Full disclosure: Obviously Spin was published by my employer, Tor Books. In addition, it was ably edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Posted February 16, 2006 3:38 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

those darn huge alien artifacts, always messing up life on earth. Unless, of course, it's the huge atmosphere alien artifact on Mars in Total Recall, which was benevolent. But that was Mars, I suppose.

Seriously though, I just might have to pick up a copy. Sounds interesting.

Posted February 16, 2006 3:56 PM by Greg London

I loved A Hidden Place... As for Spin, I had read about it in Locus, and it sounded very interesting, but I thought I'd wait until the paperback was out. Thanks for the reminder.

By the way, could Making Light be nominated for the Hugo's fanzine award?

Posted February 16, 2006 3:57 PM by Serge

Geez, that sounds fantastic. I will have to email Dot about getting a copy for review.

Posted February 16, 2006 4:07 PM by Gabe

Unfortunately I keep mixing him up with Robert Anton Wilson. (Also, and with far less excuse: Walter Jon Williams with Lawrence Watt Evans. Worse, or perhaps better, still: Lerner & Loew with Leopold & Loeb.)

Fortunately, your description reminded me of Darwinia, which, of course, same guy! And it rocked! Also The Perseids and Other Stories!

Posted February 16, 2006 4:10 PM by Avram

I am now making bets with myself about what-is-really-going-on in Spin...

Posted February 16, 2006 4:22 PM by Serge

The Too-Many-Robert-Wilsons Problem has manifested itself in a variety of ways. The reference series Contemporary Authors once published an entire selection of review clips about the author of the Illuminatus! trilogy and Einstein On the Beach.

Posted February 16, 2006 4:49 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Spin probably is his best, but anyone who hasn't read any of Wilson's other books has lots of treats coming. I only started with (I think) Darwinia, but The Chronoliths was the one that really clicked. He really does well developed realistic human characters, almost like something you'd see in lit-fic (except not quite so dreary, usually).

Posted February 16, 2006 4:50 PM by Chuk

"Lerner & Loew with Leopold & Loeb."

Rodgers and Hammerstein with Roy and Dale?

Sounds like a fascinating premise for a novel; I'm gonna go see if I have any of those Borders coupons left.

Posted February 16, 2006 4:51 PM by Linkmeister

Awww, Patrick - it's the inside-baseball science-fiction-field bits that are the most fascinating to some of us (well...to me anyway). Of course ML is such heady stuff to begin with, that's saying something.

Take the lame NPRish long-time-listener, first-time-poster, intimidated-as-heck stuff as read.

Posted February 16, 2006 5:00 PM by Melody

...There's an opportunity for an 'all the Robert Wilsons' anthology here...

Posted February 16, 2006 5:13 PM by Marna

Well, that sounds like an endorsement.

That's not even the first recommendation I've heard for Spin.

So, ok, I'll put it on my list. Thanks for the tip.

Posted February 16, 2006 5:20 PM by Bob Oldendorf

If it's as good as Mysterium I'll buy it. It certainly sounds like a worthwhile read.

I have to say, Patrick, you write a mean blurb.

Posted February 16, 2006 5:25 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I've been on the edge on going to Worldcon (It would be my first -- I really should have gone to ConJose which was closer) and this just gives me more reason. I'll go check out the paperback.

Posted February 16, 2006 6:12 PM by Claude Muncey

Thanks for the tip off, Patrick. It goes onto my wishlist immediately. Darwinia was excellent, so anything that represents a big step up from there should be impressive.

Posted February 16, 2006 6:17 PM by Clifton Royston

Jason seeds near-space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun and report back on what they find.

Well, there goes the neighborhood...

Posted February 16, 2006 6:31 PM by Greg London

Many of the genre’s classics are in essence carefully-tuned machines designed to attract readers whose primary conscious loyalty is to rationalism, and lead them by a series of plausible contrivances to a sudden crescendo of mystical awe.

I just want to sit and admire this sentence for a while. Bravo!

(In other news, Robert Rathbun Wilson's widow died this week, six years after her husband did.)

Posted February 16, 2006 6:35 PM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

And its, if you are inclined to shop there, apparently part of Amazon's 4 books for the price of 3 sale (Many many other SF paperbacks being part of the sale, too, it must be said)

Posted February 16, 2006 6:56 PM by Paul

Ever since I happened across Harvest some years ago ("I liked the cover!"), Robert Charles Wilson has been one of my favorite SF writers. I've read not quite all of his works, but nearly all, and I can't believe I was so distracted as to not get around to buying and reading Spin yet.

