Subject: Review: Egan's _Quarantine_

From: [email-masked] (Paul S. Jenkins)
Date: 12 Jul 1999 12:17:21 -0400

_Quarantine_ by Greg Egan
	Review Copyright (c) 1999 Paul S. Jenkins

Greg Egan is one of those SF writers 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 having been
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 you can revel in the sense of wonder that Egan conjures with
such assurance.  It is fiction after all -- if it were possible, someone
might have done it.

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.

%A   Egan, Greg
%T   Quarantine
%I   HarperPrism
%C   New York
%D   1995 (copyright 1992)
%G   ISBN 0 06 105423 2
%P   280 pp.
%O   paperback $5.99 

Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at: 
Portsmouth   UK | http://www.cix.co.uk/~willowsoft/revup/