Spin (Spin, #1)

by Robert Charles Wilson

Which put me among the majority of people who continued to conduct their lives as if the end of the world had not been announced.

It might have been different if doomsday had been calculated down to the day and hour. We all could have chosen our motifs, from panic to saintly resignation, and played out human history with a decent sense of timing and an eye on the clock.

So how do you build a life under the threat of extinction?

THE question, at least so far in the story.

The question defined our generation.

I’ll bet it did. Haha.

imagined myself saving lives, should the end of the world prove to be more than hypothetical and less than instantaneous.

Why save a life if all human life was due to be snuffed out?

So I coped. Jason coped. But many people had a much rougher time. Diane was one of them.

Haha not surprised. Know them well.

a tall blue afternoon,

Simile ? Unusual

Chilling.

Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, music that had been old even when Marcus Dupree was young,

Date? Question

When? Question

Haha not a problem unless it directly affects me. A parable for our times . We are facing a situation where some people are ringing an alarm bell very loudly, and other people are not hearing it. Some people hear an alarm and they hit the deck. Other people say ‘What is that noise in the background interfering with me enjoying my life?’ ~ Dr. Rachel Yehuda, in 2021 on the phenomenon of ecoanxiety https://forward.com/news/474402/why-climate-anxiety-is-familiar-to-some-jews/

when your life consists of scrounging enough biomass to feed yourself and your family?

It’s a lot to swallow, especially if you’ve been educated in a Moslem theocracy, an animist village, or a public school in the Bible Belt.

Cosmology 101,

the real bad news. Time itself is fluid and unpredictable.

People were starting to take it seriously, he said. And that was bad for business.

Haha is the CEO mocking the scientists? Or is Jason parodying the CEO position? Or is this an over-the-top moment?

the silver boxes, big as cities, hovering outside the Spin barrier, hundreds of miles above both poles of the Earth.

Simile

Perihelion Foundation.

President Walker’s Select Committee on Global and Environmental Crisis Planning.

I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.

Haha poetry IS profound.

Haha

Haha

Haha he became an “ace” (asexual)

I wondered how this yard work would look to what Jason was fond of calling the universe at large.

To the universe at large, Earth was a planet in near-stasis. Those blades of grass had arisen over centuries, as stately in their motion as the evolution of stars.

“Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.” “I can’t believe that!” said Alice. “Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.” Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~ Through the Looking Glass, ch. 5.

radiation filtered from a star in full-out runaway Spin,

A human body, she said, ought to contain love, hate, courage, cowardice, soul, spirit … not this slimy assortment of blue and red imponderables. Yes. And we ought not to be dragged unwilling into a harsh and deadly future.

Haha

NK rallies

New Kingdom Christin activism.

Where would she go? Question

I’m talking about eons.

Mars.”

Outside the Spin bubble, Mars had been “evolving” for millions of years since the October Event, warmed by the expanding sun.

Haha. Mee too

that would take—” He smiled.

The idea is to get enough organic action going to loosen up the carbon locked into the crust and respirate it into the atmosphere.

It was an audacious, even ludicrous, plan he had contrived, but try as I might, I could find no flaw in it!”

Haha Watson in a Sherlock Holmes story? Question

Inside the Spin bubble we don’t have time enough to figure out who the Hypotheticals are or why they’re doing this to us.

“Hypotheticals”—

extremophiles

everything else is fully proven technology. We know rockets work. We know organic evolution works. The only really new thing is our perspective.

“It’s almost like,” I said (testing the new word he had given me), “what the Hypotheticals are doing.”

Haha double simile

Haha ewww - cf. the frog in the warming water.