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qntm

Fine Structure Paperback – March 5, 2021

by qntm (Author)

401 ratings

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Fledgling physicist Ching-Yu Kuang has discovered a Rosetta Stone for all of physics, a treasure trove of advanced scientific breakthroughs beyond all imagination. Exotic energy, teleportation, FTL, parallel universes and near-infinitely more wonders are just within reach; a promise of paradise.

But every attempt to exploit this new science results in sabotage, chaos and destruction. And the laws of science themselves are changing with each experiment, locking out the new discoveries, directly altering the universe to make what should be possible impossible. While Ching watches, humanity's future is being stolen.

Because there's something wrong with his world. There's a fundamental flaw, a defect in its structure...

Print length

386 pages
Language

English
Publication date

March 5, 2021
Dimensions

4.21 x 0.97 x 7.01 inches
ISBN-13

979-8735962700
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0926TNY4B
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (March 5, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 386 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8735962700
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.21 x 0.97 x 7.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #267,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,760 in Superhero Science Fiction
- #24,628 in Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
401 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		46%
4 star		33%
3 star		15%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Daniel M. Bensen

An Ode to Experimental Science

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

The first thing you need to know about Sam Hughes’s Fine Structure is that it was originally serialized on the author’s webpage. That’s why (especially towards the beginning) the “chapters” are so all over the place. In a way, this isn’t a novel, but a series of short stories that take place in the same universe, with recurring characters, leading up to a denouement. Given all that, this is a _great_ book.

The basic idea is that there is a whole bunch of technology – ansibles, teleporters, replicators, warp drives, time machines – that should be possible theoretically, but isn’t. The experiments don’t work, or return screwy, inconsistent results. Or the experimenters die. Sometimes in grotesque ways. Also we have super-heroes for some reason? What works doesn’t make sense, and what ought to make sense doesn’t work. And somebody is responsible.

Fine Structure is a lovely ode to experimental science, and a fist-shaking-at-the-sky cry of rage at a universe that refuses to treat humans fairly. There are also discussions of how a skyscraper reacts to having someone punched through its long axis, how X-ray vision would really work, and the ennui of civilization construction and maintenance.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Richard Albanese

I’m not sure what I just read

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is my first foray into qntm’s work. At first the book seems like a jumble of incomplete short stories, but a plot eventually comes together about 20% into the book. After a good bit of coherent and enjoyable story, the book devolves again into a difficult to follow series of short and increasingly complex story fragments, ending in a bizarre sort of hyper dimensional climactic super-battle and a Deus Ex Machina sort of epilogue to wrap it up. One theory I have is that qntm was attempting to structure his book as a mirror image of his tiered multiverse, with infinite layers of increasing complexity, parallel worlds, and fractal symmetry. But I could be wrong…

I found the book enjoyable, thought provoking, frustrating, difficult and confusing at times. I think reading it in one sitting may have helped me, but not so sure about that.

I do, however, like this authors writing style, his grand ideas, and solid grasp of hard science and theoretical physics. I see great promise and do look forward to reading more works from qntm.

Minus 1 star for lack of coherence, plus 4 stars for initiative, imagination, a grand premise, and future potential.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

L. Jones

In serious need of an editor!

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020

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There is a great story muddled up in here. I mean really great. Exciting concepts, decent prose, but unfortunately it's such a mess that it's hard to make heads or tails of. It needs to be ripped apart and reassembled in a more linear fashion by an editor that can make it right. The author has done himself and injustice releasing it like this.

8 people found this helpful

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medfair

Unglued

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2021

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I gave this author full five enthusiastic stars for his/her "There is no antimemetic division". So it was with great expectations that I purchased this book and very soon realized that I was in for a major disappointment. The prologue was pretty awful, but I said "let's give it a chance." Then the first chapter was reasonably competent describing a baffling experiment in imaginary physics+math, and then....What a disaster. The only excuse I could try to make for the author was a heavy dose of the wrong mushrooms. Don't touch!

7 people found this helpful

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Charles A. Clemens

There are two factors to be considered.

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2022

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First, and most important, the reader must rate the quality of writing. FINE STRUCTURE is an excellent book, written in a never-before-seen style that holds together much better than the book itself.
That brings me to the reason I didn't give this book a 5-star rating.
I am very careful with books and I own three that were published in the 19th Century. All three remain in excellent condition.
The binding on this paperback book is terrible. Several pages fell out as I was reading the book. Has glue gotten so expensive that a printshop can no longer make books that can be opened and read without falling apart?
These are difficult times.

