What do you think?
Rate this book
Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories
qntm has been writing science fiction for most of this millennium. His works start from elegant, deep hypotheticals and wind entire universes around them, pushing science, technology, time and logic to breaking point and far beyond.
This volume collects the highlights of his short fiction, including "The Difference", "I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is A Big Responsibility" and the acclaimed "Lena".
This volume collects the highlights of his short fiction, including "The Difference", "I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is A Big Responsibility" and the acclaimed "Lena".
101 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2022
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
December 4, 2022
This is solid collection of short stories, some of which are good, some of which are excellent. qntm's writing evokes the big ideas of Cixin Liu and the hard SF of Greg Egan, but in its own style.
April 5, 2023
This is a collection of SF shorts stories by Sam Hughes, who often used the pen-name qntm. They are short, great with ideas but sometimes uneven in execution, and mix SF with horror. I read it as the monthly reading for April 2023 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group.
The collection starts with a Boom! The first story, Lena is written as a Wiki article from the 2070s about the earliest executable image of a human brain MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo) and its ‘usage’/slavery during the following decades. It questions whether it is moral to run a sentience simulation, whether it is a person or another piece of software. The title is an allusion to Lenna, a standard test image used in the field of digital image processing starting in 1973, based on a picture of the Swedish model Lena Forsén, from November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine. 5*
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries about a possible signal from outer space. 4*
The Frame-by-Frame a dialogue between subsystems/modules of a self-driven vehicle, when they note a possible human on their way. A bit too simplistic, but the idea is solid. 4*
The Difference a log of chat between a man (?), kidnapped and kept is a closed room and random people on the Internet, who assume they chat with a chat-bot. 3.5*
Gorge A faster-than-light human fleet discovers a perfectly round planet, which they repeatedly fail to probe. 4*
cripes does anybody remember Google People another chat log, this time made as a Twitter account, about a supposed Google social network, which few people recall… 3.5*
Driver a continuation to Lena but about an executable image of a human brain made to control other images, for they tend to be “stuck in very low quality-of-work (boredom/confusion) states, non-functional protest states, permanent blue/red condition loops or end states.” 5*
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility The next step after quantum computing, a machine that has the infinite processing power and can do anything. While it isn’t clear how it mixes a mathematical concept of infinity with our finite universe and characters are a bit slow bearing in mind that they are geniuses, but as ‘what-if’ it is great. 4.5*
A Powerful Culture an engine from a parallel Earth doing something bad on ours and other Earths, an environmentalist piece. 3*
Valuable Humans in Transit an AI narrator saves humanity from an asteroid impact, but its work is only starting… 4*
Overall a great collection of a strong new (for me) voice in SF.
The collection starts with a Boom! The first story, Lena is written as a Wiki article from the 2070s about the earliest executable image of a human brain MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo) and its ‘usage’/slavery during the following decades. It questions whether it is moral to run a sentience simulation, whether it is a person or another piece of software. The title is an allusion to Lenna, a standard test image used in the field of digital image processing starting in 1973, based on a picture of the Swedish model Lena Forsén, from November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine. 5*
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries about a possible signal from outer space. 4*
The Frame-by-Frame a dialogue between subsystems/modules of a self-driven vehicle, when they note a possible human on their way. A bit too simplistic, but the idea is solid. 4*
The Difference a log of chat between a man (?), kidnapped and kept is a closed room and random people on the Internet, who assume they chat with a chat-bot. 3.5*
Gorge A faster-than-light human fleet discovers a perfectly round planet, which they repeatedly fail to probe. 4*
cripes does anybody remember Google People another chat log, this time made as a Twitter account, about a supposed Google social network, which few people recall… 3.5*
Driver a continuation to Lena but about an executable image of a human brain made to control other images, for they tend to be “stuck in very low quality-of-work (boredom/confusion) states, non-functional protest states, permanent blue/red condition loops or end states.” 5*
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility The next step after quantum computing, a machine that has the infinite processing power and can do anything. While it isn’t clear how it mixes a mathematical concept of infinity with our finite universe and characters are a bit slow bearing in mind that they are geniuses, but as ‘what-if’ it is great. 4.5*
A Powerful Culture an engine from a parallel Earth doing something bad on ours and other Earths, an environmentalist piece. 3*
Valuable Humans in Transit an AI narrator saves humanity from an asteroid impact, but its work is only starting… 4*
Overall a great collection of a strong new (for me) voice in SF.
