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Spin State (Spin Trilogy #1)

by Chris Moriarty (Goodreads Author)

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 858 ratings · 94 reviews

From a stunning new voice in hard science fiction comes the thrilling story of one woman’s quest to wrest truth from chaos, love from violence, and reality from illusion in a post-human universe of emergent AIs, genetic constructs, and illegal wetware...

Spin State

UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li has made thirty-seven faster-than-light jumps in her lifetime—and has probabl...more

Paperback, 640 pages

Published November 23rd 2004 by Bantam Spectra (first published 2003)

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Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century

92nd out of 209 books — 1,241 voters

Future Classics: Best science fiction by women written 2001-2010

4th out of 126 books — 63 voters

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Sep 13, 2008 Valerie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Rick Coencas

Recommended to Valerie by: free

Shelves: fantasy-sf, math

There is nothing I like better than a good old fashioned "what-if" this book asks some of those questions about quantum physics and entanglement, and asks them in the form of space opera.

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Mar 14, 2008 Haengbok92 rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone, but especially those with a Hard SF bent

Recommended to Haengbok92 by: a very good friend

Shelves: favorites

It gives me great pleasure to finally be able to write a review on this amazing book. This is one of the best Hard SF books I've read in some time. It combines theories of quantum mechanics and multi-universe theory as well as confronting issues of class, humanity, identity and the nature of love all in a wonderfully creative and gripping way. Genetic constructs and sentient vs. nonsentient AIs, war, intrigue, betrayal, romance--this book has it all. And the main character Catherine Li, as well...more

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May 03, 2012 Dev rated it 2 of 5 stars

Bussard ramjets, wetware, einstein-bose condensates, share streaming, emergent AI's and construct Dna I can take, but when its piled so high it becomes tiresome. Lately, the sci-fi books I have read have seemed turgid w/tech. After some thought, and a rejection of the hypothesis that I'm just getting old and becoming cantankerous, I realized the reason these books are so unsatisfying is the deus ex Technica that has arisen. Plot moments happen that are simply unseen, unknowable until the occur....more

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Oct 01, 2011 Adam Snider rated it 3 of 5 stars

An excellent book, with a startlingly new spin on some basic tropes (alien life, the 'space marine' as a character trope, and artificial intelligence especially). After quickly finishing both this book and its sequel, Spin Control, I was disappointed to learn that Moriarty hadn't published any more in the series. The re-read which prompted this review was done in celebration of the fact that she seems to be preparing a third book, Ghost Spin, although the release date has yet to be announced.

It'...more An excellent book, with a startlingly new spin on some basic tropes (alien life, the 'space marine' as a character trope, and artificial intelligence especially). After quickly finishing both this book and its sequel, Spin Control, I was disappointed to learn that Moriarty hadn't published any more in the series. The re-read which prompted this review was done in celebration of the fact that she seems to be preparing a third book, Ghost Spin, although the release date has yet to be announced.

It's the Future, and humanity has moved out into space using both slower-than-light travel and some slightly hand-wavey quantum tunneling effects to transport good, services, and information across a rapidly expanding envelope of space which has been divided into UN territory (including a ecologically devastated Earth) and the worlds of the Syndicates, whose population is comprised of clones whose genetic material is tailored for specific tasks - something which is explored more in the sequel than in this novel, where the Syndicates are more a background threat. The protagonist, Major Catharine Li, is a tough UN soldier who also happens to be a lesbian, to have Syndicate genes in her background (a serious business in a UN career), and to be increasingly disenchanted with the murky politics and political games which keep getting people around her or under her command killed. In concert with a mercurial AI, Cohen, she ends up on Compson's World - a mining planet which produces the unobtanium/Spice analogue which enables the UN's quantum-spin technology to function - investigating a murder which quickly transforms into a crisis for Compson's World's inhabitants (human and non) as well as humanity as a whole.

The plot is engaging and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, but what really struck me about this book was the way in which it engaged with many issues that science fiction more generally tends to background. The issue of prejudice based on genetics (Major Li) or against AIs (Cohen) are played straight but also dealt with in a more realistic and careful way than is usual. The economic situation of the Compson's World miners struck me at first as kind of unrealistic - what, we've settled other worlds but we've still got guys punching on the clock to go down shafts and get killed by explosive gas? Really? - but at the same time I give Moriarty serious kudos for suggesting that the future may hold economic and social injustices much like (if not identical to) the ones we see around us today. It reminded me of some of Richard K. Morgan's work, and not just because the two are often found near each other on the shelf.

