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Spin (Spin Saga #1)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 10,640 ratings · 900 reviews

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

Life on Earth is about to get much, m...more

Mass Market Paperback, 458 pages

Published February 7th 2006 by Tor Science Fiction (first published April 2005)

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Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century

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Mar 23, 2012 mark monday rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: futuristik

Spin is a Hugo award winner that wonders what would happen if the earth were forced to remain as it is while the universe around us aged at approximately 100 million years per earth year. as far as scifi concepts go, it is a fairly mind-boggling one. to compound matters further, scientists quickly realize that as the universe ages, the earth's chance for utter destruction increases - when and if the shield around the earth is eventually lifted. and that is what creates the human drama within Spin. the reader is given two big things to chew on: the more intellectual mystery of who is behind the shield and what is its purpose... and the more emotional drama of seeing how End Times will impact all of us silly humans. Spin succeeds in accomplishing its first goal; i found it to be less successful in reaching the second.

the first goal is expertly achieved. Spin is in many ways 'pure science fiction'... it is not fantasy or historical fiction or metaphysical metaphor gussied up with scifi trappings. it takes a genuinely speculative approach to exploring the ramifications of this strange shield: what does it mean, what is its purpose, how does it impact us, how does it change us? everything connected to this central concept succeeds admirably. i really don't want to say much more on this, because part of the pleasure for me was finding out what was to come next - seeing the mystery explored, and open up into new mysteries. the one thing i will add was a plot turn that came out of the blue for me... how the earth could manipulate its new-found stasis. specifically, how the earth could terraform and then inhabit mars. one earth year = one hundered million regular years... terraforming & colonization that can take place within a few years! this was a really exciting development; even more thrilling was discovering all about this new martian world.

for me, the second goal had more mixed results. i'll try to sum it up briefly: the earth goes bonkers. governments get even more paranoid, wars erupt, lawlessness is everywhere (which leads to a truly ironic ending for one particular character), suicides & murders increase, and religious feelings skyrocket. and so Spin is not just the tale of a fascinating scifi concept, but one about the human drama of What Is The Right Path To Take? when great and terrible things happen, how do we react, and what do our reactions say about us? what do we do when confronted with a state of absolute and infinite potentiality?

and so Spin is both a novel of grand ideas, staggering possibilities, elaborate ways to wonder why and how and when and what if... and it is also a very intimate, small-scale chamber piece featuring three major characters and a handful of sharply dilineated supporting characters. each character has their own way of approaching these grand ideas and staggering possibilities.

rather predictably, the second goal becomes a depressingly either/or type situation, with two of the major characters (the Scientist and the Zealot) embodying opposite ends of the spectrum and our protagonist landing somewhere (but not quite) in the middle. despite my complaints, Wilson's writing does not actually disappoint. he is not a pedantic author and his characters are sympathetically and realistically conceived and explored. they are alive. his narrative is not custom-built as a vehicle to express a certain dialectic and so i didn't feel as if the story was manipulated to prove certain points. nonetheless, i found this aspect of the novel to be rather tedious.

i suppose these kinds of binary arguments just automatically aggravate me. what is up with humans always having to draw lines in the sand, ignoring the basic complexity of life, being unable to see multiple sides and multiple levels? why is it so hard to live with facts that any true adult knows to be truth: the world is a complicated place, humans are a complicated species, each individual encompasses many different things. we are a continuum - not a single, fixed point. right? perhaps i am an idealist (ha! sure). i feel these truths are self-evident... but as Spin and, oh, the entirety of human history attests, the species homo sapien usually chooses to reject such complexity. and so this sad spinning piece of rock and all of its denizens spins on.

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Apr 06, 2013 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sci fi fans

Recommended to Carol by: probably Maggie!

Shelves: my-library, sci-fi, awards, male-lead, hugo

I've always loved star gazing. Perhaps it was Greek mythology that hooked me; I could look up and find the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and later transform them into Ursa Major and Minor. Cassiopeia would appear late in the summer, arms outstretched on her throne. Orion was easy to pick out, and once I found him, I could find the Pleiades--the seven sisters--grouped together running away. Orion held a special spot in my heart, being one of the few strong enough to brave the Los Angeles skies w...more I've always loved star gazing. Perhaps it was Greek mythology that hooked me; I could look up and find the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and later transform them into Ursa Major and Minor. Cassiopeia would appear late in the summer, arms outstretched on her throne. Orion was easy to pick out, and once I found him, I could find the Pleiades--the seven sisters--grouped together running away. Orion held a special spot in my heart, being one of the few strong enough to brave the Los Angeles skies when I was away at school. When I took astrophysics and learned about spiral galaxies, white dwarfs, and black holes, my imagination was captured by the sky in a different way.