September 17, 2023
y'all gotta read this one short story, shit's crazy https://qntm.org/perso
April 18, 2023
Pretty good. There are a few very strong short stories here, especially the first one "Lena" and the related "Driver". Both deal with uploaded humans being used as workers on an industrial scale. Pretty horrific. (Lena is free on the author's blog, and an accompanying essay says he doesn't really believe uploads are possible. Nor do I.)
A story where different parts of a computer program responsible for driving a car talk to each other was also very clever.
A few stories didn't work for me, but most did. I'm willing to try more from this author.
A story where different parts of a computer program responsible for driving a car talk to each other was also very clever.
A few stories didn't work for me, but most did. I'm willing to try more from this author.
May 27, 2024
qntm is different to—and better than—anyone else currently writing fiction, to my mind. The only complaint I'd have about his career to date is that there isn't more of it.
February 9, 2023
This collection is a lot like if Philip K. Dick had Twitter.
That's unfair, qntm is deeply their own voice, not a pastiche of any New Wave speed freak. But the paranoid vibe of mind uploading, simulated universes, the catastrophic collapse of humanity, that's draws comparisons to Dick, Alistair Reynolds, Ted Chiang. These stories are microscopic bites of weirdness that blow up into strange feasts.
That's unfair, qntm is deeply their own voice, not a pastiche of any New Wave speed freak. But the paranoid vibe of mind uploading, simulated universes, the catastrophic collapse of humanity, that's draws comparisons to Dick, Alistair Reynolds, Ted Chiang. These stories are microscopic bites of weirdness that blow up into strange feasts.
December 6, 2023
Сайфай сжатый до самого своего ядра. Изящество, поэзия.
June 29, 2024
a delightful little collection of treats
April 9, 2023
The first story, 'Lena', is an instant classic that should be on every philosophy of mind syllabus. The others are at least clever.
The title story is a nice illustration of why existential risk is so concentrated in our near future (since if we make it through, we will have powerful guardians) and a very nice wishful-thinking companion to Gwern's 'Clippy'.
A common thread in the stories is the gross and complete failure of moral intuitions to cover new kinds of people (uploads, sims, those in lower dimensional projections). Capitalism is usually implied to be to blame, but in one of the stories it's a sunny green research project that dumps catastrophic waste into our yard, "legally speaking your Earth is as empty as Earth 2985b". How can you do this? Because you have a theory which lets you and no imagination to give you caution.
The title story is a nice illustration of why existential risk is so concentrated in our near future (since if we make it through, we will have powerful guardians) and a very nice wishful-thinking companion to Gwern's 'Clippy'.
A common thread in the stories is the gross and complete failure of moral intuitions to cover new kinds of people (uploads, sims, those in lower dimensional projections). Capitalism is usually implied to be to blame, but in one of the stories it's a sunny green research project that dumps catastrophic waste into our yard, "legally speaking your Earth is as empty as Earth 2985b". How can you do this? Because you have a theory which lets you and no imagination to give you caution.
January 6, 2023
(3.5 stars.) Uneven, but Qntm is one of the only interesting SF writers alive right now; a sort of quasi-Ted Chiang (if Chiang spent way too much time on Reddit).
November 15, 2022
More of what qntm does best! So the stories in here were either good or great.
January 21, 2023
"Lena" continues to be one of the most horrific stories I've ever read. The rest of the bunch ain't bad either.
January 24, 2024
Aww; I really wanted to love this one.
- Started out good and for a second I thought I'd jumped ahead in my nonfiction hard science reading list. That opening had me double checking but the 2010-2073 life and death year settled it.
It had promise and it would nosedive into not my taste and then rise and land firmly in something I enjoyed.
