop'' to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a ''strange loop'' was originally developed in his 1979 book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach''. ...

'' by Douglas Hofstadter.

Frame stories

The novel uses frame stories rather extensively, a feature also of ''The Arabian Nights'' and Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Several characters in Sirr are the namesakes of characters in these two earlier works as well. The events in ''

'' are also retold at least once by Jean le Flambeur in the course of the events in this novel.

Reception

The novel has received generally positive reviews. However, criticisms of the novel still revolve around Rajaniemi's uncompromising " show, don't tell" style. For example, Amy Goldschlager, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, suggested that " bit more explication of the physics involved (“surfing the deficit angle”?) would really be helpful, more helpful than the description of the Schrödinger’s Cat problem given earlier in the book".

Bibliography

* ''The Fractal Prince'', Hannu Rajaniemi: Gollancz, 2012, (paperback )

References

External links

*
Glossary for The Quantum Thief / The Fractal Prince / Jean le Flambeur
replacing the deleted Wikipedia glossary {{DEFAULTSORT:Fractal Prince, The 2012 American novels Novels by Hannu Rajaniemi 2012 science fiction novels Victor Gollancz Ltd books Quantum fiction novels Fiction about memory Finnish science fiction novels 21st-century Finnish novels Fiction about artificial intelligence Fiction about consciousness transfer Fiction about the Solar System Nanotechnology in fiction Fiction about megastructures Exploratory engineering Tor Books books