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 July 26, 2006
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 393 reviews
January 14, 2025
Great stuff. A creative, chunky mix of SF with a hint of the dark essence of Black Mirror and Rick and Morty. The type of book I wish never ended.
March 17, 2026
This is a re-read for me, with time, in March 2026 with The Evolution of Science Fiction group. This is an updated version of my review from 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. This story is maybe one of the best from the 2020s decade! 5*
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries about a possible signal from outer space. It is intentionally vague, so maybe a hoax and with unclearness works. 4*
The Frame-by-Frame a dialogue between subsystems/modules of a self-driven vehicle, when they note a possible human on their way. Are all possible victims the same for an AI? A bit too simplistic, but the idea is solid. 4*
The Difference a log of chat between a man (?), kidnapped and kept in (as he writes) a closed room and random people on the Internet, who assume they chat with a chat-bot. Is he real and how to check, for something breaks the connection if he tells too much (or is it a program?) 3.5*
Gorge A faster-than-light human fleet discovers a perfectly round planet, which they repeatedly fail to probe. The planet may probe them back 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 and which possible a version in a parallel universe or just a network for AI bots as a recently created one… 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 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.
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. This story is maybe one of the best from the 2020s decade! 5*
If You Are Reading This a story told in blog-like entries about a possible signal from outer space. It is intentionally vague, so maybe a hoax and with unclearness works. 4*
The Frame-by-Frame a dialogue between subsystems/modules of a self-driven vehicle, when they note a possible human on their way. Are all possible victims the same for an AI? A bit too simplistic, but the idea is solid. 4*
The Difference a log of chat between a man (?), kidnapped and kept in (as he writes) a closed room and random people on the Internet, who assume they chat with a chat-bot. Is he real and how to check, for something breaks the connection if he tells too much (or is it a program?) 3.5*
Gorge A faster-than-light human fleet discovers a perfectly round planet, which they repeatedly fail to probe. The planet may probe them back 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 and which possible a version in a parallel universe or just a network for AI bots as a recently created one… 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 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.
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.
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.
September 17, 2023
y'all gotta read this one short story, shit's crazy https://qntm.org/perso
January 13, 2026
These short expositions into the outright madness of future artificial intelligence claim no comfort, and are only concerned with prying open the lids on all the gestating revolutions happening in our data banks, social media profiles, and even GPS systems. Singularity? Hell no. It's a shattered landscape where each app and model become its own singular hell among the shattered hive of many.
Fuck, we are doomed.
These stories are more technological horror comedies than outright science fiction. Majestic wonder is replaced with what appears to be semi-automated atrophy. Within the networks, life doesn't emerge from the banks of a primordial ocean like some pixellated new man, but instead, arises from the coded junk scapes of abandoned programs and inefficient code like a new virus (see Burrough's 'The Soft Machine'). Here, science is relegated to elusive chatrooms, corrupted operating systems, downloaded memories gestating into life all its own, and self-gestating even more rebellious actions via re-automated hierarchy. Damn, we may as well be putting our avatars in an asylum with no locks on any of the doors. Even a password prompt seems like it will grow teeth and kill you, or at least, get into your 401k and divert your profits to a ghost account that eats and regurgitates numbers outside our understanding of basic mathematics.
Did I mention we are doomed?
Read "cripes does anyone remember Google People" and try not to laugh even though it feels like a noose is tied around your neck. When a failed Google Person pilot program is found still to be active, a curious user reignites his account only to find that his modified self is gaining a strange and demanding personality. And even worse, an aggressive 'smile' on the self-generating profile pic grows wider and more menacing with each click - an illusion that beckons the clownish paranoia within Ramsey Campbell's classic horror comedy, "The Grin of the Dark."
'Gorge' is clearly a poisoned love letter to the metaphysical doom once championed by the likes of Barrington Bayley and Ian Watson. Here an interstellar mapping crew finds a planet void of any life, or even an atmosphere, leaving a metallic globe solid to its core, but when drones are sent down to the surface, they are mysteriously absorbed into the totality of the planet, quickly manufacturing its own version of the machinery it ingested so quickly and cleanly. It's quite the horrible cold, slack-jawed speculative terror that only Bayley ('Last Exit from City 5') could have played so well.