He is just exactly my kind of SF writer, primarily because, as Patrick says, most of his works "turn on some kind of radical intrusion of the outrageously strange into the well-observed, realistically-portrayed lives of his (usually contemporary) characters."

Not that my recommendation means squat to anybody, but I did want to pipe up in favor of the man and his work. It's the least I could do for all the SF reading pleasure he has given me over the years.

Posted February 16, 2006 6:59 PM by Michael Weholt

Avram confuses me with Walter Jon Williams? That's a new one. I think I'm flattered.

I did get to read my own obituary once, when someone got me confused with Karl Edward Wagner. That was very weird.

Posted February 16, 2006 7:04 PM by Lawrence Watt Evans

Not to take anything away from Spin, which really is great, but I thought The Chronoliths was just as good (or maybe a very small titch less good).

Posted February 16, 2006 7:05 PM by Mike Kozlowski

Welly, well. I have as yet read none of Wilson's stuff, and I see that King County Library System has several copies of Spin on hand. And as I only got round to Fire Upon the Deep at the beginning of the year and had my socks rocked, I am now looking forward to a treat. Lucky me. Heck, at the very least, it's gotta be better than Jim Butcher and Chris Bunch.

Posted February 16, 2006 7:08 PM by Ulrika O'Brien

Ooops. We weren't doing the invidious comparisons.

Posted February 16, 2006 7:09 PM by Ulrika

Oh, yay! My horribly stuffy university has a copy, and request is in. And more amusing, listings for four different Robert Charles Wilsons.

Posted February 16, 2006 7:54 PM by Soli

I'm not nominating or voting, but I'll move Spin to the top of the piles.

I like a lot of RCWilson's books, but I thought Darwinia was a cheat.

Posted February 16, 2006 8:24 PM by Marilee

Not as if it needs more recommendation than that, but FWIW, I am firmly behind everything Patrick says on this. Spin is the best novel -- not just counting SF -- I have read in the last year and it is easily Wilson's best book.

In general I think that RCW deserves far more attention than he gets: he's produced a number of excellent, nuanced novels that seem to have gone without trace (especially A Hidden Place, Gypsies, and A Bridge of Years), the only common element being that they all had truly hideous cover art. For stuff still in print, Darwinia and Blind Lake are both excellent as well.

To cross over to the topic on "What Not to Say to Your Favorite Authors When You Meet Them," I met RCW once at Worldcon. "Hi. I really enjoy your books," I said. "Oh!" he replied, eyes widening in surprise. "Thank you!" It's like no one had ever said it to him before, which was likely not true as his novel was up for a Hugo that year. Maybe it's just that Canadian modesty thing.

Posted February 16, 2006 9:23 PM by Alex Cohen

Copy ordered, sir!

Posted February 16, 2006 9:25 PM by Brad DeLong

Hmm. Perhaps I have found airplane fodder for next week.

Posted February 16, 2006 9:27 PM by Leigh Butler

I am another accidental RCW fan. I picked up Darwinia because I liked the name, the cover-art & the back-cover blurb, then had to buy & read all of his others.

His books are low-key, but interesting. To grossly generalize, I think there's usually one central & usually fairly simple novel idea to each book, and the book explores it while telling you a story. There aren't any gimmicks or twist-in-the-tale endings (a statement sure to produce some counterexamples now). Like I say, low-key. He reminds me Joe Haldeman in that.

I liked Darwinia a lot, and The Chronoliths was also excellent. Ditto A Hidden Place. (I didn't think much of Bios, but that's the only one I haven't liked a lot.)

Anyway, Spin was great. I am the world's worst book reviewer so if I tell you it was the uhhhh emotional depth of the characters & the story more than any great novelty to the setting that made it interesting please try not to laugh at me. He does a lot with the fairly-familiar isolated Earth scenario.

Posted February 16, 2006 9:49 PM by Jacob Davies

What an odd feeling, just having made similar (if far inferior) comments about Spin elsewhere, to click over to Making Light and find this. And while I'm under no illusion as to the weight of some random lurker's recommendations, Spin really is the best pure SF novel of the past decade (in part, certainly, because it works on many more levels than just straight hard SF), Wilson's best work (which is saying a lot, in this reader's opinion), and far and away the best of the novels I read last year. It's a book that makes me want to say, "Well, you aren't really an SF fan, then," to aficionados who haven't read it, and, "This will change your mind," to anybody who believes the field can't produce worthwhile fiction.

