Spin

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NO SPOILERS!This book not only enthralled me in every sense of the word, but it also made me a Robert Charles Wilson fan."Spin" is the kind of sci-fi I love: one that gives you both hard science and strong characterization. I found it a pleasure to read--the work of a complete writer who doesn't appear to like to sacrifice either element. AND it won Wilson the 2006 Hugo for Best Novel.All great novels start with a good premise; and all good sci-fi starts with a great proposition--in this case: what if, one night, all the stars in the sky just disappeared? It's not one that can be answered easily: our orbiting craft return looking as if they had been orbiting for much past their real lifetimes. And, as time goes on, the stars, the moon, and sun slowly emerge again, but in time it becomes clear that what we see is only a representation of those bodies...something like a projection, as if they were night lights.When we do find out SOME of the truth--that our new sky is in reality a "caul" of sorts, surrounding us, for our protection, and that the universe beyond the caul is traveling millions of times more quickly than here on our planet--we are really only learning some of the truth. WHY this is happening is not going to be answered for quite some time.It is here that the characters become important, and it is to Robert Charles Wilson's credit that his cast of characters is not immense; instead, those characters of interest include, primarily: Tyler Dupree, our narrator, who begins the novel as a young boy and ends it as a doctor; and his next door neighbors, the Lawton family--chiefly, E.D. (the brilliant scientific tycoon whose friendship with Tyler's father still ties their families together) and his children, Jason (a brilliant young man whose conflicted path will follow his father's) and Diane (Jason's twin sister, whose lack of faith fills her life with fear, false icons, and promiscuity).While it is true that this novel's attention to characterization slows the action a bit, it's a critical sacrifice: each of these people drives and informs the plot of the novel. While our narrator is necessarily separated from the Lawton household, he is still close enough to learn key details ahead of the world at large.The novel is told in a kind of bifurcated manner: while most of the chapters follow a linear story line--their time span covering something like a decade--other chapters take place at some unclear time in the future. This manner of storytelling is popular, I know, but I often think it is more of a short cut. I know it's done to build suspense, but its interruptive manner sometimes divides attention and diminishes itself or the other story line.But the long and the short of it is that I enjoyed this book immensely: I felt the science aspect of it was occasionally stunning--especially when we learn the truth behind the caul, and then come up with a way to use it to create life on Mars. INTELLIGENT life--what an absolutely brilliant concept, and how cleverly conceived! This aspect was strongest for me, and has stayed with me the longest.As for the characterization, I felt it was intelligently done, though maybe it went on a bit long. I won't say it dragged, as I found the part concerning Jason was pivotal and exciting. Diane's portion was the problem, and it had only a little to do with the fact that it did not propagate any of the sciences. It was more that her role was weepy and weak and dependent upon others. I get that her role was to be the one who was conflicted by her relationship with her father (as was Jason, surely) but, more simply put:She was just not that interesting.I understand why her role is pivotal to the novel. Diane is not only Tyler's love interest...I believe she is also a metaphor for much of mankind. That is, I believe she represents much of earth's population: those disaffected with and conflicted by our technological and scientific advancements. For millennia--but particularly often now--man has been making leaps that make divides humans into two camps: those who believe such leaps are good for the race, and those who believe such leaps represent man's assumption of the role of God.So Diane's conflict makes sense--her turning to cults and (pseudo) religion and even sexuality represents her inability to accept this next leap, and her troubled path echoes a society that questions its new role upon Earth and, soon, within the universe at large.Additionally, Diane does get more appealing in the "out-of-sequence" chapters, chapters that advance their life after the events of the other part of the story. Here her compassion and guile and inner strength come more to the fore...until this point, frankly, it wasn't just that I couldn't figure out what Tyler saw in her. It was that in the beginning of the book she was described as a person "whose IQ was nearly as impressive as Jason's." Other than her angst I saw no reason to believe such a claim.I really enjoyed "Spin" for its involved, clever, complex story as well as its exhilarating ideas. Granted, stories like Wilson's require a lot of exposition, but I found the reading gratifying. Read this novel if you're interested in big ideas and enjoy strong characterization and an involved storyline.And if you enjoy it you'll be happy to know that it was followed by its sequel,  Axis , and then followed again by  Vortex .

