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Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
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Spin (original 2005; edition 2005)

by Robert Charles Wilson

Series: Spin (1)

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3,8611563,161 (3.96)169
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

From the author of Axis and Vortex, the first Hugo Award-winning novel in the environmental apocalyptic Spin Trilogy...
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.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless diskâ??a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than insideâ??more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.
Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.
Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sunâ??and report back on what they find.
Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) appl
… (more)

Member:byrnedhead
Title:Spin
Authors:Robert Charles Wilson
Info:Tor Books (2005), Hardcover, 364 pages
Collections:Your library
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Work Information

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (2005)

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» See also 169 mentions

English (145)  French (7)  German (2)  Dutch (1)  Spanish (1)  All languages (156)
Showing 1-5 of 145 (next | show all)

Just a great story, interesting plot, well developed characters and cool opening premise. Just :-)

It's more novel and less sci-fi than you might expect, but don't let that discourage you. Read it, it deserved the Hugo, and deserves to be read more than once. ( )
  furicle | Aug 5, 2023 |
Fun, suspenseful, nerdy stuff! Very much a page-turner, as you try to figure out the central puzzle of the story. ( )
  grahzny | Jul 17, 2023 |
My second attempt at this book, and I realize why I DNF it previously - the first 100 pages are some interesting SF ideas mired in the tedious lives of people who are roles rather than characters. The Genius is there to explain (because all the interesting stuff happens off-stage); the Girl is there as love interest (how very 1950s); and the POV is there to be explained at, and to moon tepidly about the Girl. Having said that, it certainly does improve once the science-fiction comes to the fore and ends up being a worthwhile read (though the characters never do develop). ( )
  SChant | May 9, 2023 |
275
  freixas | Mar 31, 2023 |
This book has everything that should result in deserving my highest praise. It has alien megastructures, a planetary existential crisis, biotech, terraforming, vast timeframes (billions of years), post humanism, and Von Neumann machines. However, it also felt more soap opera than space opera to me with unrequited love, alcoholism, religious fanaticism, twins, workaholism, social unrest, incurable illness, secret forbidden love & corresponding mysterious love letters, and of course, daddy issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it didn’t deserve its Best Novel Hugo, it’s an impressive saga with continuous conflict and drama throughout the story. It’s honestly a personal preference that I prefer philosophical over psychological and wonder over drama. There is a lot packed into this book and it invests heavily in character development. In fact, one of my issues, is that we spend more time on father-son issues and the protagonist’s pining than we do on the grandiose ideas of space megastructures that creates temporal distortion. I also didn’t really connect with any of the characters – which again is my personal reaction rather than a structural issues with the book – I typically like extensive character development.

On the positive side, there are some extremely cool ideas with epic implications in this book. It has a fantastic opening (the stars go out!) that catches your attention and holds it for most of the book. It’s sweeping and apocalyptic yet finds a way to stay with a single set of characters (while many books of this scale do not). It also feels like a complete book with a full story-arc, while leaving plenty of unanswered questions for the following two books in the series (I bought all three up front).

An apocalyptic saga packed full of intriguing science ideas, but in my opinion, overwhelmed with the melodramatic interactions of tragic characters. ( )
  Kevin_A_Kuhn | Mar 25, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 145 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (4 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Robert Charles Wilsonprimary authorall editionscalculated
Brick, ScottNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gálvölgyi, JuditTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
SchĂĽtz, NeleCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Singelmann, KarstenTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:

From the author of Axis and Vortex, the first Hugo Award-winning novel in the environmental apocalyptic Spin Trilogy...
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.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless diskâ??a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than insideâ??more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.
Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.
Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sunâ??and report back on what they find.
Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) appl

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