Quarantine (1992)

I've read 6 Egan books so far, including this one in addition to a short story collection, and each time I come to appreciate his recurrent use of lone wolf, nearly autistic lead characters a little bit more. I grew up reading every Asimov novel I could get my hands on, and to this day I consider the original Foundation trilogy to be nearly perfect science fiction: expansive, imaginative, thoughtful, and most of all, deeply concerned with human problems. But where Asimov's heroes were hard-boiled 50s men translated to a far future of robots and starships, Egan has a different attitude towards his protagonists that reflects his different attitude towards the themes of his books. He doesn't ground his writing in Asimov's cheerful faith in rationalism as the savior of humanity even as his heroes are some of the most coldly rational you'll find, he's much more content to just set up a mind-twisting mathematical dreamworld and let them stumble around from one revelation to the next, enjoying the various scenarios for their own sake rather than as parables of the Enlightenment. Maybe these different attitudes to science are partly a generational thing - even though Asimov was as big a fan of hard science as anyone, many modern authors seem to have lost the belief that science in itself can lead to better worlds. The cigar-chomping traders and politicians in Foundation might be completely out of place in a galactic civilization, or even a transhuman world a few decades from now. Or maybe Egan is just more of a nerd, more comfortable with characters who can prune away feelings they don't like and can choose to accept the messiness of the world on their own terms.

Quarantine starts off with a nod to the sudden astronomical catastrophe in Asimov's classic Nightfall: a mysterious force has enclosed the solar system with a spherical event horizon that blocks all contact with the universe beyond, spawning new apocalyptic, millennarian cults. This event was less devastating than the one in the Asimov book, though, and life has moved on. Protagonist Nick Stavrianos is a computationally-augmented private eye hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a mentally disabled woman from the institute she was residing in, which could be the work of one of those cults. Nick manages to track her down, discovers she has the ability to somehow make locks and barriers irrelevant, and is immediately pressed into the service of a corporation doing research into quantum consciousness. Roger Penrose once wrote a book called The Emperor's New Mind that tried to argue that AI was impossible because consciousness isn't something merely algorithmic, it depends on quantum effects inherent in the unique physical structure of the brain. I thought the book was flat wrong, but Egan introduces a similar idea here in reverse, that the macroscopic quantum stability/waveform collapse we see everyday is due to the unique observer properties of conscious minds and can be explored with the help of mental software. Egan ties this idea back into the solar Bubble in an interesting way, but unfortunately the climax of the novel, and in addition many of the points about religion and quantum physics, struck me as very similar to their counterparts in Distress - this quantum Messiah idea is the first time I've seen Egan repeat himself so blatantly. Since Distress was written after Quarantine that shouldn't reflect poorly on this book, and to be fair the books aren't necessarily as similar as all that, but I just wasn't expecting such a close recapitulation of themes.

The parts of the book I thought were strongest was where Nick was wrestling with the effects of being neurally reprogrammed to be completely loyal to the quantum consciousness research project, and his Jesuitical attempts to gradually gain some of his mental independence back; those parts brought to mind many good points about the nature of faith, loyalty, and free will. Nick's use of a piece of mental software to run a simulation of his dead wife is also another trademark Egan take on the way we deal with death and loss, which is even more humane in its way somehow than whatever the counterpart would be in an Asimov novel. Maybe the characteristic manipulation of human emotions in Egan's books isn't a sign that he just can't write "normal" people, but an acknowledgment that the limitless possibilities inherent in the idea of increased control of our minds means that a faithful depiction of this process is inherently alienating to the people who have been left behind. There's an outburst from Nick to this effect in the book, which is of course conveyed in hyper-articulate info-dumps, and it's surprisingly moving, in the same way that the similar struggles with death of the characters in Diaspora were moving. Has the relentless opening of new technological vistas rendered the neat futures of Asimov obsolete, and does a more accurate depiction of the future involve more of Egan's brooding introversion than Asimov's scientific optimism? I guess there's no real way to say, but I do enjoy the contrast, and Quarantine, while not quite the philosophical masterpiece that is Permutation City, is still a strong novel on its own. ( )

Plus half a star except for the last quarter which just seemed to fade out into repetitions with little of interest. I like a good attempt at hard science and the book is built around the quantum whatsit which is a large part of the plot. None of the characters are very engaging. When reading over reader's reviews I discover there are a couple more books in something of a sequence so I'll be interested to read the next one, Permutation. ( )

I loved how the ideaspace kept expanding so rapidly. Also, it's pretty amazing that this was written in the 90s. There's loads of anachronisms that somewhat date this novel, but at the same time, its main idea and parts of the world still hold up well. ( )

An interesting sci fi detective story with quantum mechanics and the many worlds theory at its core. I'm a big fan of Greg Egan -- one of the best hard sci fi authors around -- and especially of his short stories and early work, like this one.

I listened to the audible audiobook of this; unfortunately a grating narrator made this worse than it could have been, but still solid 4/5. ( )

What starts as a detective set in 2067 quickly turns into a head spinning novel about the possible existential effects of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics – more specifically the consciousness causes collapse variant. In short: humans observing stuff limits the number of possible worlds.

If you thought the popcorn sci-fi of Dark Matter was hard, well, this is the real deal. On the other hand, compared to the only other Egan I’ve read so far – the brilliant Schild’s Ladder – this is an easier, more accessible book.

The first half is smooth reading: Nick Stavrianos, a hardboiled PI, investigates a kidnapping/closed room mystery. The specifics of the setting – Earth quarantined by “an impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system” in 2034 – seem a cool yet inconsequential backdrop at first. It’s brilliant how Egan manages to weld the two mysteries together.

The same goes for the other science fictional thing Quarantine features: mental modifications people install in their brains via nanobots. Again seemingly gimmicky in the first half of the book, it nonetheless gives the detective story a futuristic, exciting edge that would not be out of place in a Hollywood action flick.

But as the story progresses (...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It ( )