Review (#5): "Quarantine," a novelette by Yuriy Shcherbak (Kyiv, 1966)
By Péter MARTON ** Join the European Science Fiction group on Facebook for related discussions. ** "Quarantine" ( Карантин in Ukrainian and Russian), a 1966 novelette by Yuriy Shcherbak, may be well worth a read even today. In this brief review I will give you a few good reasons for this, bullet point by bullet point, to keep my thoughts super-organised. Shcherbak is originally an epidemiologist, and as such he is the author or co-author of many scholarly papers.* Given this, when it comes to dealing with the medical and technological details of a story that begins with an incident in an early-era biosafety lab, it's like a walk in the park for him – he pulls it off without effort. He is also a pretty good writer, good at drawing characters, and providing insights about their merits and into their motives, simply by showing their actions and interactions unfold. In Quarantine , he is able to present a silent hero of humanism in chief researcher Balandin w...