_Spin_ by Robert Charles Wilson is the best. Science fiction novel. Ever. Yes, I mean that. I would put it up against _Dune_ , _A Fire Upon the Deep_, and _Ender's Game_, it is that unbelievably good. Or if it is not the best one ever, it definitely belongs in the top five. Bold words I know and I run the risk of overselling the book but this novel is what other science fiction novelists should aspire to create. It has everything. The basic premise - no spoilers here, you can get this from the back cover of the book - is that one October night the three main characters, three adolescents, Diane and Jason Lawton (fraternal twins) and their best friend Tyler Dupree are out on the lawn stargazing when the Moon and stars disappear, the sky become a flat black. Rushing inside, they learn that all satellite communications have been lost and the world is in a panic. News from the other side of the world is hard to come by, and the three wait with trepidation to see if the Sun will even rise in the morning. It does, but it is a strange sun, an almost generic Sun, a perfect one without evidence of solar flares, prominences, or sunspots. An idealization of a Sun. It becomes clear to the government, military, and scientists that a planet-spanning shield, a membrane, has been erected around the globe, completely blocking sight of the stars and Moon from the people of the Earth. The Sun that that people see, that is still driving the world's weather, ecology, and agriculture, is a simulacrum; for all intents and purposes, the real Sun but upon study obviously not an actual star. It gets stranger though. The Spin membrane (the event comes to be called the Spin) has two highly unusual properties. One, it has produced a huge time discontinuity; for every second that passes on Earth, something like 3 years passes outside the membrane. Two, the membrane is selectively permeable. As obviously the Earth would be fried if 3 years of sunlight hit the planet every second, the "Sun" is a filtered representation of actual sunlight. Similarly, the planet is protected from similar accumulations of cosmic radiation. However, the membrane is permeable to manmade items, both coming and going. This is in fact how the unique temporal properties of the membrane were discovered, as survivors of the International Space Station fell to earth the first night of the Spin but claimed that they had been orbiting a frightening, black, blank world for three weeks! At first kept secret, this does eventually get out to the public. The novel follows the next 30-odd years of history after the creation of the Spin membrane through the eyes of the three main characters. Each tackles the brave new era in his or her own way, each in ways that thoroughly flesh out the character, are true to the characters personalities and desires, and illuminate different aspects of the Spin Earth. Jason devotes his life to unraveling the mysteries of the Spin, trying to understand who did, what it means, and how to defeat it. Diane instead embraces religion, joining a different segment of the population who is trying to come to terms with the event through spiritual means. Tyler is in some sense the outsider, the unattached one, in the outside looking in as a child and still as an adult. He becomes a physician and travels between the two worlds, Diane's and Jason's. The novel is also a love story, as Tyler nourishes strong unrequited love for Diane, who herself has strongly conflicted feelings for him in turn. As events in the Spin unfold, Diane and Tyler almost connect again and again but events in their personal lives - irrevocably tied up in the Spin - keep them apart. It is an also an end of the world story. As 30-odd years pass on Earth, 300 billion years pass outside the Spin membrane. During that time the Sun has swollen and would be lethal to life on Earth if the membrane were to disappear. Instead of the Spin being seen as a prison, it instead becomes the only thing keeping humanity alive. But for how long? Will the membrane disappear, the Earth left to the blazing and merciless fury of a senescent Sun, the oceans boiling away, all life turned to cinders and ash? Or is something else in store? Humanity - and the main characters - struggle with the issue. The novel continually adds surprises, with developments in the characters personal lives, how the world reacts to the Spin, and the absolutely fascinating and exciting things that are done to study and fight against the Spin, wonderful things that have you exited as you read them, going to yourself, "wow, I never thought of that." So many things happen, things I would love to tell you about, but I won't. Get the book and read it. Now. This is epic science fiction. This has fantastic writing. This has incredibly well-done characters. And it has a mind-blowing ending. Oh, and a sequel, _Axis_, due out in September, which I plan to get.