The alien, when it appears, reminded me somewhat of the lifeforms encountered in Peter Watts' Blindsight, in that it is bluntly and honestly inhuman while also drawing on the writer's knowledge of and obvious fascination with Earth's wide variety of lifeforms - in this case, with coral reefs. The creature isn't as shocking or frightening as Watts' are, and the intended point seems more geared toward the problem of environmental overexploitation and ecological disaster (hinted at by the vision of Moriarty's future Earth as well) than Watts' focus on existential horror.

There are some weaknesses - as I mentioned, Irish miners IN SPAAAAACE won't necessarily be as easily believable as the Syndicates or Catherine Li and her compatriots in the UN military, and at several points in the narrative you start to lose track of what precisely is going on - the machinations and motivations of various groups and individuals involved - including Syndicate spies, UN politicians, labor unions and strike-breaking managers, a dead scientist and her genetically engineered lover, and several AIs - are cloudy at best. Spin Control, which I'll get around to reviewing eventually as well, was much more polished and clear in execution, but Spin State is well worth reading nonetheless, both in its own right and as a solid foundation for the second and - soon appearing, one can hope! - third installments.(less)

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May 08, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm one of those people who re-reads books. I re-read this one a few weeks ago, and it was as good as I remembered. Back around the time this book was new, I'd had my appetite for cyberpunk re-whetted by Richard K. Morgan, and was looking around for other good authors in the genre to read. Moriarty did not disappoint. And all these years later, on rereading? I was still awake half the night just digesting all the /ideas/ Moriarty filled this world with. If you want a book with an astonishing amo...more I'm one of those people who re-reads books. I re-read this one a few weeks ago, and it was as good as I remembered. Back around the time this book was new, I'd had my appetite for cyberpunk re-whetted by Richard K. Morgan, and was looking around for other good authors in the genre to read. Moriarty did not disappoint. And all these years later, on rereading? I was still awake half the night just digesting all the /ideas/ Moriarty filled this world with. If you want a book with an astonishing amount of science and wow factor built in, Spin State is a good choice.

Which brings me to a second point. In Cyberpunk/Future Noir, writers tend to want to balance the overwhelming technology both inside their protagonists and out with something more human. Gibson's spacefaring Rastas are a fine (though not especially successful) example of this. Moriarty's approach was to assert that Bose-Einstein condensates - quantum-paired materials that permit quantum teleportation, and which are the backbone of her universe's economy - occur on one colony world, nestled in coal seams. The colony is a company town, and the mining is human-intensive, backbreaking coal mining. More importantly, the coal mine, the occurrence of the Bose-Einstein condensates in it, and the very human process of mining it are all integral to the plot.

Where the book fails (and it's a small failure, for which I'm docking only one star) is in trying to cram too many interesting ideas into one story. In addition to all the interesting things about Bose-Einstein condensates, quantum teleportation, coal mining, and politics, Li, the main character, is a posthuman. She's genetically engineered and hiding it, and she's a cyborg, and she's in an on-again off-again love affair with an AI. All her quantum teleportations have begun erasing her memory, which she has to restore from backups which, in turn, have been edited by the security agency she works for. It's a lot to digest all at once, and while Moriarty manages to keep Li human enough to identify with, and to move the story along, there were times when some pruning of the tree of ideas in this story might have streamlined things, and allowed Li to breathe a bit better as a character.

Or maybe I'm just jealous of the sheer smarts of this book.

Anyway, a fine read, and I'm pleased to say that Moriarty has two new books in the pipeline - a third in the Spin State series, and a fantasy book - which I'm looking forward to reading.

One other thing. Read Chris Moriarty's website(s). If you write, read her advice to writers. I recall one of her articles where she mentioned that in the process of writing /Spin State/, she realized halfway through that she was writing a spy story, so she went back to one of her favorite Le Carre books (I think it was /The Spy who Came In from the Cold/), and tore the story apart, took notes, until she understood exactly how Le Carre's first big hit really worked as a story. She then put those tools to work finishing /Spin State/, powering through the point at which she'd been stuck. This sound advice (and Le Carre's /The Looking Glass War/) served me well on my second novel.

