Here are 92 books that The Quantum Magician fans have personally recommended if you like
The Quantum Magician.
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I’m an author, a reader, and a second generation sci-fi geek. For me, space caper novels are the ultimate escape. Both fun and intellectually stimulating, they allow readers to safely explore adventures beyond the constraints of law, morality, and our planet.
If you experience bouts of nostalgia for classic pulp sci-fi, you should read this.
While not all aspects of this 1950s book aged well, I love its style and its protagonist, “Slippery Jim” diGriz, for his ideological stance, which involves zero grand motives. He intentionally chooses the life of crime because he believes it’s public entertainment in an otherwise pristine system, but is ultimately out-conned and forced to catch other criminals for an organisation called Special Corps.
In the vastness of space, the crimes just get bigger and Slippery Jim diGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is the biggest criminal of them all. He can con humans, aliens and any number of robots time after time. Jim is so slippery that all the inter-galactic cops can do is make him one of their own.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m an author, a reader, and a second generation sci-fi geek. For me, space caper novels are the ultimate escape. Both fun and intellectually stimulating, they allow readers to safely explore adventures beyond the constraints of law, morality, and our planet.
Artemis feels underrated compared to Weir’s other books, but has his signature style—hard sci-fi delivered as amusing and accessible first-person banter.
It speculates on what life might look like in the Moon’s first city through the perspective of a brilliant yet somewhat selfish and immature female protagonist, Jaz, which only makes her more interesting to follow. She pulls off a dangerous, scientifically plausible heist and uncovers a hidden secret.
I listened to the audiobook, and Rosario Dawson’s narration was incredible.
The bestselling author of The Martian returns with an irresistible new near-future thriller—a heist story set on the moon.
Jasmine Bashara never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich.
Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity’s first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she’s owed for a long time.
So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can’t say no.…
I’m an author, a reader, and a second generation sci-fi geek. For me, space caper novels are the ultimate escape. Both fun and intellectually stimulating, they allow readers to safely explore adventures beyond the constraints of law, morality, and our planet.
Maya is a former art thief who is asked to do one last job: steal a valuable artefact to help save an alien species from extinction. But while doing so, she may also condemn humanity. What emerges is a story about a touching friendship between two characters from different species and a varied found family.
I enjoyed the world building with its fascinating planets, species, and cultures, and the exploration of themes of cultural appropriation and anticolonialsm.
Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilisations - until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she's haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.
Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can't refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren't the only ones hunting for it.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’m an author, a reader, and a second generation sci-fi geek. For me, space caper novels are the ultimate escape. Both fun and intellectually stimulating, they allow readers to safely explore adventures beyond the constraints of law, morality, and our planet.
If you enjoy Star Wars but wish it had more Han and more heists—this is for you.
Destroying the Death Star doesn’t rid Han Solo of his debt to Jabba the Hutt, so, in this book, he signs up to a dubious con job and finds himself deep over his head. I loved that in addition to fan favourites like Han and Lando, the heist crew features several new and interesting female characters.
The plot is full of twists and betrayals. And the tone balances Han’s trademark charm, cynicism, and optimism. The audiobook narration was great.
Ocean's Eleven meets Star Wars in this classic adventure set just after StarWars: Episode IV A New Hope. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Timothy Zahn, and starring Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, and more favorites!
The Death Star has just been destroyed and Han Solo still needs the money to pay off the bounty on his head. Now the opportunity to make that money and then some has walked into his life in the form of the perfect heist. With nine like-minded scoundrels, he and Chewbacca just might be able to pull it off and live to tell…
I'm a queer guy who loves speculative fiction. That hasn't been easy. The Disney villains of my childhood were all some kind of horrible LGBTQIAP+ stereotype (Ursula from The Little Mermaidliterally modeled after a drag queen. Gaston, the muscle queen. Jafar, the effeminate manipulator...the list goes on and on). I recently watched the first season of Vox slack-jawed: the only queer representation was an effeminate, over-weight, makeup-ed, middle-aged queen lusting after a much younger straight character. Like many writers in the last few years, I'm trying to re-imagine speculative fiction with an array of LGBTQIAP+ characters in my upcoming contemporary epic fantasy YA book These Precious Stones.
You gotta give props to Flewelling, who wrote a fantasy series with queer male protags in 1996! Just imagine – before Will & Grace, before Queer as Folk, before gay marriage was even a thing, she had the courage to write this deeply moving spy espionage fantasy book and the relationship between the noble rogue Seregil and his mentee/lover Alec was basically what I used as a model for every romantic relationship in my life. Also, the protag in my first two books was named Alek. Coincidence? I think not.
"A new star is rising in the fantasy firmament...teems with magic and spine-chilling amounts of skullduggery."–Dave Duncan, author of The Great Game
When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things–none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward…
Since my first trip to Oz, Dad’s voice traveling me to sleep, I’ve been in love with fantastic worlds, from the microscopic to the intergalactic. I’m drawn to the observations of poets, astronomers, and metaphysicians, but there’s a special place in my heart for children’s authors. Someone once told me middle grade is the “sweet spot.” Readers start making independent choices, exploring stories that resonate with them. I’ve been teaching world-building to students and writers of all ages since 1998, and there is something magical about those 8-12 year-olds with their wild imaginations and eagerness to explore. I wrote my fantasy series for 10-year-old me, lost in such worlds.
I’m a geek for a good undercover story because of the constant underlying tension. Place that undercover story in an alternate world, and you’ve got my attention! Leviathan takes place in Scott Westerfeld's fabulous re-imagining of the events surrounding WWI. It’s a world where the secrets of DNA were discovered far earlier and put to use as natural “machinery.”