Posted February 16, 2006 10:44 PM by Noel

I mentioned on the Boskone thread, on the question of What Not To Say to Famous Authors, that I'd made an arse of myself on meeting certain famous authors.

Robert Charles Wilson was my first unfortunate victim, and it was with the immortal question, "Hey, aren't you the Robert Charles Wilson who wrote the Illuminati! books?"

He gently corrected me, and I imploded with mortification, and apologised.

It is *some* comfort that I'm not the only one ever to make this stupid mistake.

This Spin book, though, sounds tremendous. Phwoar!

Posted February 16, 2006 10:54 PM by Adrian Bedford

Upstream Serge asked if Making Light was eligible for Fanzine Hugo. I think that's an interesting question; Our Hosts know what it's like to edit a damn good fanzine; does running Making Light feel like doing, say, Telos?

Somewhere in here is the Terry Carr bit about 1980's xeroxed fanzines -- he thought they were every bit as real as those mimeographed on twiltone. What mattered, Terry said, was to use the cheapest way available to communicate the ideas. Well, here we are. We've found a nearly frictionfree way of communicating the ideas...

Posted February 17, 2006 4:05 AM by Rich McAllister

At the moment blogs, and fanzines without a print form, aren't eligible for the fanzine Hugo. Though there has been at least one winner with a pretty rudimentary print form.

{FLAME ON} It is of course, the content that counts, not the formatting. And I know that I am shouting with the voice of somebody whose ancient and no-longer relevant handcraft is dying. Nevertheless, my personal view is that we shouldn't give out our field's top award, one that's explicitly for print fanzines, to fanzines that don't display some rudimentary understanding of how to use words, graphics and art together.

I won't link to the Hugo-winning fanzine I'm thinking of. It has a 'print form'. The PDF issue in front of me dumps the website text to a two column format, adds a title, headers and footers, and a headline style. It does nothing else. There is no art. The text finishes half-way down page 43. There are headers alone at the bottom of pages, and half-sentences alone at the top of pages. The margins are the same left and right and the footer is the same on left and right pages. This sort of standard of print fanzine was quite common when I first did fanzines, but has mostly been replaced by LiveJournal. It seems to me obvious that it was the quality of the website, rather than the print zine, that resulted in the award. {FLAME OFF}

Should we find a better way to update the Best Fanzine award to encompass blogs, so that fabulous blogs like Making Light, that do seem to me to be delivering the authentic fanzine experience online, could be eligible? Yes. How? I have no earthly idea. It seems clear to me that the print fanzine isn't where it's at any more; there are some excellent ones but I get fewer each year. But lots of Hugo-smoffing type people have been thinking about this, and I don't think any of the suggestions that have come up so far really work. "Best fanblog" perhaps?

Other awards: some blogs might be eligible for the Nova, but the restrictions on electronic forms are pretty tight (specifically, a requirement for discrete issues). Unlike the Hugos, there's no serious risk of the fanzine Nova ever going to something that doesn't "feel like a fanzine". I don't know whether the FAAN awards include blogs; like the Nova, they're voted on by a tight, well-informed community.

Posted February 17, 2006 6:30 AM by Alison Scott

Aloson, looking at the supposedly professional content that's out there on the web,eyes straining againt grey text on gray, recoiling from the putrescent colour-schemes of some sites, and knowing how little attention gets paid to even carefully argued explanations of why a site design is fundamentally broken (and the user not using ntrnt xplrr is an excuse which warrants disemvowelment on sight), I have to wonder whether the medium is yet of sufficient quality to warrant a Blog Hugo.

Posted February 17, 2006 7:59 AM by Dave Bell

I find myself noticing that, after featuring Tyler Dupree's experience of the Big Blackout in the first paragraph, the blurb says not a word about what *he* did afterward. I wonder if this is significant.

(I suppose the only possible response to that is "Read the book and find out, already...")

Posted February 17, 2006 8:30 AM by Paul A.

Even when he swings and misses (to continue the baseball metaphor) RCW keeps your attention because he's always trying to put the ball in a new part of the field.

