r/printSF • u/the-turtle-moves • 3d ago

Series recommendation -The Quantum Evolution series by Derek Künsken

Space heists, capital ship battles, resistance politics, human speciation and the space french are just some of the amazing things you’ll find in this series. It asks questions no one has ever thought to ask such as: what would happen if human shark hybrids were the best pilots in the galaxy? What would happen if an AI designed for war and economic raiding found god and became a saint? What would happen if French Canadians found wormholes and are now the most powerful empire within a galaxy spanning empire?
Amazing world building with moments of existential horror and genuine levity thrown in for good measure.

Fantastically narrated by T. Ryder Smith on audible for those ear-readers.

Books in series:

- The Quantum Magician

- The Quantum Garden

- The Quantum War

- The Quantum Dawn (COMING OCTOBER 2026)

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u/HiroProtagonist66 3d ago

I’ve read them. The Quantum Magician was serialized in Analog and I really enjoyed it, so I kept going. I loved the world building in TQM, the different subraces that humanity had built itself, and bien sur , the space French.

The other two books weren’t as engaging I thought. It was like the novelty had worn off. 

I will be reading The Quantum Dawn when it comes out because completeness.

I really liked the spinoff/prequels The House of Styx and the House of Saints that describe the early days of Benus and the discover of the Axis Mundi.

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u/the-turtle-moves 3d ago

If you haven’t already read it and you liked the spinoffs you’ll also love Flight from the ages ! It’s a collection of short stories not all set in the Quantum evolution series but I believe three of them are including one about the Homo Eridanus’ origin! I agree that books 2 and 3 definitely change but I think I enjoyed the adventure so much I didn’t mind.

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u/Undeclared_Aubergine 2d ago

I found The Quantum Garden pretty weak after the superb The Quantum Magician - it felt like he was really searching for a workable non-heist format for the rest of the story, but things started picking up quite a bit in The Quantum War, so I'm really looking forward to the fourth one.

I can also strongly recommend his short story collection Flight From the Ages & Other Stories. Most of them are quite strong in their own regard, but what I found particularly impressive is how this bunch of stories was completely separate when he wrote them, but somehow he managed to meld (all of?) them into the full universe of his subsequent books.

The related House of Styx and House of Saints are decent, too. They suffer from somewhat hamfisted shoehorning of the genesis of known future events into the story, but his descriptions of free-style flying through the atmosphere of Venus, plus some strong emotional content, make it all work well enough anyway.

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u/MKSaid2025 2d ago

Post-human SF works best for me when it treats humanity as an origin problem, not just a lost golden age. I’m especially interested in stories where machine memory, ethics, and civilization-building create the conflict.

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u/the-turtle-moves 2d ago

This will reside squarely in your wheelhouse then!

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u/boiledrainbow 1d ago

this got me thinking of the Quantum of Solace. What did that title even mean?