-JRS(less)

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May 03, 2011 Daniel Roy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

This novel starts strongly, by showing us a glimpse of a 'posthuman' world where people backup their memories and where AIs can hijack ("shunt") human beings for a joyride. The protagonist is a strong, tough female, suggesting a welcome change to other SF male leads.

Unfortunately, the novel quickly devolves into a 'whodunnit?' about a scientist murdered in a coal mine. It's a bit sad that such interesting hard SF concepts such as quantum teleportation, 'spinstream' and Emergent AIs are presented...more

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Mar 27, 2011 Lisa Eskra rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel but my feelings on it are mixed. What Chris did well was done really well. What she did poorly, on the other hand, fell flat.

For purists of hard science fiction, this book has everything. The author did a great job of blending futuristic concepts and technology into a world readers can imagine. The technology and quantum concepts are great. The tough female protagonist is awesome and characterized very well. The writing itself is very good and easy to read. A great debut nov...more

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Oct 27, 2009 Shaina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

In a future where quantum entanglement has enabled FTL transportation and communication, Major Catherine Li is a UN peacekeeper with a shoddy, piecemeal memory, a lot of hardware in her brain, and a secret she's been keeping for her entire professional life. She gets assigned to investigate the death of a prominent gene-engineered scientist

So, right around the time that the pretty lady in white showed up in Li's office, a classic damsel in distress move if I ever saw one, I realized that this wa...more

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Jun 01, 2009 Brownbetty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to me by OddKaren, and upholds the general trend from her of high quality recs. OddKaren is always on the search for "Ladies and spaceships" books, (and who isn't?) and this one exceeds the genre.

Moriarty (I hope this is a pseud, as it would be an awesome one) writes a thickly textured future in which the definition of life is expanding in all directions: AIs, comprised of unstable networks of smaller awarenesses, are fighting for their civil rights, genetic constructs are second-cla...more Recommended to me by OddKaren, and upholds the general trend from her of high quality recs. OddKaren is always on the search for "Ladies and spaceships" books, (and who isn't?) and this one exceeds the genre.

Moriarty (I hope this is a pseud, as it would be an awesome one) writes a thickly textured future in which the definition of life is expanding in all directions: AIs, comprised of unstable networks of smaller awarenesses, are fighting for their civil rights, genetic constructs are second-class citizens, and thanks to quantum information transfer, the virtual and the real span the galaxy and lie overtop each other.

This book manages to be about all of those at once, without relegating any of them to set dressing. The physics in particular are at the heart of the book, and as an interested amateur, I was pretty quickly lost, although the pages of bibliography at the back (with less math-heavy papers helpfully starred) were sufficient to convince me that Moriarty knows what she's talking about, at least, a great deal more than I do. I hope this doesn't scare potential readers off, though.

Points of interest: sexuality in this world is a non-issue. Cohen, an AI and a major character, while doing his impression of "Shucks, I'm just folks" for a reporter, recommends she ask any of his "ex-wives and -husbands," for confirmation that he's very boring, really. Cohen, BTW, rents out brainspace in human beings in order to have a meat-presence, and doesn't particularly care the gender of the human; but Catherine Li, the equally bisexual protagonist (tending, I would say, slightly towards the homo- end of the Kinsey scale) thinks of him as unquestionably male.

Also, a future that is not white, or post-racially beige. Spanish is the lingua franca, Catherine's home-world was heavily settled by the Irish, Cohen thinks of himself as to some degree Jewish, and Catherine's gene-set, although constructed, has left her with Han features.

Catherine is an interesting protagonist. At times her self-deception annoyed me, but she is tough, capable, smart, and able to be very stupid. She is military, a genetic construct who has escaped registration and is living an illegal existence. Half cyborg, her military issue brain is the only thing that allows her to remember the past that quantum travel irreversibly erodes with every jump. Of course, she can not entirely trust the memories the military has both read- and write-access to. And Cohen is in love with her, but she can't remember all of her past with him. So maybe she has reasons to be twitchy and paranoid.

I read it one go. Recommended.(less)

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Nov 26, 2009 Josiah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Wow, what a great read.

At first it just dropped the reader in the middle of things and it was pretty confusing, so I looked on Amazon and read the basic synopsis and persevered, but once it got past the first part it was very easy to understand and follow.