(I loved Harvesst and wish someone : ) would bring it back into print)

Posted February 17, 2006 8:53 AM by John Farrell

Should we find a better way to update the Best Fanzine award to encompass blogs, so that fabulous blogs like Making Light, that do seem to me to be delivering the authentic fanzine experience online, could be eligible?

Yes, Alison, there is a way. Let's all converge to LAcon, dressed like mobsters and gun molls. Once we've found the Hugo Committee, we'll say that Ma Teresa wants us to take them for a ride.

Posted February 17, 2006 8:59 AM by Serge

And, no, I'm not suggesting that I want to be the one to dress like a gun moll. For one thing, who ever heard of a bow-legged gun moll?

Posted February 17, 2006 9:02 AM by Serge

I'm also a big fan of RCW's Harvest, John. Fortunately I still have a paperback copy. Have you tried to find it used on the Net? Amazon's got a few (paperback and hardback).

Posted February 17, 2006 11:56 AM by Rob Thornton

Dave Bell seems to think that the existence of lousy-looking websites means that no website is Hugo-worthy, but I don't see that as a difference from print fanzines. The word "crudzine" was invented for a reason.

Posted February 17, 2006 12:03 PM by Rich McAllister

That sounds like a book both my husband and I could get into, I'll have to lay hands on a copy.

I would never dare mix up Mr. Watt-Evans with anybody. The aforementioned husband would throw tomatoes at me.

Posted February 17, 2006 12:09 PM by Cynthia Wood

Rob, I do still have it, lovingly stowed away in my SF bookcase. It would be great if it was available on shelves to reach new readers. My experience with Borders and B&N is that they tend only to carry whatever RCW's latest is.

Posted February 17, 2006 12:57 PM by John Farrell

Alex Cohen writes that A Hidden Place and Wilson's other early books had truly hideous covers... Wasn't the cover by Jim Burns? It was a different style than that of the usual book art, but a style that suited the story's tone.

Posted February 17, 2006 1:54 PM by Serge

Mirabile dictu, the Hawai'i State Library System has multiple copies of Spin, Darwinia and The Chronoliths. None of them happen to be at my local branch, but they're all on my list awaiting interlibrary transfers.

Posted February 17, 2006 1:59 PM by Linkmeister

Well, Spin is now on the New Book shelf at the local library, so I'll have to investigate. Darwinia certainly had some interesting ideas. I was a little disappointed by The Harvest,

[ROT13 "SPOILER"]

qhr gb gur ynpx bs nzovthvgl. Bar fvqr jnf fb pyrneyl gur "evtug" bar. Vg jnfa'g cbffvoyr gb ernyyl flzcnguvmr jvgu gur bgure fvqr'f cbvag bs ivrj, jvgu bar boivbhf rkprcgvba.

Oh, and Jesus gets killed in Passion of the Christ. (Hat tip to Penny Arcade.)

Posted February 17, 2006 3:22 PM by mds

This sounds like an excellent book that I must read very very soon.

But there's this little jabbering voice at the back of my head going, "Dude! It's just like what happened to the planet Krikkit in Life, the Universe, and Everything! Only in reverse! And done in a serious novel instead of a primarily funny one!"

...is it just me?

Posted February 17, 2006 3:39 PM by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little

Thanks for the reminder. I have the SFBC edition at home, and I'll move it up to the top of the pile so it gets read before the nominating deadline. If it's truly a major leap above The Chronoliths, which I liked a whole lot, that's impressive.

2005 seems to have been a strong year. I just finished Charles Stross' Accelerando, which I loved, and I still have Gaiman's Anansi Boys and Martin's A Feast For Crows waiting for me.

Posted February 17, 2006 4:23 PM by Mark Bernstein

"...is it just me?"

Not at all - FWIW it made me also think of Adams (but I will admit to being something of a genre ignoramus - the last sci-fi book I really enjoyed was Timescape by Gregory Benford). Will make a point of tracking down Spin.

Posted February 17, 2006 6:28 PM by Little Mr Square Eyes

Serge: Gun-molls are bow-legged in winter, because an ice-pick carried in the stocking-top is chilly.

Posted February 17, 2006 7:48 PM by clew

Many of the genre’s classics are in essence carefully-tuned machines designed to attract readers whose primary conscious loyalty is to rationalism, and lead them by a series of plausible contrivances to a sudden crescendo of mystical awe.

Bill Higgins beat me to it as far as singling out that sentence, but I was going to say:

I wish I'd said that.