Our star is Deryn Sharp, one of my favorite middle-grade heroines. She’s a commoner disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman, brave and fearless and clever… and living in constant fear someone will discover her secret. Even so, she faces conflict head-on and is quick on her feet.
She fights on the side of the Darwinists, using extraordinary genetically altered creatures, against the Clankers and their steampunk-style weaponry. They’re no match for Deryn, though, as she saves the day again and again with her mind…
Two opposing forces are on the brink of war. The Clankers - who put their faith in machinery - and the Darwinists - who have begun evolving living creatures into tools. Prince Aleksandar, the would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, comes from a family of Clankers, and travels the country in a walker, a heavily-fortified tank on legs. Meanwhile Deryn Sharp, a girl disguised as a boy, works for the British Empire, crewing the ultimate flying machine: an airship made of living animals. Now, as Alek flees from his own people, and Deryn crash-lands in enemy territory, their lives are…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’ve been a geeky kid all my life. (I don’t think I’ve quite grown up yet.) Born in the 1970s, my childhood was a wonderful playground of building robots and software. I was awarded one of the early degrees in AI, and a PhD in genetic algorithms. I’ve since spent 25 years exploring how to make computers think, build, invent, compose… and I’ve also spent 20 years writing popular science books. I’m lucky enough to be a Professor in one of the world’s best universities for Computer Science and Machine Learning: UCL, and I guess I’ve written two or three hundred scientific papers over the years. I still think I know nothing at all about real or artificial intelligence, but then does anyone?
This is another break from AI, and it’s another bizarre world. Why do computer scientists like this kind of thing? I think it’s because we invent mind-bending mathematical worlds in which our algorithms live – we like to explore the strange and weird. When reading this book, at first you wonder if this is science fiction at all – the story seems fantastical. But check out the Appendix and there’s the scientific explanation, complete with equations for the weird laws of physics. Now, this is a proper hard science fiction book… somehow disguised almost as a fairy tale. A lovely read and the ending is suitably in keeping with the rest of the story… Unexpected.
Tighe lives on the wall. It towers above his village and falls away below it. It is vast and unforgiving and it is everything he knows. Life is hard on the wall, little more than a clinging on for dear life. And then one day Tighe falls off the wall. And falls, and falls, and falls ...Lavishly praised everywhere from Asimov's magazine to Interzone, ON is proof positive that Adam Roberts is a new author whose potential for greatness is rapidly being realised. ON is at once a vertiginous concept novel, a coming of age saga, a picaresque journey across…
I’ve loved all kinds of science fiction since I was a child, and always enjoy discovering new worlds, and the frisson of danger that inevitably accompanies the discovery. After a successful career in science and engineering, spanning more than three decades, I left the corporate world to make stringed instruments and to write fiction and non-fiction. My two novels are An Accident of Birth, and the space opera, Galactic Alliance: Betrayal, and I’ve written a non-fiction reference book Brass and Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makers. I live in Kent, England with my wife, Margo, and our cat.
Ian Banks is as well known for his science fiction as for his mainstream and literary fiction. This is the first book in his Cultureseries, in which the Culture is a galaxy-wide advanced technological society with complex attitudes to how it should interact with other civilizations. The Culture is at war with the Idrians. Consider Phlebas is the story of a mercenary lone operative on a quest to retrieve a stranded Culture AI mind from an abandoned world to further the Idrian cause. The problem is that he is not the only one going there to find it, and nobody is playing nicely – not even the stranded AI mind. The wide-ranging inventiveness, subtle humour, and gritty realism of this story makes for highly compelling reading.
"Dazzlingly original." -- Daily Mail"Gripping, touching and funny." -- TLSThe war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza,…
I’m a former journalist and intelligence officer turned writer, so I seek out authenticity in my reading, especially when it comes to war stories. I look for fiction from people who have been there or know how to listen to those who have, and be their voice. When I write, I always put together a team of veterans and specialists in their fields to challenge my work and make sure I get it right, too!
I needed a gripping story for a drive across Australia, 800 miles from Sydney to Adelaide. I wanted one that would grab me and keep me awake and alert. This one really got my brain fizzing because it lifts you out of today and transports you into a future that could easily come true (let's hope it doesn't!).
It's the sort of audiobook that has you still sitting in your car, listening to the end of the chapter in your driveway because you can't turn it off!
It was called Jade Dragon…and it threatened to destroy the West.
Was an attack on the US imminent?
In a lab deep in the heart of China, a brilliant engineer had a breakthrough. It was the most powerful AI ever created. Ma Young believed the Jade Dragon could combat the world’s most dire challenges. There was just one problem...the president of China had other ideas. Was this their chance to conquer?
The war began at the speed of light. The entire NATO alliance stood on the brink of destruction. Cyber attacks, deepfakes, and a wave of social media disinformation wrought…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
Youth play such a significant role in the history of our struggles for justice–and yet most teenagers I meet in the classroom have limited access to these important stories. These stories are more relevant than ever as we see current youth-led activism for #BlackLivesMatter and Youth4Climate Marches. When I talk to youth about historical youth-led protests, their eyes light up–they make these connections lightning fast and say–why aren’t we being taught about things like this more in school?
Set in a future of climate change where the UN (Run by a Super Intelligent AI)–this story has so much heart and punch that it hasn’t left me all these years later. Greta, our protagonist, grows so much during this harrowing ride–but it is believable every step of the way.
The children of world leaders are held hostage in an attempt to keep the peace in this “slyly humorous, starkly thought-provoking” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel.
Greta is a Duchess and a Crown Princess. She is also a Child of Peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world, the great Artificial Intelligence, Talis. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Start a war and your hostage dies.
The system has worked for centuries. Parents don’t want to see their children murdered.…