The world is very interesting and I found myself very interested in the story. More than I've been in a long time. I really wanted to know what was going to happen next. The story just seemed to jump off the pages and I saw it all playing out i...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Bill Hayes rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

This is the prequel to 'Spin Control' which I read first and liked better.
The book introduces us to Major Catherine Li, a U.N. Peacekeeper who is a genetically engineered post-human, and Cohen, an A.I. that visits real and virtual space by inhabiting several different people. Li and Cohen both appear again in 'Spin Control'.

I have no complaints about the storyline or characters or the underlying physics, but somehow the book never turned into a page-turner. Li is sent to investigate an explosion...more

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Dec 18, 2010 Brainycat rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of cyberpunk, detective noir and romance

Shelves: read_in_2010, scifi

Genre: Science Fiction (post-human, far dark future) / Romance
Brainycat's 5 B's:
boobs: 1 // blood: 3 // bombs: 3 // bondage: 1 // blasphemy: 2
Currently listening to: ESA "The Sea and the Silence"

Sometimes books have a singular aspect that attract their readership despite all the other failings; one thing the author got so right that all the problems with the book seem trite and easily overlooked. What Spin State got right for me was the protagonist. Catherine Li is made of pure win. She's no Tak ...more

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Jul 16, 2009 Noah M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Spin State was a damn fine mystery/science fiction novel centered around a strange crystal that only grows in one place and allows for faster than light communication and travel throughout UN space.

Catherine Li, our protagonist, is a well drawn character. Moriarty has very interesting ideas about how memory redaction would affect emotional responses later in life. Specifically about how not remembering the lessons learned in childhood can make things more difficult as a cyborg-secret agent adult...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, mystery, artificial-intelligence, aliens

I am so pleased to have discovered this talented writer. In this debut novel from 2003, we get a compelling sci fi detective tale and thriller bound up with a fascinating human-AI (Artificial Intelligence) love story and themes of class struggle projected to a future where the defining characteristics of humanity have become ambiguous.

The beginning of the story drops you right into the middle of action, with the female protagonist Li leading United Nations Peacekeeper soldiers on a raid on an il...more I am so pleased to have discovered this talented writer. In this debut novel from 2003, we get a compelling sci fi detective tale and thriller bound up with a fascinating human-AI (Artificial Intelligence) love story and themes of class struggle projected to a future where the defining characteristics of humanity have become ambiguous.

The beginning of the story drops you right into the middle of action, with the female protagonist Li leading United Nations Peacekeeper soldiers on a raid on an illegal genetics laboratory on a newly colonized world. The raid goes bad and lives are lost. As a consequence, a spymaster with the UN Security Forces branch is able to force Li to take on an investigation on Compson’s World, the planet she ran away from. The mines there are the only source of the crystals that make it possible for quantum teleportation of people and goods in a wormhole network controlled by the UN. A mine explosion has killed a famous physicist who was secretly working on a method to artificially create the quantum condensates. Li’s mission is to identify the killers and recover the precious data.

The reader has to imbibe the technological wonders at play as you go along, which can be exhilarating or frustrating depending on one’s tolerance of incomplete knowledge. Basically, the major forces in competition are: the UN worlds, which are run by those who are cyborgs with lots of wiring interfaces to their brains and make use normal humans as working class; the Syndicate worlds, which are populated by clones which are genetically engineered for total loyalty to the corporations; and the Artificial Intelligences, which have achieved citizen rights and contract out their services running the infrastructure. The factions all have interest in the mines and intersect with sectors of the mining community, including corporate lackeys, unionists, and cultists who believe the crystals to have spiritual powers. Li walks the tightrope in her tense and dangerous investigations. The complexity of the various schemes and alliances she comes up against felt a bit excessive to me, as was the length of the book.

She eventually teams up with her longstanding friend, the AI Cohen, who has a presence through virtual reality interfacing or through “shunting” into the body of properly wired humans. Her growing love for Cohen is undermined by barriers of trust in his motivations and “humanity”. She suspects his involvement in the disaster of the raid. In turn, he leads her to suspect her spymaster boss. These psychological dimensions of the tale and exploration of what it means to be human gave me the most pleasure in the reading.