Posted February 17, 2006 8:48 PM by Robert L

Got my copy of Spin. I'm starting it as soon as I'm done with John Hemry's last JAG-in-space novel, Against All Enemies. (Yeah, it is the last one, not the latest... I'm bummed and not just because it's one of the few military-SF novels that doesn't make me angry.)

Posted February 18, 2006 10:37 AM by Serge

Gee, somebody at Locus reviewed it, but I haven't seen/reviewed any of his stuff since Darwinia back in '98 (shameless hint, hint). These days the boys seem to get most of the SF -- though I have seen some books with Barrier situations.

Posted February 18, 2006 11:23 AM by Faren Miller

How does a book wind up with this or that reviewer at Locus, Faren? Does it involve arm-wrestling in some cases?

Posted February 18, 2006 11:56 AM by Serge

Great-- I know what to read next! (I liked Wilson's The Chronoliths, but it seemed like the work of an author with great potential rather than one who had arrived at the height of his powers.)

Posted February 18, 2006 2:37 PM by Matt McIrvin

...I think that when I saw the hardcover of Spin on the shelves, the initial set-up reminded me enough of Greg Egan's Quarantine and Robert Reed's Beneath the Gated Sky that it didn't grab me as particularly novel. (In fact, Reed is the author who I keep confusing with Robert Charles Wilson, for some reason.)

But it's the execution that matters in these things, and I like Wilson, so I'll be sure to give it a look. I wonder why stories that start with "one day, the stars went out" are so popular; either it's a basic archetype, or these guys all want to know what happened after the end of "The Nine Billion Names of God", or maybe both...

Posted February 18, 2006 2:48 PM by Matt McIrvin

I have seen some books with Barrier situations.

How many of those are there around, Faren? There's Farmer's Walls of Terra, over 30 years ago. More recently, Robert Metzger's Picoverse dealt with humans creating artificial copies of our Universe, some no bigger than the solar system, and the smaller the pocket universe and the faster time flows inside it. Anything else?

Posted February 18, 2006 2:51 PM by Serge

I agree wholeheartedly. Just read SPIN last week, and it is a an amazing book -- a rich human story, true sense of wonder, and an incredible panorama of scientific extrapolation. And, the ending is not a copout either.

It's got my vote.

Posted February 18, 2006 2:58 PM by Vera Nazarian

Serge: Do check out Greg Egan's Quarantine, then, if you haven't read it. It's a very unusual take on the "why" of it, and the plot gets deep into quantum mechanics. Egan never seems afraid to challenge the reader with difficult scientific and philosophical ideas, though IMHO his general writing and characterization ability was weaker in his earlier novels (but has improved.)

Posted February 18, 2006 3:29 PM by Clifton Royston

Serge, I finished re-reading Egan's Diaspora last night for today's book group, which I am not at because I have what is probably stomach flu. I sent them an email about the book, though, because I bet most of them complain it's too hard and I thought I could guess the parts that needed explaining.

Next month: Dangerous Visions

Posted February 18, 2006 4:09 PM by Marilee

Thanks, Clifton, Marilee... Say, didn't Peter Hamilton do a Barrier story? Yeah, Pandora's Star, I think it was called.

Posted February 18, 2006 4:22 PM by Serge

For the longest time I wouldn't read Robert Charles Wilson. I wasn't boycotting his work, and had possibly even picked up a book or two, but never got the energy to read it. I has the (mis)perception that his books were perhaps well-plotted in an action-y kind of way, and having some intriguing science-fictional ideas/concepts, but probably rather thin on the character/human level. I have no idea where I got this idea, though-- was it based on the cover art? Or some kind of mix up with another author?

Because as soon as I started the Chronoliths I was hooked. And I wasn't enjoying the books in spite of the character development or lack thereof (something that's true of any number of sf books that I like but don't love). Rather, it was precisely because of the richness of characters-- and still mixed in with suspense and big big ideas. Indeed, after having read his other books now, including the sublime _Spin_, I've come to the conclusion that Wilson may be one of the best-- if not the very best-- at writing truly rich characters in our beloved genre (and beyond it).

(As much as I loved Spin, though, The Chronoliths remains my favorite; however, this may be because it was my first)

Posted February 18, 2006 10:45 PM by Molly

"Many of the genre’s classics are in essence carefully-tuned machines designed to attract readers whose primary conscious loyalty is to rationalism, and lead them by a series of plausible contrivances to a sudden crescendo of mystical awe."