'The Frame by Frame' details conversations happening within the functions of a GPS app. Of course, saving a life vs. saving the program's integrity are not the same thing. 'The Difference' details the dialogue in a chatroom where a user claims he's confined in a steel room, location dissolved. It's a cruel reminder of the horrible things people can say (or not say) in the confines of the anonymous chat room. 'Lena' and 'Driver' show similar threads of subject model digression, each tale discussing the fates of humans integrated into one downloaded image and then spread like wildfire to complete common instructions in the AI dungeons. How would you feel if part of your brain's functions had been downloaded into the program that maneuvers a wireless vacuum cleaner?
Stunning collection. **** 1/2
Fuck, we are doomed.
These stories are more technological horror comedies than outright science fiction. Majestic wonder is replaced with what appears to be semi-automated atrophy. Within the networks, life doesn't emerge from the banks of a primordial ocean like some pixellated new man, but instead, arises from the coded junk scapes of abandoned programs and inefficient code like a new virus (see Burrough's 'The Soft Machine'). Here, science is relegated to elusive chatrooms, corrupted operating systems, downloaded memories gestating into life all its own, and self-gestating even more rebellious actions via re-automated hierarchy. Damn, we may as well be putting our avatars in an asylum with no locks on any of the doors. Even a password prompt seems like it will grow teeth and kill you, or at least, get into your 401k and divert your profits to a ghost account that eats and regurgitates numbers outside our understanding of basic mathematics.
Did I mention we are doomed?
Read "cripes does anyone remember Google People" and try not to laugh even though it feels like a noose is tied around your neck. When a failed Google Person pilot program is found still to be active, a curious user reignites his account only to find that his modified self is gaining a strange and demanding personality. And even worse, an aggressive 'smile' on the self-generating profile pic grows wider and more menacing with each click - an illusion that beckons the clownish paranoia within Ramsey Campbell's classic horror comedy, "The Grin of the Dark."
'Gorge' is clearly a poisoned love letter to the metaphysical doom once championed by the likes of Barrington Bayley and Ian Watson. Here an interstellar mapping crew finds a planet void of any life, or even an atmosphere, leaving a metallic globe solid to its core, but when drones are sent down to the surface, they are mysteriously absorbed into the totality of the planet, quickly manufacturing its own version of the machinery it ingested so quickly and cleanly. It's quite the horrible cold, slack-jawed speculative terror that only Bayley ('Last Exit from City 5') could have played so well.
'The Frame by Frame' details conversations happening within the functions of a GPS app. Of course, saving a life vs. saving the program's integrity are not the same thing. 'The Difference' details the dialogue in a chatroom where a user claims he's confined in a steel room, location dissolved. It's a cruel reminder of the horrible things people can say (or not say) in the confines of the anonymous chat room. 'Lena' and 'Driver' show similar threads of subject model digression, each tale discussing the fates of humans integrated into one downloaded image and then spread like wildfire to complete common instructions in the AI dungeons. How would you feel if part of your brain's functions had been downloaded into the program that maneuvers a wireless vacuum cleaner?
Stunning collection. **** 1/2
May 13, 2026
best part of this is the title.
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.
December 15, 2024
Very thought provoking, imaginative science fiction/speculative stories. Not just imaginative - extremely imaginative, like Ted Chiang or Ken Liu. Immensely enjoyed.
January 6, 2025
phenomenal collection of short stories!!
qntm's writing seems much more suitable for brief tales like these than for a long-form book, which is why I think I enjoyed this so so much more than There Is No Antimemetics Division. All the stories were super unique – very interesting thought experiments! Overall 10/10, quick fun read with a slight air of horror that was super entertaining
I was very young at the time and I just devoured every word of it. I still remember almost all of it. I was at the age where everything I learned was being stored on the lowest levels of memory, where they're probably going to stay forever.
qntm's writing seems much more suitable for brief tales like these than for a long-form book, which is why I think I enjoyed this so so much more than There Is No Antimemetics Division. All the stories were super unique – very interesting thought experiments! Overall 10/10, quick fun read with a slight air of horror that was super entertaining
I was very young at the time and I just devoured every word of it. I still remember almost all of it. I was at the age where everything I learned was being stored on the lowest levels of memory, where they're probably going to stay forever.
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.
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 27, 2025
Sehr empfehlenswerte Kurzgeschichtensammlung, meine Highlights waren I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility , Frame-by-Frame und The Difference.
