Quarantine [Paperback]

Greg Egan, an Australian, is a master of intellectual dazzle who can still amaze hard-SF readers who know all the tricks and demand to be shown a new one. Quarantine (1992) was his first novel, though his short stories in Britain's SF magazine Interzone had already caused a stir. The quarantine of the title is a gigantic space-time bubble placed around Earth's orbit by unknown hands in 2034, making the stars and outer planets invisible and unreachable. Why? Investigating a pointless kidnapping, a resourceful cyber sleuth with a head full of computer add-ons stumbles on--and is forcibly recruited into--a technological conspiracy whose researches hint at the reason for the Bubble. It's there to protect the universe, or rather an infinite multiplicity of universes, from the destructive effects of human minds. In a ferociously intellectual argument Egan tackles the central weirdness of Quantum Mechanics, which is both the most successful and worryingly inexplicable theory of modern physics. Suppose it were possible for a thinking being to be consciously "smeared out" over the countless simultaneous probability states that according to QM are "collapsed" into a single reality when observed or measured? This happens to our hero, and the results are very strange indeed. Dizzying concepts and hardware overshadow the slightly flat characters, but it's a terrifically impressive book. - -David Langford

"Taut, suspenseful, darkly powerful...Hot new writer Greg Egan seems to be turning up everywhere. He is on his way, and with considerable velocity!"--Gardener Dozois, editor, "The Year's Best SF --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In the late 21st Century on Earth, Bioengineering and information systems have changed the face of humanity - you can be exactly who you want to be, but don't expect life to be any less uncertain in a world rife with religious cults and terrorism spawned by fear of the unknown. Then one night, the stars disappear - blocked out by 'The Bubble' which isolates the whole solar system. Humanity has been Quarantined - but why and more importantly still, by whom?

SALES POINTS Greg Egan's debut reissued in striking new livery simultaneously with the publiction of his latest groundbreaking novel Cutting edge science fiction from 'one of the genre's great ideas men' THE TIMES 'Never one short of startling ideas, Egan's latest, greatest novel presents us with hard SF miracles... Remember to keep your mouth closed when reading this or your jaw might drop clean off' STARBURST; 'Succeeds wonderfully in expanding the mind...rewards the reader with ever expanding vistas of wonder...The Universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it's going to have a tough time outdoing Egan' NEW SCIENTIST