Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9781416521006
ISBN number: 1416521003
Label: Baen
Manufacturer: Baen
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: January 01, 2007
Publishing house: Baen
Sale Popularity Level: 456995
Studio: Baen
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Steven Montana, computer whiz and hacker extraordinaire, was attending college in Ohio when his world fell apart. A swarm of huge meteors fell all over the world, on Europe, on the United States, and in particular on Steven¿s home town in California. In an instant, his family and all his friends were gone. Eventually, he learned that the ¿meteor¿ onslaught that had orphaned him had actually been a brief and still secret war between the U.S and its enemies (as told in Warp Speed) using a new warp drive technology that was more secret than top secret. Another secret was that U.S. had been sending faster-than-light ships to other star systems. Most secret of all was that unfriendly aliens were observing the Earth, and while U.S. spaceships were not quite in a war with the unknown aliens, they were shooting at the intruders. Whether any of these answers would do Steven any good was an open question because he learned them only after his was abducted by those very same aliens and was held prisoner on one of their ships orbiting Saturn. At first, he was one of three human prisoners, but he had just seen the aliens completely dissect one of the three, and it looked like either Steven, or the Russian girl who was his fellow prisoner, were scheduled to be the subsequent alien lab experiment. . . .
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Rated by buyers 
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Liked the very first one a lot, because it was a romp. This one was just a ramble. Reminded me of the drunken-walk approach to writing - you get to the end but it did not matter how you got there [what plot events happened on the way].
Rated by buyers 
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Travis S. Taylor's QUANTUM CONNECTION provides a sequel to WARP SPEED and is a recommended pick for prior fans. Steven is a computer whiz in college when a swarm of huge meteors falls across the world, killing his friends and family. A new world is created - and Steven becomes privy to the information that this new order also includes a new war.
Rated by buyers -
Doc Taylor's second novel, "The Quantum Connection" follows on in the same world created by Taylour in "Warp Speed". This time however, the novel doesn't center around Dr. Clemons and his associates, instead Taylour introduces the reader to Steven Montana, a character who's life was profoundly changed by the events in the very first book although we never new he existed in the very first story.
Taylour shows Steven as a very human character. He's a computer geek who finds that his whole family and all his friends have died as a result of a rain of meteors that killed millions around the world (readers of "Warp Speed" know the real story there). The very first third of the book follows Steven's ups and downs as he deals with this, with life and finally with a great opportunity to work for a government think tank reverse engineering foreign and sometimes possibly alien technologies.
The relationship between Steven and his dog, Lazarus, is one of the most interesting and touching parts of this novel. There are two kinds of dog owners in the world, ones for whom the dog becomes one of the family, and those for whom the dog is just another possession. Lazarus becomes Steven's only family, and a stabilizing force for him as he deals with erratic mood swings that the doctors tell him are part of dealing with his tremendous loss. Taylor's story uses the relationship between Steven and Lazarus as an underlying influence that helps guide Steven's actions and it allows the reader to understand his actions when tragedy does strike.
Of course at this point the novel sounds more like "Old Yeller" than a sci-fi action story, but the build up of Steven's relationship with Lazarus is important to this story. Taylour blends this element neatly into the plot right along with the aliens, super-technology, action and adventure that the book's cover art suggests. The move into the "meat" of the story is actually quite sudden as the book shifts gears radically with the introduction of the before mentioned aliens and more advanced technology. This also leads to Steven's introduction to Tatiana, a young daughter of a Russian diplomat to the U.N. who is in almost the same situation. Their relationship provides the impetus for emotional growth that all the high-tech cannot.
As has become a trademark with Taylor's work, the technology becomes a driving force in the story. Unlike "Warp Speed" which focused on the possibilities of faster than light travel, the technical focus in "The Quantum Connection" is nano-technology and the theory of the quantum connection (hence the title of the book) between all things. Taylour brings the reader into these concepts through Steven's own process of discovery and as the human's understanding of the alien technology expands, so does the reader's understanding of the underlying concepts behind it.
I'm not big on giving away a lot of the story, you should read the book for that! But I will say that some of the most interesting scenes in the book involve the interaction between Steven and Tatiana and the principle characters from "Warp Speed" as the desire to protect Earth from an alien threat brings them together. The initial meeting is fraught with misunderstanding since Steven and Tatiana are using alien technology and another high speed battle ensues that lays waste to a good portion of Earth's moon base before it is all resolved.
Taylor's blend of imaginative characters, technology, and an optimistic view of humanity's potential make for a very good read. There is plenty of action and suspense to keep you turning the pages, but in the end the thing that makes "The Quantum Connection" stand out is not the science (and oddly enough, I do feel smarter for having read the book), it's not the action and adventure; it's the story of Steven and his dog Lazarus. Many times it is the simplest things that have the most profound affects on a person and in this case one could say that it was a man's love for his dog that saved the world. I recommend you check out "The Quantum Connection" for yourself and see what I mean.
Rated by buyers 
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Of course it is just comic-book mind candy. But it does so very well.
Hope there is no sequel? Then why is super-bad-guy Lex Luther (excuse me, Opolawn) not destroyed, but only isolated for a while?
I read this one without reading Warp Speed. I was about 100 pages into it and suddenly laughed out loud. This IS a great revival of the EE Smith genre. I say that as one who started reading SF when the mag covers were always a scanty clad human female in the grip of a BEM. I have not actually read Doc Smith in at least 40 years.
Lots of psudo-science lectures interspersed with comic-book super-hero action. Of course the superhero begins as a fat, depressed nerd stranded in delayed adolesence. Once he learns how to say SHAZAM! (communicate with the alien computer) all with be made right, including a set of six-pack abs. This too is a part of the proto-story.
Rated by buyers -
While from a certain perspective this novel makes for good brains-on-vacation reading, I have to express disappointment that Taylour doesn't explain how the super-technologically advanced aliens he imagined never understood the full potentials of the stuff they invented, apparently centuries or millennia ago, whereas his slacker human hero, the smart but not genius-level Steven Montana, could grasp them in short order. I would have found it helpful if a character conjectured something along the lines that technological species don't necessarily develop universally competent intelligence, but instead display differing abilities based on the problems they had to solve in their respective evolutionary histories. They can seem really smart in some areas and dumb in other areas, in other words. Otherwise how do you account for the fact that the Grey aliens didn't have firewalls against hackers and don't go around with AI-augmented and nanotech-hardened bodies?
The leader of the other advanced alien species could at least put up a real fight in bodily combat against enhanced humans, but Montana admits that the rumble resembled the comic-book battle between Superman and Doomsday. It just solves way too many problems for humanity when the upgraded Montana and his Russian girlfriend show up on the moon base and turn some of the characters from Taylor's previous novel, "Warp Speed," into Green Lantern-like superheroes, with the added bonus that they no longer experience aging.
I would also add that I didn't care for the vengeance fantasies in both novels. Taylour apparently suffers from the white Southerner's irrational touchiness about "honor," and he feels the need to have his characters take out his anger on both evil foreigners and meddling aliens.
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