Quarantine

Quarantine by Greg Egan

HarperPrism

1995 New York, paperback $5.99

ISBN 0 06 105423 2

Greg Egan is an SF writer who takes an idea, builds a convincing world around it, and then, as if not content with producing a conventional speculative extrapolation, he develops the idea to the nth degree.

So in Quarantine we have neural modifications that can give the human brain enhanced capabilities. And we have the solar system mysteriously, miraculously and instantaneously enclosed. Cut off from the rest of the universe, humanity finds itself quarantined.

Egan links these two SF ideas in an unexpected -- not to say startling -- manner. Yet he goes further still and speculates on the notion of quantum probability, and on what would happen if someone found a way of harnessing the uncertainty principle.

It's mind-boggling stuff, and even if you don't understand every last logical step (it is fiction after all -- if it were possible, someone might have done it) you can revel in the sense of wonder that Egan conjures with such assurance.

The novel opens with Nick, a private investigator hired to find a brain-damaged young woman who has disappeared from an institution by somehow escaping -- or being abducted -- from a securely locked room. As you might expect, Nick's case proves to have far wider implications than simply tracing a missing person.

Egan's style, a consistent first-person narrative, is straightforward and involving, enabling the reader to be immersed effortlessly in the story. It runs on apace, and experiencing the protagonist's inner life, and the influence of his various neural 'mods' is a fascinating journey.

If I have one slight quibble, it's with the novel's rather open ending. But given the remarkable conclusions of the speculation -- having to do with possible alternative futures -- there are enough hints in the book that the ending you read isn't necessarily the ending that comes about.

Egan's future is a strange world, and ultimately he makes it even stranger.

Note: This review originally appeared in the Usenet Newsgroup rec.arts.sf.reviews, and has been archived at: http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/