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152nd out of 209 books
—
1,242 voters
Quarantine (Subjective Cosmology Cycle #1)
by
Greg Egan
It causes riots and religions. It has people dancing in the streets and leaping off skyscrapers. And it's all because of the impenetrable gray shield that slid into place around the solar system on the night of November 15, 2034.Some see the bubble as the revenge of an insane God. Some see it as justice. Some even see it as protection. But one thing is for certain -- now t...more
Paperback, 280 pages
Published
January 1st 1995
by HarperPrism
(first published 1992)
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I'm not a huge Greg Egan fan. But that may well be because he outgrew me, and I stopped keeping up with the right varieties of science to really appreciate his work. However, Quarantine, one of his first novels, is one of my favorites. I reread it over the past few days, but I first read it when it came out. We older SF fans talk a lot about the sense of wonder (aka sensawonda). But over the years, I got less and less of that sense from the physics/chemistry parts of SF and more from things like...more
I didn't know much about this book going into it except that it was a futuristic detective novel. Greg takes the detective story and turns it into a very interesting thought experiment that is very pleasing and fun to travel through. At times he has to use his characters to obviously explain some of the more difficult parts of the physics but he does it well enough that it adds to the story. The switch from detective novel to thoughtful hard sci-fi is well done and I finished the book in a very...more
Jul 25, 2012
Aaron Arnold
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2012,
science-fiction
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-boile...more
Part one shows Egan effortlessly guiding the reader through an espionage mission so that even a non-tech-head like me is swept up in the enthusiastic attention to detail. It's a future in which humans have the technology to insert 'mods' ('modifications', a mental version of our 'apps' today) to regulate their brain functioning. If you're on a stakeout like our hero detective Nick Stavrianos, then the P3 suppresses all distractions, including the need to eat and release. A dead lover can be inse...more
As always, Greg Egan's writing is excellent. I find, though, that I'm having difficulty with some of his story content. The concept of Quarantine is uniquely clever. I can't fault that at all. And the tag line for the book, "A Novel of Quantum Catastrophe" is as accurate as any I've ever seen.
I found Quarantine a lot easier going the The Clockwork Rocket, in which Egan invented his own version of physics. (Had I read his blog, or had I read the Afterward before the story, I'd have known that and...more
I found Quarantine a lot easier going the The Clockwork Rocket, in which Egan invented his own version of physics. (Had I read his blog, or had I read the Afterward before the story, I'd have known that and...more
"Quarantine" isn't my favorite Egan novel ("Distress" is probably my favorite) but since I like almost all Egan, not being my favorite is not a bad thing. In this novel, Egan takes on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, looking at the consequences of consciousnesses that don't collapse the wavefunction and consciousnesses that can chose how the wavefunction collapses. But it's the other factors that I recall better - the effects of ready access to neural implants on society, incl...more
Oct 31, 2009
Thom Foolery
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Shelves:
aliens,
altered-states,
consciousness,
fiction,
neuro,
philosophy,
science-physics,
trans-humanism,
sf
The rest of the universe has somehow quarantined humanity with a Dyson-sphere-like bubble around the solar system, all because the human brain has the ability to collapse all the possibilities (*eigenstates*) in each quantum event, thereby reducing the potential and actual diversity of the cosmos. Egan takes this premise and asks, "OK, what if someone became consciously aware of this collapsing process and began choosing which eigenstate was made manifest?" What if each moment were a smear of pr...more
If you really like quantum mechanics and philosophizing on all of the strange reality that it entails, then you'll love this book. Otherwise, it's basically a mind f---. The ideas explored here aren't novel, but they are taken to such an extreme that it's hard to enjoy the book as a story instead of a thought experiment. And a challenging one at that - even with quite a bit of qm theory under my belt, I still ended up re-reading pages to make sure I kept everything straight. As a result, I only...more
With Egan, you get your sci-fi hard and weird, just the way I like it. It's 2068 and the solar system has been quarantined inside a huge bubble for decades. Nick is an ex-cop private eye hired on a missing persons case. His anonymous client wants to find a profoundly retarded adult who was kidnapped from a care facility, the same one she escaped from twice previously. In the absence of a ransom demand, Nick imagines all kinds of reasons why this woman would be valuable and how she would be trans...more
True science fiction: looking at physics as we understand it (or as it was understood at the time), tweaking one variable (in this case, the quantum 'observer effect') and following the result to its possible outcomes.
Greg Egan does a great job of facing the consequences of his theses head-on - his characters' actions are believable, given their bizarre circumstances, and he doesn't let narrative convenience trump the (not realistic, but consistent) rules of his world.
As a bonus, you get a well-...more
Greg Egan does a great job of facing the consequences of his theses head-on - his characters' actions are believable, given their bizarre circumstances, and he doesn't let narrative convenience trump the (not realistic, but consistent) rules of his world.
As a bonus, you get a well-...more
This book taught me a lot about Quantum Mechanics, and inspired me to dive into the science itself and get a better idea of what he was talking about. Greg Egan is a scientist more than a writer, and thus his fiction has a lot of science in it. A whole lot. It almost reads like a science book itself, so the storytelling will take a bit of a hit here. He's not a bad writer, he just gets a little Crichtonism, in which he wants so badly to push his idea that he takes more time noting it out than he...more
4 Stars
I am giving the overall of this book 4 stars only because Egan is not afraid to write hard science fiction. This is my second Egan novel that I have read, Clockwork Rocket (a book that I loved) being the first. Greg Egan is not afraid to use fiction to explore real science, physics, quantum mechanics, and deep philosophy.