It's clear why Spin won a Hugo. Stars. Inventive science. Family expectations. Coming of age. Engineering evolution. Human-descended Martians. Mysterious aliens.

For me, Spin was a slow-moving, thoughtful book, the kind that doesn't quite keep you reading from excitement, but from simple human curiousity and interest. Told from the viewpoint of Tyler Dupree, a well developed, high-achiever Everyman, the kind of character most people reading would likely identify with; shades of inadequacy and affection are mixed up in his friendship with Diane and Jason, the twins living in the Big House. One night when they are teens, the stars go out. Blink--no more stars. Thankfully, the sun still rises. From there, their lives change forever; in subtle fashion for Diane and Tyler, and more directly with Jason, who wholeheartedly pursues the mystery. We learn about the mystery as Tyler does, and I appreciate the deliberate way it is explored. The science was explained enough to catch interest, and even more fascinating questions are raised when the temporal ramifications of the shield become clear.

Eventually, Spin perhaps attempts to achieve too much; as the trio grows older, the looming effects of the phenomenon become more clear, and they grapple with larger political and social issues that aren't always well explained. I found myself most interested when Tyler and Jason's professional lives intersected, and more of the Spin was explored. The story is narrated from Tyler's viewpoint, and is broken into two timelines, sometimes well, sometimes more awkwardly. At times when it becomes a little like a story based on a thought experiment, it's saved by the thoughtful and well-rounded development of the characters. I have a feeling it's the sort of story that I would appreciate even more after another read or two, so I'm glad it's joined my shelves.

Cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2012/1...
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Aug 19, 2011 James Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who likes sci-fi or just wants to see what all the fuss is about

Shelves: favorites

This was some of the best science fiction I've read in years. Heck, it was one of the best books I've read in years.

This is the sort of book that I babble about. It's hard to write down what's good about it because everything about it is good. Everything about it is amazing, really, so there's no good starting place. It all just comes out in a rush of Plot/Big Ideas/writing style/characters/character relationships/tragedy/humor/everything.

If you've ever enjoyed a sci-fi book, read it. If you th...more

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Oct 25, 2007 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who likes sci-fi

Shelves: sci-fi, favorite-books

This is one of those rare science fiction books that lets you wonder and imagine and forget that it's science fiction at all. Many sci-fi authors lean too heavily on the science and speculation and not enough on the fiction, creating interesting premises but characters that are two dimensional. Wilson does not have that problem here. His characters are fully fleshed, flawed and realistic and it is these characters that move Spin along so well.

This is not to say that this book lacks in science a...more

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Feb 16, 2011 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-novels-aaargh

(note - satirical spoiler alerts ahoy)

Robert Charles Wilson appears to be paid by the word - how else to account for such passages, and they are legion, as this :

The day I left Perihelion the support staff summoned me into one of the now seldom-used boardrooms for a farewell party, where I was given the kind of gifts appropriate to yet another departure from a dwindling workforce : a miniature cactus in a terracotta pot, a coffee mug with my name on it, a pewter tie pin in the shape of a caduceu...more (note - satirical spoiler alerts ahoy)

Robert Charles Wilson appears to be paid by the word - how else to account for such passages, and they are legion, as this :

The day I left Perihelion the support staff summoned me into one of the now seldom-used boardrooms for a farewell party, where I was given the kind of gifts appropriate to yet another departure from a dwindling workforce : a miniature cactus in a terracotta pot, a coffee mug with my name on it, a pewter tie pin in the shape of a caduceus.

