Spin (Spin, #1)

by Robert Charles Wilson

we were (as Jase occasionally said) a cultivated planet now, a garden tended by unknown forces rather than a patch of cosmic wildwood.

Or COBAL, haha

Haha

Haha

The sunlight might be fake, filtered, but it still broke into colors when it cut through falling water and it still felt like a blessing when we rolled from under the shading oaks onto the glittering white sidewalk.

The twins had their birthdays in June. Mine was in October. Every summer they were not one but two years older than me: the twins had turned fourteen but I was still twelve for another frustrating four months.

the glassy nave of the mall.

“Have” is a church metaphor. Simile

the mall lived in blessed denial.

Haha

Haha

from the beginning E.D. had wanted him to understand how business, science, and technology intersect with political power.

the solemn, studious sons of single working mothers didn’t make anyone’s A list.)

“The time is out of joint.” Chilling

I braked and keeled

Not to make too much of this incident, but I thought of it occasionally in the years that followed—Jason’s machine and Jason’s body locked into a dangerous acceleration, and his unflappable belief that he could make it come out right, all by himself, if only he tried hard enough, if only he didn’t lose control.

Twins 19, Tyler 17

It was a gesture both generous and emotionally false, but it was also a gesture I couldn’t afford to refuse.

Marcus Dupree,

Generosity of any kind is a rare animal, my mother used to say.

Haha

somber preppies who had skied at Zermatt or Gstaad long before their braces came off—

Haha

Simile haha

Simile

“Apocalyptic theology.

Praying in the Dark is the title of a 2022 book by Daniel O. Snyder. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63102515-praying-in-the-dark I can find no trace of a C.R. Ratel, though ratel is another word for honey badger.

Then Jason began to talk, softly, methodically, almost soothingly, delivering a nightmare as if it were a bedtime story.

Five years later E.D.’s aerostats were carrying telecom payloads and repeaters, doing multipoint voice and data broadcasts, doing almost anything (apart from GPS and astronomy) a conventional satellite could have done.

As if, Jason said, it had hit the Event boundary and bounced back.

But it hadn’t bounced. “When they recovered it they downloaded a full week’s worth of data.”

What happened was, the payload spent seven days in orbit and came back the same night it left.

Time was passing differently outside the barrier.

what they’re calling a temporal gradient.

But what causes what? What is the culprit? Is the time outside speeded up so the barrier therefore protects the earth, or does the barrier cause time on earth to slow down? Question

But the idea of a time gradient has a certain explanatory power.

So the electromagnetic barrier around the Earth isn’t concealing us, it’s protecting us.

“It’s been five years and a couple of months since the October Event. Outside the barrier, that translates into a little over five hundred million years.”

eventually the Earth will be inside the heliosphere of the sun. Swallowed up by it. Past a certain point there’s simply no going back.” “How long, Jase?” He gave her a pitying look. “Forty, maybe fifty years,” he said. “Give or take.”

Graphomania

Diane, when she was undergoing the same ordeal,

Jala

She was bidding for berths against a bunch of crazy-utopian kibbutzim,

Simile ouch

The girl on the page is indifferent, almost cruel.”

an oasis of uncomplicated affection.

Diane lived in a world even bigger than the Big House, a world where grief and joy moved as ponderously as tides, with the weight of an ocean behind them.

a sense of irretrievable loss akin to those dreams in which one searches futilely for the missing wallet, watch, prized possession, or sense of self.

Simile metaphor

the Martian drug

Personification

The Archway

Simile extended