Not without it's flaws, but well worth a read. There is actually very little Original SF being written any more. Almost all SF works with long established tropes: exploring the solar system; exploring the galaxy (with various work-arounds for the speed of light limit), meeting / fighting / allying with alien species / cultures; robots & androids, apocalypses from nuclear / biological / outer space causes; post-apocalypse struggles, etc, etc. That's not to say there isn't a lot of very good, very creative SF being written, but almost all of it falls within these traditional themes. Spin doesn't. Oh, it touches on the threat of apocalypse, and there are aliens of sort, although we never really meet them, and of course there's a little bit of space travel, but the theme of the novel doesn't fall into any of the genres I listed above, nor have I encountered a major theme like it before. For that reason alone it's well worth reading.Nonetheless, to be completely honest: the three major characters are well fleshed out. Some of the others, even ones who are very important to the story, and kind of two-dimensional. At times the story drags, with too much long winded detail that is far from essential to the story line. And much of the story set in Sumatra seems intended to show off Wilson's knowledge of the culture, rather than add to the story.But those are pretty minor complaints compared to the positives. Reward originality and creativity. But it and read it.

This novel has all the worst traits of American science fiction and none of the true vision, wit or genuine sense of scientific accuracy that hard sci-fi demands. Worst of all: the writing depends on literary devices and contrivances that are, at best clumsy (expositional dialogue crowbarred into character's mouths, vast quantities of cliffhangers where none are needed etc. etc.) and , at worst, just annoying. NO ONE in this book talks like a real human being. They either use hackneyed, over-flowery poeticisms which would sound weird in real life, or expound in cliches used to fill space while the plot rolls along its predictable course.Told from a purely American viewpoint (a common trait in all USA culture, but truly unforgivable when dealing with a backdrop of literally cosmic proportions), you'd be hard-pressed to remember that other nations exist while the events unfold. The 'ideas' are buried beneath a human-interest story so predictable as to be laughable, and when the conclusion is reached, it turns out to be the same old 'humans are bad for the planet; here's a portal to other worlds sent by beings so advanced it'll take two more books to attempt to explain the inexplicable' that anyone with any interest or grounding in the history of SF since Arthur C. Clarke could have foreseen as soon as an 'arch' is referenced in the introduction.A vague attempt to pit all this against christian fundamentalism comes across as a half-baked response to 'contemporary issues' although, again, serves only to remind you that only in the USA could this kind of end-of-days BS be taken seriously.For true 'hard' Sci Fi the bar has been set way higher than this by genuine writers such as Iain M Banks, and in recent years Cixin Liu has shown us that maybe we have to stop relying on Americans to speculate about our future. Basically this has all the believability, conviction and skill of a Dan Brown novel. Terrible.

Two twins and their friend are lying in a back yard one night when the stars go out. Thus begins a story that spans thirty odd years, as the three of them find strive to survive and overcome the slow apocalypse that has overtaken the earth. What has caused the stars to go out? Who is behind this mystery? And how much longer does humanity have?A little while ago I got a review for my Science Fiction novel “Dead Moon” which simple said “Three stars. Not as good as Asimov.” This made be both laugh and feel a little melancholy. Laugh, because I never expected anyone to compare me to Asimov and so shall take it as a compliment. Melancholy, because when you think of the true greats of hard science-fiction, the science is basically physics. The science in my science fiction is economics, cognitive psychology, and a fair chunk of epistemology. That’s the stuff I know, and I find it interesting enough to write about it. But it will never stand shoulder to shoulder (even if I were a better writer) with names like Asimov or Heinlein.Wilson writes like a modern-day Arthur C Clarke, and if that isn’t a high enough recommendation for you then I don’t know what is. In some ways (yes, I’m going there) Wilson is better. Not only does he pose realistic hard physics questions, but the emotional context and development of the characters is magnificently portrayed. This isn’t just about what you do when the stars go out. It is a realistic and touching portrayal of a world where everyone lives under the constant threat of annihilation.A good friend of mine said that the core of science-fiction is presenting brilliant characters with an incredibly hard problem, one that is enormous in scale, and then watching them trying to figure it out. Spin is an excellent example of this, surprising you at every turn, filled with utterly convincing people trying to achieve the impossible – from saving the world to saving your love. A truly brilliant read.