I will be pursuing Moriarity’s sequel, Spin Control, from 2006, and a second sequel Ghost Spin, due out in 2013. Otherwise, he has only one other novel, a paranormal mystery.
(less)

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Oct 08, 2011 Joanna rated it 4 of 5 stars

A little predictable and space opera-ish but quite satisfying. Strangely, although the quantum mechanics stuff was well done it sort of didn't matter in the least. She could have made it all up and it would still have sounded totally believable. I suppose that's what happens when physics/fiction come so close to merging.

It's a total cool universe she's created and I liked Catherine Li as the narrator even though the whole plot thing isn't really under control. So if you enjoy complex world-build...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Andy Love rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-fantasy

I didn't like this book very much, but I'm not quite sure why. The story is well-written, and the main character (a UN military officer with an important secret) was appealing, but I found the novel's background unnecessarily grim and intricate. The idea that a far-future very high-tech society is mining on a distant planet using 20th century mining technology was not well-justified, and the constant use of the word 'spin' (referring to the quantum entanglement of particle spins which is the bas...more

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May 12, 2009 Blarg rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book gets 5 stars for ideas but 2 stars for execution.

The subjects it covers are ones I love to read about: quantum entanglement, emergent AI, wetware bio-enhancements, and political struggle caused by rapid technological lurches.

Unfortunately this book was very difficult to read because the characters were thin, the writing was confusing and vague, and the whole thing felt like a wannabe screenplay for an action mystery movie.

The endless twists, double-crosses, flashbacks, and simmering...more

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Mar 06, 2010 Jensownzoo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-reads, bookmooch-com, cyberpunk, science-fiction

Stayed up until the wee hours finishing this one. I must admit that a lot of the explanations of the technology went way above my head, but the story was top-notch. I guess that is reasonable since this book of fiction has several pages of bibliography at the end of it, all relating to quantum physics, if that gives you any idea. BUT, you don't need to be interested in quantum to really enjoy this book...there is something for everybody. Mystery, crime, romance, social commentary, etc. and so fo...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Alexa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Now this is what they like to call "hard" science fiction, the kind where you really have to enjoy stopping and thinking about the science, otherwise you risk having a lot of the nuances of the story go right over your head. This mostly worked, although there were a few places it became a bit unwieldy. The story line for the most part takes the form of a classic murder mystery. The heart of this book's enjoyment for me however were the relationships, particularly that between our hard-bitten pro...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Pete Ames rated it 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps I should be upfront, this is not a 4 star book yet I could not bring myself to give it a mere 3 stars for I feel I owe it. Thanks to this book I have had an enjoyable introduction to the world of Hard Science Fiction and I know that could have easily not been the case.

Spin State is, in a way, two books:
1. An inventive extrapolation forwards of human science and human nature to conjure a world which is at once familiar in its motivations but monumentally different in its experiences
2. A m...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Gaston Prereth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Spin State is a fractured book. It is undoubtedly a Hard SF book, dropping the reader in at the deep end within the first few pages. It introduces vast waves of technology with little explanation and expects the reader to be able to keep up. It is also, undoubtedly, a pulp/noire-esq detective story with shady characters in bars talking over half smoked cigarettes. Unfortunately, the two story lines share little with each other and often the transition between scenes is jarring and uncomfortable....more Spin State is a fractured book. It is undoubtedly a Hard SF book, dropping the reader in at the deep end within the first few pages. It introduces vast waves of technology with little explanation and expects the reader to be able to keep up. It is also, undoubtedly, a pulp/noire-esq detective story with shady characters in bars talking over half smoked cigarettes. Unfortunately, the two story lines share little with each other and often the transition between scenes is jarring and uncomfortable.
Hard SF and Noire are both genres that I enjoy in isolation and I have no problem with genre crossing books, but in Spin State the two different types of story didn't inform each other and instead of providing a new and interesting angle for the reader to enjoy, the differences merely highlighted the issues with both of the styles.
The detective story was, frankly, uninteresting and clichéd. It was predictable and the characters could have been copied and pasted out of any other noire storyline. While some of these criticisms could be levelled at Raymond Chandler himself, Spin State lacked the one thing Chandler always gave the reader in spades. Style. The writing style leant heavily on the SF aspect of the storyline and so when the reader was invited into the dark and dingy parts of Compson's world, the 'cool' factor you'd expect from a noire story was starkly absent.
The Hard SF part of Spin State was far more interesting. It was full of ideas and some of its concepts, particularly the approach to AI, were intriguing. Giving some licence to the author, particularly around 'condensates', the technology and science surrounding it was well thought out and plausible (enough at least). However, because the main narrative thread (supported by the noire elements of the story) was so flimsy, it rarely felt like the technology of the world was impacting on the world itself. Even with AI's 'shunting' into people here and there and a whole alternate digital reality pervading large parts of the book, the technology didn't actually change much. It was window dressing. Window dressing to a largely flawed detective story.
It is the ideas in this book which earn all of its stars and, while it didn't allow those ideas to shine as brightly as they deserved, they were interesting enough to keep the story being enjoyable for most of the book. A stronger central narrative would have made a big difference, but it would need to be a storyline which entwined and entangled the actual narrative (not just the motive). I wanted to see how people would behave and react in a world full of this new technology, and yet I got new technology surrounding people doing and behaving as a person would now.