2.75⭐ upgraded for Lena story
Plot/Storyline/Themes:
Multiple stories some hits and some misses. I can see what they were going for though. Makes me weary of trying to read the rest of the qntm backlist.
Two Sentences, A Scene or less - Characters:
I cared for no one. I just read and moved on, read and moved on. Very clinical.
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Scene: :
The Difference chapter was interesting but Gorge was the best in my already depleting interest in this collection.
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Quotes:
🖤 “the longest-lived MMAcevedo underwent brain death due to entropy increase at a subjective age of 145.” (On AI Death due to extreme context drift and workload.)
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Concepts:
■ MMAcevedo: Living Snapshot of A Brain
■MMAcevedo's Context Drift
StoryGraph Challenge: 1800 Books by 2025
Challenge Prompt: 150 Science Fiction Books by 2025
It had promise and it would nosedive into not my taste and then rise and land firmly in something I enjoyed.
2.75⭐ upgraded for Lena story
Plot/Storyline/Themes:
Multiple stories some hits and some misses. I can see what they were going for though. Makes me weary of trying to read the rest of the qntm backlist.
Two Sentences, A Scene or less - Characters:
I cared for no one. I just read and moved on, read and moved on. Very clinical.
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Scene: :
The Difference chapter was interesting but Gorge was the best in my already depleting interest in this collection.
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Quotes:
🖤 “the longest-lived MMAcevedo underwent brain death due to entropy increase at a subjective age of 145.” (On AI Death due to extreme context drift and workload.)
Favorite/Curious/Ludicrous/Unique Concepts:
■ MMAcevedo: Living Snapshot of A Brain
■MMAcevedo's Context Drift
StoryGraph Challenge: 1800 Books by 2025
Challenge Prompt: 150 Science Fiction Books by 2025
December 19, 2023
One of the best sci-fi pieces I’ve ever read. Strongly recommended.
June 29, 2024
Hughes is able to achieve big feelings that many novels take over hundreds of pages to get to, in the span of mere single digits of pages. These stories are all insanely satisfying to read and quick to the punch, yet elegantly written.
Can’t wait to try their other stories.
Can’t wait to try their other stories.
May 31, 2023
Short stories are the perfect vehicle for qntm's ideas. These put me mind of the best Black Mirror episodes.
Read
January 24, 2024So let's start...
Lenna and I didn't knew about it, was photo and standard test image used in the field of digital image processing starting in 1973. In this tale we follow another character which instead of a photo, the brain was scanned. This is the history of their uses... highly interesting sci-fi (not so distant) where we can achieve for all purposes immortality... but is it a good thing?
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries and was a bit weird for me
The Frame- it's basically the story of a self-driving car and deciding their actions when they encounter someone right in front of them. You get the supervisor, the video, the brake, the wheel, the abs etc. Very interesting and comedic
The Difference this was a comic , and unsettling story that deals with a man being trapped somewhere while other people log in and out and he tries those people to help him out...
Gorge a pure sci-fi story about humanity discovering a weird planet... to be honest was a bit confusing
cripes does anybody remember Google People this is a chat log, twitter probably, where a man is talking about a now-defunct google application called Google People which was a bit weird since , it worked like facebook, but it did a lot more things like fake entries, adding randomly people, asking if x or y was known to them etc. It was interesting. the ending was a bit like the Difference story... or was it?
Driver this story follows the first one. If you enjoy the first you going to enjoy the second.
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility This tale is very good. It's about a computer, above the most powerful we have nowadays, the quantum computing, and these two IT create a simulation of a world (imagine Populous game) but then things got out of hand and strange stuff starts to happen mixing realities and existences.. (you can deduce by the title)
A Powerful Culture is a story about a world where something is discovered that links this world to another parallel world. And that world is using another earth as a dumping ground of pollution. Great ending.
Valuable Humans in Transit this was interesting tale where an AI narrator saves humanity from an asteroid impact... But there are more stuff in there. I was confused until I re-read again.
