Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read, 19 May 2006
The Spin is the name given to a mysterious veil that one October night in the near future, shuts off the stars and isolates the earth, but not only that, for every minute that passes on Earth, three years pass outside the veil.
The three main characters deal with this in three very human ways. Jason tries to understand who created the Spin, and why, emersing himself in science. Jason's twin sister, Diane, follows the path of faith, spirituality and enlightenment. Tyler, childhood friend of both takes the middle road, dedicating himself to helping others, becoming a doctor and attempting to simply live life.
Wilson exposes the vulnerability we all feel when we look at the sky and wonder, "What if we're not alone?". When an event so powerfull as to dwarf every human endevour occurs, one cannot help but feel completely overwhelmed.
Spin is not hardcore SciFi, but good tale, well told. involving everything you'd expect from a good scifi book, but without the technobabble. Technical issues that do arise are well explained, as Tyler is just your everyday, cynical Joe, and requires a lot of explanation.
Spin is shortlisted for the 2006 Hugo awards, and well deserved so.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Time in a Bubble, 30 Nov 2006
`Hard' science fiction novels, all too often, get bogged down in their `gee-whiz' science, to the detriment of their story and characters. Happily, such is not the case here, as the characters of Tyler Dupree and Jason and Diane Lawton are well depicted, and their story, of just how they react when all the stars suddenly disappear one night, remains front and center throughout this book.
The `gee-whiz' science here is the `Spin', a membrane folded around the earth that slows the time rate experienced by its denizens by a factor of 100 million versus the `normal' universe. This has an implication: in just 40 Earth years, 4 billion years will have passed on the outside, our sun will be nearing the end of its life, and will have expanded to the point that an unprotected Earth would be immediately fried. Where did this membrane come from? Who put it there, and perhaps more importantly, why? What can be done about it? Wilson's characters, in one way or another, attempt to answer these questions, an involvement that shapes much of their lives, and the lives of everyone on Earth, who are effectively facing a true end of the world scenario.
Wilson presents his science in fairly small, well explained chunks - you don't need to be an actual rocket scientist to grasp what he is presenting, and this presentation doesn't interrupt the story flow, unlike all too many books that belong to this sub-genre.
While all the above is quite good, I found I was disappointed in the final answers the book provides. I saw most of the answers long before they were directly shown - not good for a concept of this grand scope. Nor was I greatly impressed by the philosophical points raised. In these two areas, I expected more from a book that took the Hugo award over some other books that are just as inventive and possibly have a deeper level of meaning than this one. The Martian, introduced about the middle of the book, was not characterized very well, nor was his described culture very believable - probably because his function was that of deus-ex-machina device, a way for Wilson to get to his `solution' space.
An entertaining read with some good concepts, but for my money the Hugo should have gone to John Scalzi's Old Man's War.
--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, 6 Oct 2007
Some SF writers use deliberately obscure language to presumably enhance the complexity of the ideas or the plot. The more difficulty you have undestanding what's going on, the more technically/scientifically complex the story is supposed to be. What happens, in fact, is that you plod through virtually unintelligible text to hopefully glean some kind of meaning.
What I appreciated in this novel is that it reads like a novel. It is clearly written, it respects the reader and it is very exciting!!
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