Quarantine is a book set in the near future, much of the culture is the same, but there have been improvements in some technology that make life a bit different. The most dramatic improvement has been in neural mods. Devices that cause the brain to be rewired in various ways.

It is interesting that despite the ability to choose sleep, your neural mod will put you to sleep if you choose it, it hasn't cured insomnia, since you still have to make the decision.

This book explores quantum theory, and the question of how much influence humans have on the universe by collapsing the wave function through observation. How much of the universe is defined by our observation? How many possibilities are we destroying?

The solar system has been quarantined by an unknown agent, there is a giant bubble around us. It cuts us off from the rest of the universe, from seeing the stars. No one understands why or how it was done, although there is plenty of speculation.

Quarantine is an amazing exploration of complex physics, with a touch of psychology and philosophy thrown in. The main character comes to understand the nature of reality, and his own beliefs, and we do with him.

Greg Egan has a talent for making very complex issues easy to understand and interesting to read about, and this is definitely the work of a brilliant imagination.