It is indeed an admirable sentence, and makes me wonder if one can compare some SF to some of the intensely rational sorts of Buddhist ideas.

My sense of RCW has long been of compassionate mystical writing; when I read him I am reminded of Sturgeon and Pangborn. Unfortunately, this may be why his genuine virtues are to some extent lost on me. Or perhaps I am just out of sympathy with midwestern US culture.

Posted February 19, 2006 2:13 AM by Randolph Fritz

I see that today's update of Locus's site displays the cover for Spin.

Posted February 19, 2006 7:56 AM by Serge

Serge: Pandora's Star has a sequel, Judas Unchained, and my review will be in the March Locus. I got those morsels of genuine SF because the publisher sent them directly to me (the first volume in its pb reprint). My perception is that for reviewing, the guys get most of the science fiction -- unless it has "weird"/fantastical elements that put it in my supposed province. I used to get a broader spectrum, but then I also used to work in-house rather than have them send me stuff.
I do get a lot of very interesting reading in those packages, but now and then it's good to branch out.

Posted February 19, 2006 6:48 PM by Faren Miller

Recommendation noted, and I had a re-discovered Borders gift card burning a hole in my pocket so I picked it up this weekend and read it.

Awesome-ville. I love the way that events of such magnitude are followed along from "ground level" (as it were). And I couldn't stop recommending it to people even as I was in the middle of it.

Posted February 19, 2006 7:18 PM by Fuzzy Gerdes

A rec from Patrick, a rec from Michael (yes, Mike, some of us do care), and a review I read a while back (maybe in S&SF?) that I found interesting...I guess I need to add another book to the "to be read as soon as possible" pile, which is, of course, about to topple over off of the nightstand onto the carpet by my bed...

Posted February 19, 2006 7:28 PM by punkrockhockeymom

Took my copy of Spin with me this weekend and finished it in two days. Can't remember the last time that happened. It's really good. Like, wow.

Posted February 20, 2006 1:47 AM by Madeleine Robins

So, that's how it works wih the Locus reviews, Faren? No arm-wrestling? Oh well... Anyway, besides the Egan & Hamilton & Metzger books, have there been other Barrier books out these days? Is this one of those coincidences of the collective authorial lizard brain?

Posted February 20, 2006 8:42 AM by Serge

The earliest "Barrier book" that comes to mind is Brian N. Ball's 1965 Sundog, in which Enigmatic Alien Observers have inadvertently arranged themselves (or their sensors) to form a barrier that blocks human attempts at interstellar exploration. Then there was David Brin's short "The Crystal Spheres"....

Posted February 20, 2006 10:13 AM by Dave Langford

Thanks, Dave. And one could say that the movie Highlander 2 was also a Barrier story, but it really was a worthless piece of crap.

Posted February 20, 2006 10:39 AM by Serge

Blew through Spin last night in record time. Reminded me a small bit of A Mote in God's Eye. not sure why.

But one quibble. (and minor spoiler warning)

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I didn't get the sense that Simon, Diane's first husband, was the cult leader. He seemed to be more of a follower. Guess I'll have to go back and look it up.

Posted February 20, 2006 11:22 AM by hrc

Reminded me a small bit of A Mote in God's Eye.

I guess, like in Banks' Against a Dark Background, the barrier is normal space. Though in Mote's case, there is an exit through hyperspace....

Posted February 20, 2006 2:21 PM by NelC

I made an effort to plug Spin at a couple of panels at Boskone this week, and I just posted a comment over at Calpundit Monthly plugging it, so I might as well add to the praise for it here.

I wrote a book log entry about it back when the hardcover first came out, and I was still regularly updating the book log, and as I said there, I think it deserves to win every award the SF field can throw at it. The giant, cosmic, sense-of-wonder stuff is every bit as good as anything you'll find in the field, and the interpersonal relationships and human interactions are every bit as real and emotionally affecting as anything you'll find on the mainstream shelves. That's a rare combination.

It's a fantastic book, head and shoulders and most of the torso above anything else I read last year.

Posted February 20, 2006 2:27 PM by Chad Orzel

But one quibble. (and minor spoiler warning)

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I didn't get the sense that Simon, Diane's first husband, was the cult leader. He seemed to be more of a follower. Guess I'll have to go back and look it up.