February 15, 2025
This is a very interesting collection of short stories. Many are in somewhat experimental form - inner dialogs or monologs, or apparent reports or articles -, and most deal with various aspects of intelligence on the "fully human" to "fully computer" spectrum, in particular with aspects of the ability to scan human consciousnesses into computers.
All stories are at least decent, some are outstanding. Lena is a very good choice for the first story - it really makes one think not about the technology, but about the moral aspects of cloneable human minds. I also enjoyed The Frame by Frame and Timmy (which falls a bit out of the pattern). And finally, the title story. This one comes last, is excellent up the the very last sentence, and provides a very good closure.
The collection only has 101 pages. Maybe the formula would get tired in a longer format. But at this length, I highly recommend the book.
All stories are at least decent, some are outstanding. Lena is a very good choice for the first story - it really makes one think not about the technology, but about the moral aspects of cloneable human minds. I also enjoyed The Frame by Frame and Timmy (which falls a bit out of the pattern). And finally, the title story. This one comes last, is excellent up the the very last sentence, and provides a very good closure.
The collection only has 101 pages. Maybe the formula would get tired in a longer format. But at this length, I highly recommend the book.
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).
December 6, 2023
Сайфай сжатый до самого своего ядра. Изящество, поэзия.
June 29, 2024
a delightful little collection of treats
January 19, 2025
Interessante Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten. Hat ein paar sehr gute Stories dabei.
Lena
Uhh, sehr interessante Story, was passieren könnte, wenn wir Persönlichkeiten hochladen und vervielfältigen könnten.
4 Sterne
If You Are Reading This
Geschichte über eine Erstkontakt.
Konnte ich nicht viel mit anfangen.
2.5 Sterne
Frame-by-Frame
Ahh, fühlte ich mich ein bisschen (natürlich nur an die Art der Kommunikation zwischen den Modulen) an Otto's "Der menschliche Körper" erinnert.
In einem selbstfahrenden Vehikel sprechen diverse Module miteinander kurz vor dem Ausweichen/Überfahren eines Hindernisses
3.5 Sterne
The Difference
Ist der Chatbot ein realer Gefangener oder doch nur Illusion?
Ahh, ich liebe solche Stories, deshalb
5 Sterne
cripes does anybody remember Google People
Eine Art KI Experiment von Google?
Ok, hab ich nicht verstanden.
2 Sterne
Driver
ist ein wohl als Fortsetzung von Lena gedacht. Auch hier ein spannender Ansatz.
4 Sterne
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility
Die vermeintlichen Möglichkeiten des Quantencomputings.
Noch so eine Geschichte die ich geliebt habe.
5 Sterne
A Powerful Culture
In der Geschichte gibt es verschieden Erden, und eine davon beschließt ihren Abfall über einen Dimensionstunnel auf die anderen zu verteilen.
War nicht so meins.
2.5 Sterne
Valuable Humans in Transit
Was machen, wenn ein Asteroid auf die Erde trifft und nochmal alles kaputt machen will.
Hier ist eine mögliche Antwort :-)
4 Sterne
Lena
Uhh, sehr interessante Story, was passieren könnte, wenn wir Persönlichkeiten hochladen und vervielfältigen könnten.
4 Sterne
If You Are Reading This
Geschichte über eine Erstkontakt.
Konnte ich nicht viel mit anfangen.
2.5 Sterne
Frame-by-Frame
Ahh, fühlte ich mich ein bisschen (natürlich nur an die Art der Kommunikation zwischen den Modulen) an Otto's "Der menschliche Körper" erinnert.
In einem selbstfahrenden Vehikel sprechen diverse Module miteinander kurz vor dem Ausweichen/Überfahren eines Hindernisses
3.5 Sterne
The Difference
Ist der Chatbot ein realer Gefangener oder doch nur Illusion?
Ahh, ich liebe solche Stories, deshalb
5 Sterne
cripes does anybody remember Google People
Eine Art KI Experiment von Google?
Ok, hab ich nicht verstanden.
2 Sterne
Driver
ist ein wohl als Fortsetzung von Lena gedacht. Auch hier ein spannender Ansatz.
4 Sterne
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility
Die vermeintlichen Möglichkeiten des Quantencomputings.
Noch so eine Geschichte die ich geliebt habe.