2 people found this helpful

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Billingham Matthew

Better than Brokian Ultra Cricket.

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2020

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Mucking around with the laws of the universe? What do you expect from a bunch of pan-dimensional super beings?

Utterly delightful. Completely joyful.

At first I'm wondering what is going on, where is this leading? But as the story comes together and the pieces fall into place, my mind expands exponentially.

I've never read anything like and totally lovely it. The ideas are incredible, but in some way, logical. It works. It's fun. (It's terribly terribly moving). I've not even finished yet, but I'm just so excited. I have to ration myself or I feel I miss something. I think this could be one of those rare books where I'll immediately re-read it, so I can really get what is going on.

5 people found this helpful

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Alek0

Was the author high when writing this?

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2020

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I found it totally unreadable, and from the book description definitely did not expect to read about bodies and pieces of bodies floating around frozen in time while a superhero flies around at superhuman speeds trying to kill a more powerful chinese counterpart. Each chapter seems like a part of completely different book. Couldn't finish the book it just did not make any sense.

2 people found this helpful

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Anthony

Awesome. Brilliant.

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021

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Well I’m buzzed and that’s after a few glasses of wine and a sleepless night. Alternate histories, alternate physics, super science, super humans, multi-universes, vast hierarchies of layers of reality and unknowable gods best not to be noticed by. Immortality and ultimate knowledge. What’s not to lust after.
Starts a bit slow and scattered but very rapidly intensified. Very stimulating. What a buzz.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

John Ferngrove

A moebius book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2022

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As the years pass, really mind-blowing conceptual science fiction gets ever harder to find. Everything one reads has been done before, while still way too much of it is just cowboys and Indians transposed into space. That's fine. Lots of people like that stuff and it keeps them safely off the streets. And plenty of perfectly good stories can be written about strong, believable characters and then be dressed up in SciFi camouflage. But there are us hi-concept SciFi junkies who have enough of a science background to not be fobbed off with bad physics and rehashed, ungrounded technologies. We crave stronger stuff and it just keeps getting harder for authors to pull off. Cixin Liu's pure-mathematical technologies in his Three-Body Problems series comes to mind as the last bit of genuinely intriguing conceptual SciFi I had the pleasure of. Before that, I have to cast my mind back to the awesome femtotech and Black Hole engineering of Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space.

So finding this, my first title from the enigmatic Mr. (or Ms.) qntm has been a terrific bit of fun, and I fully intend to move on to their 'There is no Anti-Memetics Division' as next stop. To be honest, I got to the end of my first reading and turned straight back around and began reading again. The first reading was enough to tell me that I'd read something mind-blowing, and give a few hints and pointers as to the most significant characters and episodes out of which I might decoct a vaguely feasible storyline. But as someone else put it - I had no idea what I had just read. The story is presented as a sort of fractal melange of set piece situations, with a fairly large cast of characters whose motivations and allegiances are frequently left less than explicit.

On second reading, I'm managing to get a lot more traction on whom is trying to do what to who and for what reasons. Coming to the end now I think I would be able to describe the plot in some sort of temporally linear English, but of course, to do so would spoil it for new readers. In fact, on second reading, additional, more abstract characters become apparent that help the whole thing fall into a more orderly narrative. In fact there are a couple of pages around the 72% mark that require some very careful reading and deduction but from which most of what comes before will emerge into comprehensible sense. But blink and you will miss it.

So what is the big idea? To attempt to summarise we might say that the book focuses on the nexus between matter, energy and information, with the occasional nod to thermodynamics, all set inside a very, very large poly-dimensional multiverse. It seems that qntm is determined to make the reader work hard, which of course is not the strategy of an author of runaway best sellers. This is
SciFi written by a conceptual connoisseur for conceptual connoisseurs. Essentially a labour of love and a worthy exemplar of imaginative glory.

Joe

What on earth did i just read ....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2022

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..... I have no idea. Insanely complex and self-referential, which somehow i read through to the end.

4 stars because it sucked me in but I'm not even sure i liked it ! And if you think this review makes little sense steer clear of the book !

Not one for beginner SF readers !

Preach

Just wow, what an imagination, what a ride

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Barely clung onto this tale as it plunged headlong beyond science into metascience and beyond. From a spark to a nuke to a star a supernovae. Hang on reader, next stop is the terminus