David Brin's Existence is a near future novel which attempts to solve the problem of communication on a galactic scale in a relativistic universe without resorting to worm holes and warp drives. In some ways, this is a similar near future novel, although Robert Wilson's solution requires a level of technology which would make the physics of Star Trek a bit like banging two rocks together.In his novel "Freedom", Jonathan Franzen gives a family saga powered by a triangle at its core. Here the three way relationship between siblings Diane and Jason Lawton, and the son of their family's housekeeper, Tyler Dupree, is a different one, but it is still at the core of this surprisingly character-driven science fiction novel.Throw in a bit of Dallas-like family and business feuding to the near future hard-SF and coming of age (and beyond) tale, and you get something of a feel of this ambitious, large scale, original and largely successful story.Teenage Jason, Diane and narrator Tyler are in the garden of the Lawton family home, while the adults party indoors when suddenly the stars disappear. That is the set up for the novel which spans around 30 years (from one perspective) as Jason becomes a scientist seeking to understand what has happened, Tyler qualifies as a doctor, while Diane becomes embroiled in an apocalyptic cult inspired by the Spin, as the loss of stars becomes known.As Tyler goes from lovelorn schoolboy, to doctor, to interplanetary diplomat to fugitive, we see a world psychologically tossed around as the human race swings from hope to despair to resignation in the face of impending extinction. On the family level, we learn about the tensions and conflicts of the Lawton household, centred on overbearing father "ED". As with any good family saga, there is a buried secret which provides a plot twist. This is a twist which is telegraphed from a long way out, but then, pleasingly is very different to expectations.So all in all, this is an excellent, and highly original book. Its weaknesses are that sometimes the dialogue is somewhat stilted a la Basil Exposition, and not every aspect of the Spin is fully thought through. As an example, one sign that the rest of the universe is out there is that the tides still work, but when the true nature of the Spin is revealed, this couldn't happen. On the plus side, Wilson delivers an intelligent, entertaining, easily readable fast paced, multi faceted story with much more 3 dimensional characters than are to be found in much speculative fiction.Recommended.

Wilson's work is regularly nominated for awards, and rightly so. He writes dense, complex novels in which the scientific elements and characterisation are both admirably dealt with. His work is generally character driven and here we find a trio of people who grew up together, brother and sister Jason and Diane, and their friend Tyler.One night, when they were still teenagers, they witnessed the stars disappearing. A shell had appeared around the Earth, along with a false sun that rose and set just as the old one did.Jason's father, ED Lawton, an important businessman with US government contacts, immediately creates a plan to replace the satellites which were lost when the enclosure occurred.It becomes clear that the sphere is neither a barrier nor an inert shell. Outside, time is running at a different rate and Jason, (who is a physics genius) calculates that within 50 years our sun will have come to the next stage of its life and expanded beyond the orbit of the Earth. In order to employ this knowledge against The Hypotheticals (as the possible aliens who may have erected the sphere have been named) a plan is hatched to fire rockets at Mars loaded with bacteria, algae and lichens that exist in extreme climates. Thus, we could create a habitable Mars within weeks as millions of years of evolution would have taken place outside the sphere.Then we send a human colony.The narrative is split between two timelines, one dating from the advent of The Spin, and leaping forward in years. The other is set in Tyler's future where he is suffering the effects of a drug which extends human life through nanotechnology rebuilding the cells of the body.It's a powerful and moving novel featuring damaged characters to a greater or lesser extent. Jason and Diane's father, ED Lawson, is a control freak and openly despises those he considers below his social level. Jason is the tool he moulds to inherit his mantle, blind to the fact that Jason must at some time supplant him. Tyler, who has always been in love with Diane, stands by as she gets deeply involved with an Armageddon cult. Jason's mother is an alcoholic, perhaps driven to drink by her husband's dispassionate singlemindedness.Along the way they have other relationships, but the three main characters remain inexorably bound by the love they have for each other.Structurally Tyler is the middle ground between science and religion, acting as both narrator and confidante of both Jason and Diane.As in `The Chronoliths' the issue of father and son relationships is a central theme, although here, unlike `The Chronoliths', the human drama is well-balanced against the backdrop of vast science and forces beyond anyone's control.

This novel won a Hugo award for best novel. The plot centres around the after effects of a cosmic phenomenon that results in the stars and moon disappearing from the Earth's sky, while the sun, though still present, looks different. The Earth has become trapped inside a membrane, outside which time is passing much more rapidly than it is inside. Like many SF novels, this is one which draws its strength from its ideas, rather than from plot or characters. The plot in my view too often gets bogged down with technological info dumps and accounts of what has happened (telling rather than showing). Most of the characters didn't particularly appeal, though the central character and narrator Tyler Dupree was quite sympathetic. I found out about three quarters of the way through that this is the first of a trilogy, the other volumes of which I will probably read at some point.