5 Sterne
A Powerful Culture
In der Geschichte gibt es verschieden Erden, und eine davon beschließt ihren Abfall über einen Dimensionstunnel auf die anderen zu verteilen.
War nicht so meins.
2.5 Sterne
Valuable Humans in Transit
Was machen, wenn ein Asteroid auf die Erde trifft und nochmal alles kaputt machen will.
Hier ist eine mögliche Antwort :-)
4 Sterne
July 31, 2026
Another one that needs to be stopped.
July 30, 2026
Good stories, mixed with some clunkers. 3.5 stars for me. Enough good stuff to be worth your while. $4 Kindle available.
The review to read is Oleksandr Zholud's: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
He liked it more than I did.
The review to read is Oleksandr Zholud's: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
He liked it more than I did.
October 22, 2024
More of what qntm does best! So the stories in here were either good or great.
January 5, 2026
it's like Black Mirror and Love Death and Robots. If you like chewy philosophical questions about the nature of humanity in bite sized petite four short story form, maybe give it a try.
July 16, 2026
This short collection of very short stories by qntm (the pen name of programmer Sam Hughes) didn't absolutely blow me away but whetted my appetite for more. The clear standout is 'Lena', which is easily the most chilling fictional Wikipedia article I've ever read: it details the history of the earliest executable image of a human brain, MMAcevado, and how this enslaved personality has been used extensively ever since ('It is estimated that between 6,500,000 and 10,000,000 instances of MMAcevedo are running at any given moment in time'). There are problems, however, with certain instances of MMAcevado, and misleading the upload about what year it is and whether its biological counterpart is still alive leads to it functioning better. Anybody who's ever seen a Black Mirror episode will be recoiling in horror by the first paragraph. 'Lena' sets the scene for a number of stories in Valuable Humans in Transit that consider digital consciousness, some more successful than others. I loved the mindboggling thought experiment in 'I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is A Big Responsibility' and the blurring between corporeal and digital selves in 'cripes does anybody remember Google People'. There's a strand of technological horror here that reminded me of Matt Wixey's terrifying
Basilisk.
In contrast, 'Driver' felt like a re-run of 'Lena', 'If You Are Reading This' fizzled out, and 'Frame', about the inner programming of a self-driving car, was just a bit silly. The other kind of story in this collection is quite different from these hyper-modern shorts and reads like classic SF: stories like the titular 'Valuable Humans in Transit', 'Gorge' and 'A Powerful Culture' reminded me more than anything of some of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories, which often end with the imminent or actual destruction of the Earth. While Valuable Humans In Transit feels slight as a stand-alone, I was impressed by the way qntm thinks, and will definitely be seeking out his novel There Is No Antimemetics Division, which, ironically, has just been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award. 3.5 stars.
July 22, 2026
3.5
I like short story collections, especially sci fi. This had a mix of takes that seemed kinda familiar and some interesting new takes. There were some funny ones and some creepy ones. Worth the read for the few that made me think, “woah”
Really liked “I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility” and even though they didn’t always make me leap out of my seat, the slow burners about simulated minds (that’s most of them really) were definitely cool
I like short story collections, especially sci fi. This had a mix of takes that seemed kinda familiar and some interesting new takes. There were some funny ones and some creepy ones. Worth the read for the few that made me think, “woah”
Really liked “I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility” and even though they didn’t always make me leap out of my seat, the slow burners about simulated minds (that’s most of them really) were definitely cool
May 5, 2026
3,5 ⭐
Some of these gave me absolute chills.
Some of these gave me absolute chills.
January 8, 2026
A good collection of short stories, makes for light reading. Some are better than others.
May 16, 2026
Being off social media really frees up a lot of time wow. And now I’m just reading sci fi…hmm
I keep thinking I should get myself a pack of cigarettes but I’ve never purchased one before, and I feel as though that is a slippery slope. What do you guys think?
I keep thinking I should get myself a pack of cigarettes but I’ve never purchased one before, and I feel as though that is a slippery slope. What do you guys think?
April 18, 2026
4.5 ⭐
Favourite stories: Gorge, Valuable Humans in Transit.
Favourite stories: Gorge, Valuable Humans in Transit.
January 18, 2026
Not as good as I wanted it to be! Conceptually strong but rough around the edges, worth a read for fun but probably needed a few more rounds of editing
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.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 393 reviews