Spin (Spin, #1)

by Robert Charles Wilson

all of us doing our jobs here at the tag end of human history, doing what was expected of us, playing it like it mattered.

Haha keeping perspective.

“Belinda Dupree was the best thing about the Big House. I mean that.”

Haha simile and immediate criticisms.

President Garland.”

lid that enclosed the world.

“A ‘strange membrane.’”

Haha simile

an act that a less ambitious space agency would once have deemed impractical and radically unsafe. But we lived in more daring or desperate times.

Haha - a usual assortment for 2 million people

Twelve pillars of white fire, separated by miles but compressed by perspective,

Personification

Personification

Simile nice

the brute spectacle

it was remarkable mainly for its intent, its motivating idea.

the pleasantly awful stench of Roman candles.

Simile

Haha

A bacterial armada was en route to Mars.

Simile metaphor

They have to enter the Spin membrane more or less simultaneously, or they’ll exit separated by years or centuries.

we’re practicing for when it really matters.”

One terrestrial second equals 3.17 years Spin time.

let a minute pass on your watch. That’s approximately a hundred and ninety years by an outside clock.”

Right now, as we speak, any bacterial colonies that survived the trip will have been reproducing on Mars for two centuries.

In an hour, they will have been there eleven thousand four hundred years.

This time tomorrow they’ll have been multiplying for almost two hundred seven...

“This time next week, 1.9 million years.”

“A month, 8.3 million years.”

“This time next year, one hundred million years.”

“On Earth, one hundred million years is roughly the span of time between the emergence of life from the sea and your last birthday.

Algae emerged about a billion years ago, so he’s talking about “marine animal life” and I am Informed that the tetrapods began colonizing land about 350-400 million years ago. I get his point, but his mistake of fact is disappointing. https://www.thoughtco.com/evolution-of-vertebrate-animals-4040937

All that liberated CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

Hard science

we send another armada of respirating organisms, and they begin to cycle CO2 into free oxygen.

when all that stabilizes into some kind of crudely homeostatic planetary ecology, we send human beings.

“There’s a Greek word for this, Jase.” “Ecopoiesis.” “I was thinking of ‘hubris.’”

Haha

Haha

“Or offending the Hypotheticals?”

A chilling moment

If we acknowledged it at all it was only in the cumbersome detours we took to avoid it.

not Spin time, but something just as erosive and just as hungry.

spectrographic images of Mars—snapshots of the ecopoiesis.

by midsummer we were seeing strong spectrographic evidence of biological activity.

Jason

Diane

Simon

Jordan Tabernacle.

the Messiah issue.…”

Haha

Haha

Suddenly we were responsible for our own chiliasm.”