I also have a few minor points: 1) baseball... really? how out of place did that feel? 2) I hate untagged dialogue from different characters being in the same paragraph. 3) if people are smoking in the distant future, it needs to be explained. It felt very archaic. (less)

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Apr 28, 2013 Paul Hufton rated it 3 of 5 stars

So. Spin State is a pulp sci-fi novel set largely in a mining town on a distant planet. It’s very much a thriller, with a lot of action and characters that are unsure how much they can trust one another. The author creates a whole universe, and does so quite convincingly, but this does affect the pacing somewhat as the book is quite long and there isn’t that much plot to sustain it. Equally it means that some aspects of the universe are described that just aren’t relevant to the plot or characte...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Bart Everson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: octavia-sf

It looks like a typical 300-page paperback, but when I actually cracked it open I was surprised to discover it’s twice that long. I had a mere ten days to read it, and I’m a slow reader.

So I tried to read this one more quickly, especially toward the end. I made a point of not letting my eyes drift backward in the text to re-examine the previous sentence, the previous paragraph, the previous page. I discovered I could read much more quickly if I enforced this discipline. Apparently my eyes dart a...more It looks like a typical 300-page paperback, but when I actually cracked it open I was surprised to discover it’s twice that long. I had a mere ten days to read it, and I’m a slow reader.

So I tried to read this one more quickly, especially toward the end. I made a point of not letting my eyes drift backward in the text to re-examine the previous sentence, the previous paragraph, the previous page. I discovered I could read much more quickly if I enforced this discipline. Apparently my eyes dart around quite a bit when I read. So that was interesting.

As for the book, it’s a mish-mash of many different sub-genres of science fiction: military sf, feminist sf, hard sf, space opera, cyberpunk. It’s also a murder mystery and a romance, with some espionage thrown in for good measure. It’s got quantum teleportation, cloning, wetware, artificial intelligence and — oh yes — mining. No, not data mining, I mean digging holes down in the dirt.

Sounds like a mess, but it’s actually fairly coherent, with a compelling protagonist and admirable pacing. There’s a lot to like here, but it’s ain’t perfect. It really seems to go on too long and there’s so much stuffed in there it just becomes ridiculous and loses strength because of that. Still, considering this was Moriarty’s first novel, it’s an impressive accomplishment.

One thing that annoyed me was the imagining of a faster-than-light technology. This kind of pseudo-science is fairly common in the genre. Usually I can excuse it as a literary device that allows the author to explore some other theme. But here, I found myself wondering why. I think authors are drawn to the notion of people zip-zip-zipping all over the galaxy for the sheer glamor of it. I think there’s a psychological connection with our desire to consume all fossil fuels so we can zip-zip-zip around our planet. I’d rather see stories that try to remain within the bounds of what we currently believe to be possible. For the record, quantum entanglement is not generally believed to enable fast-than-light communication.

But I quibble.

Choice quote:

“What’s a Pontchartrain?”

“The Pontchartrain. It’s a lake on the Mississippi, that used to flow through New Orleans.”

“Before the floods, you mean.”

“Before that, even. The river — the whole Mississippi Delta actually — shifted. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent, oh, a century dredging and channeling and building levees. Defiance of nature, on a megalomaniacal scale. People wrote books and printed articles and whole theses about it. The river finally had its way, of course. It jumped its banks right around the time the oceans really started rising. Shifted the delta halfway across the Gulf of Texas. I wish I could make you feel what it was to be in New Orleans, stranded in the middle of a man-made desert while the ice caps were melting and we were watching floods in New York and Paris on the news every night. It was… unforgettable.”