This book Quarantine, a first in a trilogy is focused around quantum mechanics, specifically around a measurement known as Schroedinger’s Cat. “Quantum mechanics descri...more
I am giving the overall of this book 4 stars only because Egan is not afraid to write hard science fiction. This is my second Egan novel that I have read, Clockwork Rocket (a book that I loved) being the first. Greg Egan is not afraid to use fiction to explore real science, physics, quantum mechanics, and deep philosophy.
This book Quarantine, a first in a trilogy is focused around quantum mechanics, specifically around a measurement known as Schroedinger’s Cat. “Quantum mechanics descri...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This book is built on a lot of great ideas, and there are some nicely whimsical stylistic touches, like the way that the narrator parenthetically gives the manufacturer and cost of each brain modification that he mentions, as though it was the New Yorker shopping issue. This is a bit of a spoiler, since the book starts out seeming like a cyberpunk private eye story, but in the end, the book presents a novel take on Schrödinger's cat-style quantum observer issues.
I love how Greg Egan can write incredibly hard SF - I mean, most of his stories revolve around pure mathematics or quantum physics - without ever ignoring the consequences for people. I don't remember his stories very well between times (this was a re-read, but I couldn't have told you anything about it) but they're always worth the effort.
There were some really interesting ideas in this books, specifically about the ability to utilize the wave properties of quantum particles to whittle away all possible outcomes, but it was a little heavy, a little redundant, and ultimately led to very little satisfaction at the end. It was well written, thoughtful, but just a little too...precocious.
Read this in college. It's really quite a good mystery and primer on probability, wave functions, and Feinman's theory of sum-over histories. It also makes one think out-of-the box on what life in other places could be like, even though you never see an alien or anything. I'd like to see Ridley Scott direct the film.
Aug 06, 2011
Bryan
added it
Brilliant, even by Greg Egan's high standards. Schrodinger's cat on steroids, a fast-moving novel that fantastically combines a genuine human story with clever physical insight that gets to the heart of the paradox of quantum mechanics. Not for the faint-hearted, but definitely worth the effort.
This book starts with a nice idea, and at first seems like a good cyberpunk novel.
However, the story gets stuck quickly into metaphorical technobabble about quantum states and probabilities, and becomes very arid and uninteresting.
I didn't like this book, although I finished it anyway ;)
However, the story gets stuck quickly into metaphorical technobabble about quantum states and probabilities, and becomes very arid and uninteresting.
I didn't like this book, although I finished it anyway ;)
A friend bought this as part of a "3 for 2" deal and didn't want to carry it back to Australia as he had too much luggage. Lucky me! A great mind f*ck of a book that I found difficult to believe had been written nearly 20 years ago, as much of the underlying theory seemed very current...
This was a very hard book to get through. The whole "barrier" thing is just a backdrop to the story, which really focuses on something else entirely. This is the kind of sleight-of-hand in a book description that I don't like.
an excellent blend of science and fiction, with a cyberpunk bent. weaving quantum mechanics into fiction is a particular challenge and one that i think Egan did well. i will definitely look into his other books. thanks, web!
I chose to read this because I liked a short story I'd read by the author. But maybe shorter works are his strength, because I found this rather disappointing.
The story-line was built around the role of the observer in collapsing quantum states, and what it might mean if the observer could somehow affect those states. That should have been plenty for an interesting overall plot, but somehow it just didn't seem to work.
The main character was also rather one-dimensional (or, maybe, we couldn't tel...more
The story-line was built around the role of the observer in collapsing quantum states, and what it might mean if the observer could somehow affect those states. That should have been plenty for an interesting overall plot, but somehow it just didn't seem to work.
The main character was also rather one-dimensional (or, maybe, we couldn't tel...more
It starts out as a futuristic tale that then heavily focuses on the nuances of quantum mechanics. Very interesting read, but near the end comes off more as fantasy then sci-fi.
A pretty good book that got a little thick into its exploration of quantum mechanics. Sometimes the science got in the way of the fiction. Otherwise, rather enjoyable.
A fun sci-fi setting for an interesting quantum story. The setting was the best part, the use of quantum theory was intelligent but the writing itself left me indifferent.
Loved it until the end, when it settled for a bit less in my view. Still, a gripping read, a gritty reality reminiscent to me of Mindstar Rising by Hamilton.
very well done but just a bit to chaotic for me. read it in a hospital ward and it served as a good distraction from me daughters heart surgery
Spin is a total rip-off of this book!
Human minds as a metaphysical quantum observer.
This one was a little too wacky for me to really get into.
Human minds as a metaphysical quantum observer.
This one was a little too wacky for me to really get into.
Possibly the best explanation of quantum mechanics I've ever read in a SF book! I think I may actually understand eigenstates after this.
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Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
More about Greg Egan...
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
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Apr 29, 2013 07:38am
Yup, with the manufacture's name and retail price included with each mod - a very H...more
Apr 29, 2013 08:08am