Overall a very interesting tales Some were more impactful than others. That's why I will rate 73/100. Because some stories really brought down the top ones... Read in one day. What more can I wish? This person is very good.
Lenna and I didn't knew about it, was photo and standard test image used in the field of digital image processing starting in 1973. In this tale we follow another character which instead of a photo, the brain was scanned. This is the history of their uses... highly interesting sci-fi (not so distant) where we can achieve for all purposes immortality... but is it a good thing?
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries and was a bit weird for me
The Frame- it's basically the story of a self-driving car and deciding their actions when they encounter someone right in front of them. You get the supervisor, the video, the brake, the wheel, the abs etc. Very interesting and comedic
The Difference this was a comic , and unsettling story that deals with a man being trapped somewhere while other people log in and out and he tries those people to help him out...
Gorge a pure sci-fi story about humanity discovering a weird planet... to be honest was a bit confusing
cripes does anybody remember Google People this is a chat log, twitter probably, where a man is talking about a now-defunct google application called Google People which was a bit weird since , it worked like facebook, but it did a lot more things like fake entries, adding randomly people, asking if x or y was known to them etc. It was interesting. the ending was a bit like the Difference story... or was it?
Driver this story follows the first one. If you enjoy the first you going to enjoy the second.
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility This tale is very good. It's about a computer, above the most powerful we have nowadays, the quantum computing, and these two IT create a simulation of a world (imagine Populous game) but then things got out of hand and strange stuff starts to happen mixing realities and existences.. (you can deduce by the title)
A Powerful Culture is a story about a world where something is discovered that links this world to another parallel world. And that world is using another earth as a dumping ground of pollution. Great ending.
Valuable Humans in Transit this was interesting tale where an AI narrator saves humanity from an asteroid impact... But there are more stuff in there. I was confused until I re-read again.
Overall a very interesting tales Some were more impactful than others. That's why I will rate 73/100. Because some stories really brought down the top ones... Read in one day. What more can I wish? This person is very good.
February 24, 2024
A nice collection of short stories with a fairly high hit ratio!
The standouts for me were:
- Lena & Driver: Lena is a look into the world of brain scanning and uploads of sentient programs, with Driver expanding on it.
- cripes does anybody remember Google People: Though the format of a Twitter-like thread threw me off a bit at the beginning, it ended being a fairly interesting... maybe not horror, but horror-lite piece
- The frame-by-frame: A humurous view into the world of self-driving cars, with a touch of corporate ruthlessness on the side
- A powerful culture: Interesting concept of interdimensional garbage dumping
- I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility: The technobabble felt a bit unbelievable at the start, but beyond that it's a great 'what-if'
With the rest ranging from feeling a bit underbaked to never really catching my interest.
The standouts for me were:
- Lena & Driver: Lena is a look into the world of brain scanning and uploads of sentient programs, with Driver expanding on it.
- cripes does anybody remember Google People: Though the format of a Twitter-like thread threw me off a bit at the beginning, it ended being a fairly interesting... maybe not horror, but horror-lite piece
- The frame-by-frame: A humurous view into the world of self-driving cars, with a touch of corporate ruthlessness on the side
- A powerful culture: Interesting concept of interdimensional garbage dumping
- I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility: The technobabble felt a bit unbelievable at the start, but beyond that it's a great 'what-if'
With the rest ranging from feeling a bit underbaked to never really catching my interest.
December 23, 2023
Colección de relatos cortos con temática de ciencia ficción / ficción especulativa de Sam Hughes, que firma como qntm (léase quantum). Muy interesantes los comienzos, siempre, aunque la mayoría de ellas pierden algo de fuelle hacia la mitad.
En su blog personal el autor da unas pinceladas sindicalistas sobre el verdadero problema que supone su historia Lena, que leí por separado y que he vuelto a encontrar en esta recopilación.
En conjunto forman una lectura entretenida pero no me han enamorado.
En su blog personal el autor da unas pinceladas sindicalistas sobre el verdadero problema que supone su historia Lena, que leí por separado y que he vuelto a encontrar en esta recopilación.
En conjunto forman una lectura entretenida pero no me han enamorado.
