Accidentally Encountering Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction* is what happens when you poke your head into a random bookstore on a Sunday morning. When Gina and I stepped into Porter Square Books in Cambridge (website) I didn’t even know that Rajaniemi had released a collection of short stories. Spotting the book — complete with a beautiful cover by Lius Lasahido (Deviant Art page) — I immediately knew this was going home with me. How could I say no to a collection of futurist and fantastic fiction that features such a gorgeously-painted cover?

Now I’ve read Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief*, but I haven’t read any of his other works and had no idea that this short story collection was released last month. As I find myself slowly reading through Collected Fiction* I can say that I’ll definitely be trying his other works. The writing is fairly dense in places, but as this NPR review of Collected Fiction, written by Amal El-Mohtar, says: “Hannu Rajaniemi’s magnificent science fiction — as is paradoxically appropriate — is pure magic.”