Yeah right so the world is about to end and there are millenial cults trashing the place which the woman he loves has married into one of them and his friend the genius has a grim disease and there's this stuff about a man from Mars but let's suspend all that and get the pot, the mug and the tiepin down, don't want to let that stuff go by unrecorded. Yeah they're little human touches amongst the catastrophes but let me tell you, Robert Charles Wilson, the pot, the mug and the tiepin are boring and if I may say so, so is your protagonist, a guy you'd rather jab needles into your sinuses than share a railway journey with, Doctor Humourless Dullard should be his name, not Tyler Dupree, which sounds like a guy who made two blues records for Paramount in 1928, but anyway, I'm straying from the point - what was the point? Oh yeah, a 450 page Hugo Award winning novel about the usual stuff - The End Of Life As we Know It. For most of the 450 pages the world's going to end, and by page 350 as I read I was thinking "come on, end! End now! End! Put us out of our misery!" but the world kept not ending and by page 390 this became distressing. Maybe I'm a bad person. So maybe if there has to be an Apocalypse we'd all vote for the kind where you have time to buy each other terracotta tie pins. It's just that it's more exciting reading about the other kind.

Sings with guitar accompaniment :

"I could've bought you a tiepin, didn't mean to be unkind
But tiepins were the last thing on my mind"

Two and a half stars.

*

Two bad tempered thoughts - the final Big Idea in Spin can also be found in Clifford Simak's lovely 1959 novella called the Big Front Yard. That one won the Hugo in 1959. And - there's a quote on the front cover of Spin which must be the worst marketing quote ever. It says "The best science fiction novel of the year so far" - Rocky Mountain News. So far? How do we know whether that review was in the February issue and they were expecting much better stuff next month? (less)

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Feb 09, 2012 Maggie K rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really LOVED this book. I had to think about it for a day or two to decide whether to rate it a 4.5 or a 5, but the fact that i was thinking about it brought it over the edge-lol.

The novel follows the thoughts of Tyler Dupree after the stars are just shut off one night. One storyline follows that evening during his teenage years up until it is revealed exactly what happened to them, while the other plot followsthe present day urge to hide from the government fallout of what is happening in the...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy

Spin was my third exposure to Robert Charles Wilson, a writer who has yet to disappoint me. He is not a "hard" sci-fi writer. Instead, the author writes about regular people and their ways of coping with major changes in their lives and environments. Spin is a very compelling story with believable, yet not overwhelming, scientific details and realistic characters. This is the type of SF novel that I would not hesitate to recommend to readers of high-quality, literary fiction who may want to expl...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle, science-fiction, favorites, favorite-author, 2011-books-read

Why did the stars suddenly go out on an October night?

This is the type of book that you wish someone else is reading at the exact same time as you are so that you can immediately discuss all the "did that just happen?" moments. I really wish my husband had been reading it at the same time as me so that I could ask if he'd ever seen any of the various plot elements put together this way in his vast reading of sci-fi. It's a story about time travel, but it's not. It's a story about an apocalyptic...more

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Oct 15, 2008 Red rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf, kindle-books

THe earth is suddenly enclosed in a alien forcefield. It blocks out views of the stars, the sun and the moon. Time inside the "Spin membrane" slows on a millennial scale. No apparent change on the planet, but outside the "spin" 100,000 years go by for every earth day that passes. It lets the author (and thereby the characters) play with the universe on a god-like scale. Small events can make huge changes over geologic time frames, and are easy to watch when that means just a few days to the huma...more

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Dec 14, 2008 Christy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-and-fantasy, readinglist2-sf, canadian-lit, favorites, want-to-reread

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Spin won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel and deservedly so. It is science fiction in all the stereotypical ways--it includes space/time travel, advanced technology, planetary exploration, even an alien--but it goes well beyond this, interweaving explanation of the technology with character development, a fully realized social reality, and explorations of what it means to be human and to face the reality of death, both of the individual and of the species.

When Tyler DuPree, the novel's protag...more

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Dec 02, 2008 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jamie by: Julie Carter

Shelves: science-fiction

I loved the first 3/4 of this book. The story of the spin and mankind's reaction to it was fascinating, and the characterization was pretty good, but all the while I could see an unsatisfying ending coming: the author chose to alternate between two time periods and the later one was consistently less appealing to me.

The fast-forwarding of the universe was great: a terraformer's dream. It was a little creepy to be reminded how tiny and insignificant humanity really is.

The revelation of the spin's...more

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Nov 04, 2012 Francine rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Joy Macpherson

Shelves: dystopian-world, modern-lit, sci-fi, speculative, favorites, postapocalyptic

First off, my breakdown of the basics:

Narrative: 5-stars. Highly intelligent, compelling, wonderful world-building. It's a novel of grand ideas yet somehow, it maintained a certain sense of intimacy. While this is, at heart, sci-fi, it deals with many things including science, religion, faith, love, loss (including loss of hope, loss of self, loss of faith), the deterioration of humanity and humanity's intrinsic need for survival, sometimes at all costs.

Writing: 5 stars. Utterly beautiful prose,...more

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Jul 03, 2009 Ron rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Outstanding. A fresh, original story and setting. Well-enough written to keep the reader engaged. There are loads or minor SF quibbles, of course, but Wilson managed to fit his exposition between two covers.

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Jan 19, 2012 Randy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though I consider myself an avid science fiction reader, every now and then I have to take a break. This isn't because some of these books are bad, but because alot of plot likes to be recycled in them. This astounds me because Sci/Fi to me is a ways to let loose in what you want the reader to experience in your mind, it's a fascinating thought to dwell on. Since picking up the Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, it has rekindled my inner child and unleashed my imagination that I thought I lost years...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it 5 of 5 stars

What knocked me out about this book was not the science half of the story, which was great, but the depth of the characters Wilson creates, and varied situations that occur and the breadth of the possible responses people have to a literally incomprehensible change in the way the world works.

Look, I love science fiction, I love the literature of ideas, and I read those books all the time. But sometimes where some of the genre falls down is in creating characters that are not made out of cardboa...more

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May 23, 2010 Wendy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-reads, sci-fi, gave-up-reading-and-skimmed

One night, the stars go out. The earth has been shielded, and it's soon discovered that time is passing much more rapidly outside the barrier. This means the death of the sun (and the end of the world) is fast approaching. The human race reacts with denial, hedonism, religiosity, despair, and clever scientific schemes which may offer some hope.

Loved the main idea but got tired of the slow pace, language, and characters and eventually skipped through to see how the story would play out.

Everythin...more

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Oct 28, 2009 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, biopunk, aliens, 2009-best-reads, time-travel, near-future, social-sf, favorites

What a fun read! A gripping science fiction romp that will leave you dazed, thinking about the size of the Universe, the effects of world-wide crises, and our small place in both of these.

The difficulty is being able to tell you much about the book. Every chapter contains either a huge game-changing twist, an important turn in the characters' story, or both. The twists start happening so early on, that I can't even breathe a word of them, lest I ruin the fun of the surprise.

The best I can do is...more

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Jan 12, 2009 Erik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: scififantasy, has-good-review

I used to have a creative writing professor who would not let his students ever write science fiction or fantasy. He would say, before you can learn to write about other worlds, you have to learn to write about simple people and simple conflicts. In effect, it tended to make stories more boring than they had to be, but his philosophy was sound.

The best sci-fi and fantasy are character-driven stories about people with simple desires and simple conflicts that just so happen to exist in fantastical...more

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Apr 17, 2008 M.D. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf

For those who read Darwinia, the tone and tenor of Spin are similar: a mix of science and fantastic, with a focus on human nature's reaction when faced with the inconceivable. Wilson is a master at it.

On a bright summer evening, three children on the cusp of teenhood witness the impossible: in the blink of an eye, all the stars wink out. Although the sun rises the next morning as usual, the next night the stars don't. Soon, scientists discover that a filtering membrane has been wrapped around th...more

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Feb 09, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

I was so impressed by his work on The Chronoliths that I went right ahead and jumped into this book without hesitation. Of course, I was not disappointed. At least not too much, but I'll get to that later.

It is the near future, as these stories so often are, and one night the stars go out. The night sky goes black, with none of the familiar lights that have guided us throughout human history. Within minutes, the entire network of satellites circling the globe plummet to Earth, leaving modern tel...more I was so impressed by his work on The Chronoliths that I went right ahead and jumped into this book without hesitation. Of course, I was not disappointed. At least not too much, but I'll get to that later.

It is the near future, as these stories so often are, and one night the stars go out. The night sky goes black, with none of the familiar lights that have guided us throughout human history. Within minutes, the entire network of satellites circling the globe plummet to Earth, leaving modern telecommunications in shambles. Many people, naturally, panic, fearing that the night would be endless, but no - the sun comes up in the morning. The bright, yellow, light-giving.... oddly uniform and uneventful sun.

The Earth, as it turns out, has been enveloped in a kind of cocoon, what thinkers of the age would call The Spin. Inside the Spin, life goes on. There's no stars or moon, and the sun is artificial, but other than that, nothing much changes. High-tech balloons help solve the problem solved by the loss of communications satellites, and everyone goes about their lives.

Outside the Spin, the universe is flying by. For every second that passes on Earth, 3.17 years passes outside the black shield. One minute means the passage of 190 years. One hour, 11,412 years. One day, 273,888 years. One year on Earth is 100,037,592 years to the universe at large. Which means that within the next generation, the sun will reach the end of its life, growing to a red giant that would turn the Earth into so much space dust, Spin or no Spin.

The big question, then, is who - or what - did this, and why?

From reading these two books, I have noticed a few things about Wilson's style. Further reading may disprove my theories, but we'll see.

For one, he seems to enjoy dealing with the sociological side to sci-fi. In The Chronoliths, he imagined how the world would react to a tyrant whose coming was announced 20 years before he ever took power - militant cults, youth movements and generational discord, of course. In this book, he does the same - what would the world do if it only had about 50 years to live? The answer, according to Wilson, is splintering messianic fundamentalist religion and violent crime. For the public at large, it seems like there is indeed no hope for the planet, so they naturally turn to the Lord or hedonism - sometimes both at the same time.

For our narrator, however, all is not lost. He is friends with one of the greatest minds of his generation, a man who might not be able to stop the Spin, but who could probably figure out what it's there for - if it doesn't kill him first.

Which brings me to the second thing I've noticed about Wilson's work. So far, he's worked through a first-person narrator, who is admittedly "chronicling" the events of the previous few decades into a book for posterity. I have no real problem with that except that by the time the narrator is writing the book, he is more or less out of any real danger. This is less true for Tyler Dupree in this book than it was for Scott Warden in The Chronoliths, but as you get to the end of the book, you realize that the important part of the story really ended years before. So the actual end is kind of anticlimactic - the narrator may be in a tough spot before he gets to the last page, but you know that he's out of the real story already and is destined to survive. Otherwise how could he have written the book?

Or maybe I shouldn't be reviewing at 12:30 in the morning....

Anyway, it was good. If I see any more of Wilson's work floating around, I'll most definitely pick it up.(less)

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Aug 01, 2012 Brooke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pre-apocalytpic, sci-fi

This was a very dense book with a higher reading level and I deinitely had to look up some words in the dictionary. I liked it well enough although parts seemed to drag. It follows three separate time lines but the story flows smoothly as the chapters alternate time lines. The Earth becomes enveloped in a membrane where time slows down in comparison to the rest of the universe. This means planets and most importantly, the sun ages billions of years during 40 Earth years. Religious cults pop up,...more

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Nov 25, 2008 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: weird-fiction

The best straight-up science fiction I've read in a long time. The author doesn't let his concepts get in the way of his characters. Very cool premise with lots of surprises.

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Aug 29, 2009 Susan Henn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 24, 2009 Artie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who are giving Sci-Fi a shot, despite the fantastic nature of it.

The reason I give Spin five stars is because it was painfully difficult to put down (I lost sleep over this one), and truly engrossing. Robert Charles Wilson creates such dynamic characters of such differing mindsets that it's quite enticing to follow along and see what becomes of them. Mostly the main character Tyler Dupree and his friend Jason Lawton. The other reason I rated Spin so highly was because I feel like it could be a great Sci-Fi novel for people just giving the genre a chance, but...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Lightreads rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction

One day in our near future, the moon and all the stars disappear from the sky. All of them at once, all over the world. Decades later and far away, Tyler remembers that night and all the years after as he grew up part of the generation that knew the world was going to end within the next fifty years. And I really cannot describe the plot with any more exactitude, because saying anything else would spoil one of the hundred complex threads woven into this story, and that would be a damn shame.

I ca...more One day in our near future, the moon and all the stars disappear from the sky. All of them at once, all over the world. Decades later and far away, Tyler remembers that night and all the years after as he grew up part of the generation that knew the world was going to end within the next fifty years. And I really cannot describe the plot with any more exactitude, because saying anything else would spoil one of the hundred complex threads woven into this story, and that would be a damn shame.

I can say that this is what is known as a “hard SF” novel, and as such it is powered on ideas. Extraordinary ideas which test the boundaries of the universe as we know it, from the jaw-droppingly smart to the ones I just didn't buy. But this is also a book rich in people, from the very personal convolutions of Tyler’s existence in and out of the orbit of twins Jason and Diane, to the deft, evocative way Wilson describes how human societies themselves work.

And that’s what’s so brilliant about this book – it’s got range. It plays Tyler and Diane and Jason’s lives on the same stage, with the same life and sympathy with which it plays the rise and fall of civilizations, the making of worlds, the human spirit in extremity at its best in grace and cleverness, and its worst in hopelessness and fear. There’s so much packed into this just-right 370 pages, from a slow and subtle love story to penetrating insights on just how people and governments work in long, wrenching crisis, and then the hard slam. As the why and the how of the plot are slowly revealed through Tyler’s memories and the past races to meet the present, the nature of the story lets Wilson do things with scale, with everything from the passage of time on the cosmic scale to the scope of human understanding. It’s riveting, sweet, charismatic, difficult to read in places.

Which is neglecting the prose, which is lucid and adroitly theatrical and just right.

“Dreams, Diane once said, are metaphors gone feral.”

“What we were transplanting was not biology but human history, and human history, Jase had said, burned like a fire compared to the slow rust of evolution.”

“There’s a phrase Pastor Bob Cobble liked to use back at Jordan Tabernacle. ‘His heart cried out to God.’ . . . But you have to parse the sentence. ‘His heart cried out’ – I think that’s all of us, it’s universal. You, Simon, me, Jason. Even Carol. Even E.D. When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it’s a cry of joy, I think that’s what it was for Jason, I think that’s what I didn’t understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But I think for most of us it’s a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence.”

And that last quote is actually a much better portrait of the book than I’m managing.

Wow. Pieces of this one will be with me for a long time.(less)

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Dec 26, 2008 Tony Gleeson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars for this one. Wish I could give it 3.5 (but then, where does such hair-splitting end? 3.1415...?). This is a fine science fiction novel in the tradition of, say, Larry Niven-- a deeply-thought-out cosmic apocalyptic event featuring a heady dose of hard science and high concept, with an emphasis on how it affects a handful of individual humans. Wilson combines the two quite well, no mean feat-- though he does seem to fall into the trap of seeming a bit aloof at time...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Stephen Thomas rated it 3 of 5 stars

NOT AS DIZZYING AS IT COULD BE

Science fiction, particularly the ‘hard’ variety, is often criticised for its lack of character development. Whether fair criticism or not, any writer who aims to address this matter is to be applauded. Wilson devotes a lot of time and energy to this end. Unfortunately it’s here that he’s at his weakest.

Spin covers a long stretch of time over which we follow the main characters as they grow from adolescence into adulthood and on into middle-age. Sadly, these charact...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Leons rated it 4 of 5 stars

Spin is a deft, breathless, big picture scifi novel. It cleverly blends near future with a cosmic scale and a surprising yet sensical and satisfying conclusion.

Geopolitically, I don't quite buy the vision of a unipolar, US-centric world projected decades into the future. However, it suffices for the purposes of the breathless plot, as the geopolitics are a backdrop and a support for the big ideas in the book.

The personal relationship stuff makes me worry a bit about Wilson's personal life, as it...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I feel like four stars might be too generous for how I felt through much of this novel, but does not fully capture the enraptured state that the book's climax caught me in. I'm averaging the score to encompass what was ultimately an engrossing book that suffered terribly from an infection of narrative flaccidity and authorial self indulgence. If you'll allow me another metaphor, when the book did not soar, it dragged interminably.

I loved this: the pure imagination of the overarching conflict; t...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Joseph Giorgione rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Spin is the name given to a mysterious veil that one October night in the near future, shuts off the stars and isolates the earth, but not only that, for every minute that passes on Earth, three years pass outside the veil.

The three main characters deal with this in three very human ways. Jason tries to understand who created the Spin, and why, emerging himself in science. Jason's twin sister, Diane, follows the path of faith, spirituality and enlightenment. Tyler, childhood friend of both t...more

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About Robert Charles Wilson

Born in California, Robert Charles Wilson lives in Toronto. Darwinia won Canada's Aurora Award, The Chronoliths won the John W. Campbell Award, and Blind Lake is a New York Times Notable Book. All three were Hugo finalists. Spin won the Hugo for best novel.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...

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Trivia About Spin

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Quotes from Spin

“There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. Its hard to live in all those kinds of times. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.” — 30 people liked it

“We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced.” — 17 people liked it

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avg rating	preview: Spin Goodreads rating: 3.97 (10640 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/910863.Spin?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316636370l/910863.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/910863.Spin?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Spin by Robert Charles Wilson[/url]

Spin (Spin Saga #1)

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