Quarantine
In 2034, the stars went out. An unknown agency surrounded the solar system with an impenetrable barrier, concealing the universe from humanity’s gaze. In 2067, Nick Stavrianos is hired to investigate the disappearance of a mentally disabled woman, Laura Andrews, from the institution where she was being cared for. Aided by a skull full of neural modifications, he follows her trail to the Republic of New Hong Kong, where an organisation known as the Ensemble has uncovered Laura’s extraordinary secret: an ability that could transform the world.
Stats for nerds
19recommend
37mentions
26people
2009–2026years
62% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Meaty: Quarantine by Greg Egan. Easily my favorite book so far this year. It starts as a detective story, but then spirals into something much bigger. Forced beliefs, quantum super positions, and the existential dread of repeatedly facing your own non-existence. It's second only to Permutation City in my Egan tier list.
That book led me to Quantum Computing for Everyone. It's good so far, but more work than expected to follow along being that I'm dumb.
Since the question is what are you reading (not what have you read): Ant-Kind by Charlie Kaufman. It's too soon to say if it's good or not, but it has made me laugh out loud several times. I'm about 80 pages in, and it's only just now started to open up into Kaufman's recursive, meta story telling that makes his film stuff so cool.
- Egan is the only great Australian science fiction writer I’m aware of. I principally recommend Diaspora for far future post-human history with a strong focus on physics and maths, and Quarantine which is a sort of heist thriller with a unique quantum physics hook in a relatively near future Northern Australia setting where First Nations people have gained independence and positioned themselves as an Asian financial / biotech hub.
Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak, but almost every page has a new creative concept.
- I've read almost all of his books and short stories. Quarantine, Permutation City, and Diaspora are my faves. Go find Egan and get a picture of him. There doesn't seem to be any on the Internet, which is pretty strange.
- This is the basis of a major plot point in Greg Egan's novel Quarantine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel)
Heartily recommend it. sci-fi detective story which asks "what if the Copenhagen interpretation of QM was real?" (note: author acknowledges that it's just a plot device: https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/QM/QM.html - good writeup, but spoilers).
- Quarantine by Greg Egan: https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/Quarantine.html
Upon re-reading your question, I don't think this recommendation exactly fits, but, damn, it's a good book anyway and Neal Stephenson doesn't do things by halves: Interface by Neal Stephenson (under a pseudonym and in conjunction with another author also using a pseudonym). This book only becomes more relevant with each presidential campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)
- Greg Egan in general is a solid recommendation for diamond-hard sci-fi; I actually think Quarantine is one of the weakest in this respect, though it's a fantastic book. Who else would think to write a series of books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan#Orthogonal_trilogy) about what would happen if you flipped a sign in the Lorentzian metric?