That passage had me flipping back to the front to check the copyright date.(less)

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Mar 15, 2011 Mardel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Chris Moriarty has written a very good mystery/sci-fi novel. There is so much going on in Spin State. The only problem is that there are times when I felt I was in an information maze. There were a few times when there were obvious information dump conversations between characters, It was kind of necessary, but hard to understand even so, since the information being discussed was Quantum Physics and a lot of other theories that the average person doesn't know anything about.

Besides that - the st...more

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Apr 08, 2010 Susan Henn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

4/10 - I read scifi for the big ideas. After the first 100 pages of this book, I almost quit reading it. It seemed like just an action/combat book void of big ideas. I persevered and finally the book got interesting with sentient AIs working for freedom from enslavement and an alien species with similarities to Earth's coral beds. I thought the religious element was illogical and I thought the lesbian agenda was too overt. Parts of the book were too 20th century Earth to be included in a futuris...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Hard SciFi fans

Shelves: science-fiction, mystery, to-re-read, action

This had to have been a labor of love by the author, it's her first book and one gets the impression that it took her years to write--this was her passion. This is about the hardest core SciFi I've read--the story integrates quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, genetics & morality, computer science, materials engineering, mystery, and, oh yes, a kick-ass heroine. The world and language Moriarty creates is intense yet comprehensible (although it takes a little while to catch on). It is...more

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Oct 05, 2008 Eli rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: eli-recommends

Without understanding any of the quantum physics taken as conceits in this novel, I still managed to enjoy this story tremendously. I just accepted, in the same way we accept magic exists in fantasy novels, that in Moriarty's far future setting, the stuff she describes works the way she says it does. In doing so, I was able to enjoy the very intrigue-rich plotline and enjoy the somewhat tangential dialogue regarding the larger implications of the definition of "life" and whether an entirely arti ...more

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Feb 03, 2009 Kam Oi rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of hard SF

Recommended to Kam Oi by: stumbled across it on Amazon

The author presents a confidently imagined vision of the future where society depends on a unique and nonrenewable resource -- and the power struggle that ensues. With a cast of fascinating characters -- a female career soldier who's hiding a secret that could ruin her, an artificial intelligence who's not just as complex and intriguing as any human but more so, coal miners, labor organizers, genetically engineered post-humans, and even the ghosts of people whose memories are preserved in networ...more

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Apr 03, 2008 Tripp rated it 4 of 5 stars

Spin State is proof that you don't have to be British to write great science fiction today. Chris Moriarty's book is set a few hundred years hence with Earth largely abandoned due to environmental collapse and humans being joined by genetically engineered humans and AIs on the various colonies and stations. The book initially appears to be similar to Altered Carbon, with a bio-engineered soldier attempting to solve a mystery.

While Altered Carbon became a California hardboiled mystery, Spin State...more

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Oct 05, 2007 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: SciFi Lovers

Spin State is a real page turner. I read the majority of this book while on vacation at the Jersey Shore, and I think I may have enjoyed the book more than the beach.

Moriarty has such a definitive and all-encompassing view of the future, that the 'fiction' in 'science-fiction' seems almost real. Every AI, Bose-Einstein condensate, and genetic construct has a history to it that brings it to life.

Spin State is technically classified as "SciFi" but really it's also a romance/mystery novel. There's...more

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About Chris Moriarty

I am the author of SF novels SPIN STATE and SPIN CONTROL, and winner of the 2006 Philip K. Dick Award. Upcoming books include GHOST SPIN and THE INQUISITOR'S APPRENTICE, a middle grade fantasy set on New York's Lower East Side, circa 1900. I also have a regular book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

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The Watcher in the Shadows (Inquisitor's Apprentice #2)

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Quotes from Spin State

“The trouble with friends was that you couldn’t get rid of them. There was no way to take back a friendship in the wake of betrayal or disappointment. The friendship, and everything that went with it, stayed. It just became unreliable, like an abandoned house; you still knew where all the rooms were, and which stairs creaked underfoot, but you had to check every floorboard for rot before trusting your weight to it.” — 28 people liked it

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Spin State (Spin Trilogy #1)

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