For years, I’ve tried to get through novels in the post-human, post-singularity, “New Space Opera” genre of science fiction, but found each book a chore. Not so much for the arcane and convoluted visions of the future presented by the authors, but because of the lack of humanity in the post-human characters. I just had a difficult time relating to or caring for characters so distantly removed from us. Sure, I was impressed with the “big ideas” inside the books (see: Stross, Charles), but I could give a damn about the plots or characters found inside.

Given my history with the genre, one would expect that Hannu Rajaniemi’s debut novel, The Quantum Thief, would leave me feeling much the same way, but this is not the case. The Quantum Thief, while presenting a radically alien post-human future described in an obtuse new vocabulary, has the one quality his peers lack — humanity. Yes, his characters are post-human, yes they exist as software iterations of themselves, and yes they are far removed from us, but despite their change in form, they are still driven by desires and ambitions and fear and love and all the things that make us human. In effect, by turning themselves into gods, the inhabitants of Rajaniemi’s novel have become like classic mythical gods — omnipotence crippled by human weakness and emotional frailties, their human foibles ever more present the less human they become.

And no character is more flawed than the novel’s protagonist, master thief Jean le Flambeur, broken out of a software prison by a female warrior named Mieli and set on a mission by a distant higher power to steal something of great value in the Oubilette, one of Mars’ moving cities. Le Flambeur has lived so many lives that he’s intentionally forgotten most of them, but reclaiming his Martian memories is one of the key points the novel hinges on. There are so many genres at work here, and so many excellent characters and co-protagonists (such as amateur detective and student art historian, Isidore, and his MMORPG-derived girlfriend, Pixil), that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

And as dense and challenging as the material is, the climax of the book and the amazing ride and fractal puzzle that unfolds is worth all the heavy lifting. The book is surprising, clever and deeply felt — easily the best science fiction novel of 2011, and the final pages only point to more to come.