April 20, 2023
There were one or two stories in this collection that I found intriguing, but for the most part there was a lot of melodrama and corny endings. My biggest qualm with these stories is the diction felt a bit weak. In stories where literally anything can happen (because science), the descriptions and worldbuilding fell a bit flat for me.
January 25, 2024
I enjoyed this short book; it was nearly exactly what I was looking for after whetting my appetite with Exurb1a's books. If anything, I wish the short stories were not so short and that is genuinely the only minor issue I have.
Should you read it?
If you're looking for bite-sized, black mirror-style short stories but way farther into the future then yes!
Should you read it?
If you're looking for bite-sized, black mirror-style short stories but way farther into the future then yes!
July 23, 2024
qntm’s There Is No Antimemetics Division was hands down one of my favourite books I’ve read this year, so I’ve had Valuable Humans In Transit on the reading list for a while. I find short story collections notoriously difficult to rate as a whole, but this was, satisfyingly, what I expected from qntm: a fun, clever, nerdy collection of bite-sized, Reddit-coded and thought-provoking sci-fi tales.
June 30, 2023
phenomenal
October 10, 2023
Really great short stories. I love qntm books! Really show the existential crisis in these and moral issues. Really great and I could see these being used in any philosophy class to debate “for and against.”
Love qntm!
Love qntm!
June 3, 2024
Wow! A wonderful short story collection, up there with Ted Chiang's Exhalation.
Read
August 3, 2023Lena and Google People my beloved <3
August 9, 2024
Read it during my commute to work, in transit.
January 27, 2024
Fantastic collection
These stories will start feedback loops in your thoughts, it's hard to describe properly the effects. Especially with autocorrect interfering, so ironic
These stories will start feedback loops in your thoughts, it's hard to describe properly the effects. Especially with autocorrect interfering, so ironic
November 30, 2022
One of the best sci-fi and speculative fiction anthologies I've ever read. I started it yesterday and read all but the last chapter in my first sitting. I'll try to keep this review spoiler free, but I will be discussing format and general concepts so be warned!
Some stories breathe fresh life into otherwise well explored topics and others prospect concepts I've yet to come across. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail but if you're interested in the intersection between humanity, sentience, the internet and technology in general you'll like most of the stories in this anthology.
qntm uses varied mediums to tell their stories ranging from a series of "tweets", a blog post, wiki articles and your standard third-person limited fiction perspective. The shifting format kept me on my toes from story to story and really made the book feel fresh all the way through. Many of the stories feel like they were pieces of media or documentation snatched right out of an alternate reality, or some near future largely in part to the format's they're written in.
I was also impressed with the level of world-building done in such short stories (especially so in the wiki articles). So much is left unsaid about these worlds, and I was left after most story's theory crafting about the surrounding situations mentioned in passing and the term's left undefined.
If you love short and sweet sci-fi that's not afraid to get a little technical, I can't recommend this book more!
Some stories breathe fresh life into otherwise well explored topics and others prospect concepts I've yet to come across. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail but if you're interested in the intersection between humanity, sentience, the internet and technology in general you'll like most of the stories in this anthology.
qntm uses varied mediums to tell their stories ranging from a series of "tweets", a blog post, wiki articles and your standard third-person limited fiction perspective. The shifting format kept me on my toes from story to story and really made the book feel fresh all the way through. Many of the stories feel like they were pieces of media or documentation snatched right out of an alternate reality, or some near future largely in part to the format's they're written in.
I was also impressed with the level of world-building done in such short stories (especially so in the wiki articles). So much is left unsaid about these worlds, and I was left after most story's theory crafting about the surrounding situations mentioned in passing and the term's left undefined.
If you love short and sweet sci-fi that's not afraid to get a little technical, I can't recommend this book more!
July 14, 2023
Astonishingly good. Readable, inventive, philosophically interesting sci fi. The story about simulating the deterministic universe is awesome. The stories about replicated humans is awesome. Hell, they're all awesome. HIGHLY recommend for any sci fi fan. I'll be reading more of his stuff in the future.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews