Borrowed from CLP on 2/12/24 to read for Beamers Online discussion on Friday, March 1, 2024. Review of that discussion:
https://beamerbooks.wordpress.com/2024/03/04/to-everything-turn-turn-turn/
Robert Charles Wilson, b. 1953 , many Hugo etc. nominations. This one won the Hugo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Charles_Wilson#Bibliography
This one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(novel)
https://infogalactic.com/info/Spin_(novel)
2005. Don’t skip the 2020 introduction by John Scalzi! “Spin is about people and how they respond to change—not small-scale change, like changing schools, or divorce, or even the death of a loved one, but the sort of global change that even if not understood cannot be ignored. Change that affects everyone. Change without apparent cause or motivation that anyone affected by it can understand. Change that permanently alters society on a national and planetary level. Change that doesn’t care how you feel about it, can’t be argued with, and won’t respond to your political or social arguments. Change that is an irresistible force, and no matter how immovable you think you are, will unmoor you and set you adrift.”
imaginative and complex sci-fi, some fantastical, some hard science
family drama & romance with likable characters and a contemporary reality
end of the world apocalyptic - a weaker strand
Philosophical and religious and sociological themes and debates
Gripping story with a good number of chilling moments and all of the above, plus a political thriller
QUESTIONS, new things, new words, some answered in the text:
the Archway, the Arch
the New Reformasi
temporal gradient (time differential)
the Martian drug
Martian archives (digital copies) pp. 72,
city-size silver boxes p. 47
Hypotheticals (aliens?) 96,
extremophiles
the Arch Port cities
rantau collectives, rantau gadang
budi, warung, adat,
time-trapped worlds
CVWS—cardiovascular wasting syndrome
tanglefoot gel
kepala desa
NK New Kingdom movement a/k/a Christian Hedonism; later Hectorian, a Preterist (Full or Partial), a Kingdom Reconstructionist—never just “New Kingdom.” Later, “the Messiah issue” …. “Bereans versus Progressives, Covenanters versus Preterists. Is there an Antichrist, and if so, where is he? Does the Rapture happen before the Tribulation or during or after?”
ekstasis
the Chaykin administration
the Clayton administration
the Garland administration
chemical sclerostatins
shotgun ecopoiesis
von Neumann machines (a real thing in speculative lit)
NEP flights (“nuclear electric propulsion”)
Replicators, seeds of an inorganic biology
QUESTIONS from reading:
When does the story start out? Dates. See notes below
Sophisticated character development and relationships, unusual for sci-fi. Usual for this author?
Why is the Lawton money not limitless? p. 129 not realistic
What is Molly after?
MARS:
ecopoiesis and homeostatic planetary ecology pp. 114-116
Wun Ngo Wen
Fourth Age
no metals pp. 146, 154,
Sparkmonth, Embermnth
Huld of Phraya
murkuds
Four Ages of a human life on Mars
The Fourth Age: a tutelary discomfort
RECOGNITIONS of intelligence:
Christina Rossetti
A.E. Housman
Victorian mystery novels
Yoko Ono
Mark Twain
the Parousia
demimonde
anodyne
Maori tattoos
instant aphasia
perihelion
ecopoiesis
amanuensis
photodissociation
cryptoendelithic (neologism: endolithic is a word for an organism able to acquire the necessary resources for growth in the inner part of a rock or in the pores between mineral grains of a rock. Many are extremophiles, living in places long considered inhospitable to life)
chiliasm / chiliast
crudités
regolith
interferometers
hydrologic cycle and biogeochemical feedback loops
red heifer calf cult
https://forward.com/culture/560201/red-heifer-third-temple-jerusalem/
TIME DIFFERENTIAL (temporal gradient):
4 times 10 to the ninth is 4,000,000,000 or 4 billion - A.D. See note p. 9.
time passes one hundred million times more swiftly outside the barrier, so that the sun itself may last only another 40 subjective years ~ Kirkus Reviews
“the night the stars disappeared from the sky” is a riveting opening line.
More than three years of sunlight for every second that passed. p. 65
** the work of extending human influence into the raging torrent of extraterrestrial time p. 89
a million centuries for each of our years. p. 91
“A decade,” he said thoughtfully. “Or a billion years.” p. 94
“One terrestrial second equals 3.17 years Spin time.” p. 114
“let a minute pass on your watch. That’s approximately a hundred and ninety years by an outside clock.” 115
REPETITIONS and themes:
Chilling moments
Humor haha
Societal decay or collapse 180
Hard science
Medical ethics and advances
Planetary ethics (who to send)
Religion reactions
point of no return
SIMILES, not too many but the ones used are (mostly) just right, many extended, some powerful and pedagogical, e.g., “The gantries grew that winter like iron and steel forests, exuberant, lush, rooted in concrete and watered with reservoirs of federal money…. spaceships like cottonwood pods, poised to carry dormant life to a distant, sterile soil.” p. 100.
Sometimes what I call similes take the form of (the more directly stated) metaphor. E.g., “a bacterial armada” 114; “The top shelf was the attic of my mother’s life.” 103
NOTES:
** So how do you build a life under the threat of extinction? p. 45. THE question, at least thus far in the book.
When does the story take place.? On p. 46 Tyler, c. 25, says he listens to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, music that had been old even when Marcus Dupree was young,”
“the moon landing more than sixty years ago” p. 110
Not a threat if I’m not personally threatened right now. p. 46
How does the mass of humanity understand cosmology? pp. 46-47
>> Tyler and Diane are a lot like Gretchen (and Patty) and me. “platonic buddies” “our telephone tryst, her act of touchless infidelity”
“the point of no return and all…” “Which we’ve passed.” p. 83, 97
https://www.facebook.com/penn.hackney/posts/pfbid02kpR1RNoECrWx7EnVMxeYUmrxyAXK1Wpm4TeJ3odSz1q4X2MvQ85KTYFUH9HNeTqSl
** “the human species rendered as a finite event in the life of an ordinary star” p. 96 the PLOT IDEA from which the grand speculation emerges.
On fear of dying: “We’re all mortal, but we used to have the consolation of knowing the human species would go on without us.” “But species are mortal, too.” p. 150
“She could, for instance, have married you, Ty, if not for this ridiculous fantasy of hers—” “What fantasy?” “That E.D. is your father. That she’s your biological sister.” p. 98
The prose is meticulous, resonant with real life. E.g., “Diane had once described my mother’s housekeeping as “linear,” by which I think she meant orderly but not obsessive…. Not everything was in its place. But everything *had* a place.” p. 103
The Lawton mysteries; the missing MEMENTOS (SCHOOL) mystery; Molly;
2 CHARACTER vignettes.
E.D. Lawton: Much had been made, in the press and in the Lawton family, of Jason’s genius, but I reminded myself that E.D. could claim that title, too. He had parlayed an engineering degree and a talent for business into a major corporate enterprise, and he had been selling aerostat-enabled telecom bandwidth when Americom and AT&T were still blinking at the Spin like startled deer. What he lacked was not Jason’s intelligence but Jason’s wit and Jason’s deep curiosity about the physical universe. And maybe a dash of Jason’s humanity. p. 103.
MOLLY SEAGRAM: Molly turned out to be smart, sly, cynical, and better company than I had expected.
