Quantum Garden follows up on The Quantum Magician by throwing a new and pressing problem at Bel: the destruction of his own people
Being a Homo quantus, even one that has pulled the biggest con job in history, rescued a fleet, stolen a pair of time gates, reunited with the love of his life, and gotten rich, is not easy. The problem for Belisarius Arjona is that this has made it clear to the powers of the 26th century that the Homo quantus, thought to be a harmless, dead-end experiment, were in fact very dangerous. Dangerous enough to wipe their colony from existence. Luckily for Bel, he has a pair of time gate wormholes. But how to rescue his people and keep it from happening again? Bel is going to have to pull off an even bigger heist this time. A heist in time itself…
This is Quantum Garden, the second novel in Derek Künsken’s Quantum Evolution series, following on The Quantum Magician. I am re-reading this series in audio, narrated by T. Ryder Smith.
For those who haven’t read the first even once: to catch you up, there are a few gene-engineered variants on humanity in this 26th century setting where wormholes have been used to explore and settle nearby solar systems, but two main political polities, the Union and the Congregate, are in a warming cold war. One of the gene-engineered variants of humanity is the Homo quantus, who have been designed and bred to try and “see the future” through a more intimate connection to quantum states. This design has turned out to be not as useful as people thought, and so the couple of thousand Homo quantus peacefully live on an asteroid, doing mathematics and theory and living quietly. Belisarius (or Bel for short) is the wild exception (aside from the aforementioned love of his life, his partner Cassie), and that is why he was recruited for the heist in the first book.
But after the events of the first book, the danger and potential of the Homo quantus is now clear, and in a world where the two interstellar superpowers are in a deadly cold war, the quantus are a threat to be removed from the board. So Bel and Cassie, fresh off their heist, witness the destruction of the asteroid that houses their people, and then resolve to save those people as best as they can: by using the time gates.
And so a story is told. This is a novel with a lot more philosophy of quantum states, history, and grandfather paradoxes than the first novel. It is in this novel that the author really delves into what some of the newest generation of the Quantus project, like Bel and Cassie, can really do, and the consequences of those actions. The observer effect of quantum superposition states and information theory come into play right from the get go. After seeing the asteroid from a far distance blow up, Bel’s immediate reaction is NOT to go in and look for survivors, because that would resolve reality and constrain the possibilities of those actions. Instead, Bel uses the time gates to go and travel in time to warn his people to evacuate before the deadly attack. Bel didn’t see the evacuation because he was too far away to, and thus it COULD occur.
That is not enough, of course (they could just be found and destroyed again), so Bel has to go much further. The quest to find a safe and isolated location for the Homo quantus has Bel having to go cap in hand to the officer whom he double-crossed in the first book, and taking a perilous journey back in time to get the resources he needs in order to put the Homo quantus beyond the easy reach of the rest of humanity.
This launches the book into a nest of ideas and concepts that are the real heart of the book. Bel discovers not only where the time gates that he stole in the first book came from, but the secrets of the intelligent lifeforms that live around it on a desolate colony planet. Bel’s discovery of the vegetable intelligences and their true relationship to the time gates and to quantum reality itself are part of the wonder and discovery (and origin of the title) of the book.
The other half of the meat of this book is a lot of speculation and thought and consideration of grandfather paradoxes and time travel as a concept. We got a bit of that in the beginning with Bel’s rescue of the Homo quantus, but given that an older version of a character sends Bel and his team to this colony planet to eventually meet her younger self (as she in fact remembers that Bel did it), this leads to a whole nest of paradoxes, closed time loops and more. They soon learn that trying to escape messing with history is far harder than they realize, and the consequences of doing so are debated again and again. There is a lot less action than in the first book, and a lot more philosophy.
The novel focuses on Bel and Cassie as our primary characters, and once again Bel has a team. He does once again hire pilot Vincent Stills, a Homo eridanus who has been designed to live in a high-pressure environment. Stills is foul-mouthed and foul-tempered, but he is one of the most memorable secondary characters in the author’s oeuvre, and the narrator brings him to glorious life. And he really is as good a pilot as he thinks he is. Sadly, the explosive expert Marie, a particular favorite of mine from The Quantum Magician, does not make a return this time.
One other thing that is quite refreshing, like in the first novel, and helps the author’s space opera stand out, is that it is not the too-common “America in space” that for so long dominated the genre. The author’s future has the Anglo-Spanish main culture that Bel was created from, but there is also a strong element of French and French culture in his universe (How *that* happened is explored in his later prequel series The House of Styx). So, yes, in case you were curious, Stills can and does swear in English, Spanish *and* French.
The book definitely has a bit of middle-book vibe in some respects, when we cut away from Bel’s point of view to that of his antagonists, the Scarecrow. And even by the end of the novel, it is clear that the simmering conflict is going to blow up in the third book of the series. This is not a placeholder book, but it does have some of the limitations of a middle book, which is possibly why the author went with this bottled time travel narrative. The book does improve on some of the not-fully-realized potential of the first novel; that’s clear on this audio re-read.
This is definitely not the place to start with Künsken’s work. Even if you really were more jazzed by these quantum theories and time travel speculations, jumping in here would remove most of the context to the space opera universe that the author has created. I do appreciate that the author, off the heels of his first novel, did not simply have Bel “pull another con,” and instead has him engage with the consequences of his actions from the first book, while introducing a whole set of complications, both theoretical and practical, to his continued well-being. I applaud the author’s willingness to expand his horizons, and look forward to continuing my re-read of the series.
Highlights:
- Improvement on the first novel, especially exploring the potential of the setting
- Less action, more philosophy
- Middle book in a series.
- Excellent narration by T. Ryder Smith
Reference: Künsken, Derek. Quantum Garden [Rebellion Publishing, 2019].
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
My 2019 review of The Quantum Magician is here. That book was previously reviewed by Adri Joy as well.