He wasn't. The jacket copy was, um, inaccurate. Not like that's ever happened before.

Posted February 20, 2006 2:59 PM by Madeleine Robins

I remember my favorite combo writer Upton Sinclair Lewis, Half of him ran for governor of California and the other half won a Nobel Prize.

Posted February 20, 2006 3:30 PM by Vaughn

I remember my favorite combo writer Upton Sinclair Lewis

I got that wrong on a history test once. Fortunately, I was sitting right there when the teacher was grading it, and he gave me a chance to correct myself.

--Mary Aileen

Posted February 20, 2006 6:16 PM by Mary Aileen Buss

I can absolutely see why you'd be wary of advertising something like this here, and my voice mayn't count (as I've posted maybe a grand total of four posts here in the last year or so), but hell, if it's got a premise as awesome as this, never hesitate to advertise! I just ordered it through my local amazon website (that would be amazon.de; they DO ship English books too, although I'm going to have to wait "one to three weeks") and I can't wait to read this. Few summaries make me say, "wow, I wished I had thought of that", but this one... yeah. Damn.

Also, I'm one of those lit-fic readers, but I heartily agree with what Chuk implies: that too many seem to confuse realism with being dreary and depressive. Deep characters are good, but deep needn't mean they were rejected by their mother when they had a homosexual relationship with their father at the age of thirteen (and then moved to San Francisco where they acquired a good number of depressing and disgusting diseases). Plus, I really like it when STUFF HAPPENS, and it sounds like a lot of stuff's going to happen in here.

In closing, do satellites really age in space? I hope Mr Wilson researched that ;P (I would suspect that aging for things made from metal would mean mostly erosion/rust) (but I'm also sure I'll find out in one to three weeks)

Posted February 21, 2006 8:46 PM by Daniel

Daniel: In closing, do satellites really age in space? I hope Mr Wilson researched that...

They age in space when something like a million years are passing by out there while only a few minutes have passed on Earth. "Space erosion" might not be as immediately apparent as the action of running water on soft dirt, but there's nevertheless a lot of wear & tear going on out there. (See: the tails of comets.) You're going to want to use your heavy duty aluminum foil if you want your space object to last anything like a Spinnishly length of time out there.

Posted February 22, 2006 6:20 AM by Michael Weholt

Thanks Michael, I'll keep that in mind for the next time I have to send satellites beyond a magical time border! ;)

Posted February 22, 2006 8:14 AM by Daniel Klein

Remember how long after Challenger it took before shuttle flights resumed? I think they then went back to some satellite that contained materials put up there to test how well they'd do in space. They saw that space definitely is a harsh place. Makes one wonder about those generation-ship stories of yore and how they probably would have had to replace the whole hull a few times...

Posted February 22, 2006 8:31 AM by Serge

do satellites really age in space?

yes, but if they can wait a little longer before they start collecting social security, their monthly benefit will be larger than if they start collecting early.

Actually, electronics in space are constantly exposed to radiation and pretty much crap out after a while (I'm not sure what the mean time between crap-outs is, but I think the useful life of satelites can be measured in years counted on the fingers of both hands).

Radiation shielding is heavy, so electronics are often lofted naked, but designed with redundancy so that when one circuit fails, another circuit can take over. This still increases the weight, a single diode with an atmosphere of radiation shielding must be replaced with four diodes and wiring to interconnect them when in orbit. Also, transistors are generally designed to be physically larger than your cutting edge integrated circuits so that when a bit of radiation hits it, it has a better chance of holding its data and not getting fried. which means your integrated circuits in space are much, much slower and at least 10 years older as far as cutting edge technology goes.

I was a rocket scientist in a previous life, but was buried deep in the lab, so I wasn't privvy to all the reasons behind certain decisions.

But the piece I know is that electronics will slowly die in space over the span of a decade or so. Radiation will eventually fry the circuits.

As for what the outside will look like, I dunno, I don't know what the mechanical engineers had to deal with.

As a completely unrelated side note, I was watching something on TV about a former oil rig that was converted into a rocket launching platform. A commercial company sails this behemoth down to the equator to get a little extra "oomph" from the earth's spin, and launch satelites from the middle of the pacific ocean. Apparently, it is enough of an advantage that they've set some records for heaviest payload put into orbit. This isn't science fiction. THey've actually launched at least a dozen satelites.

They also said that the launch failure rate industry-wide is something insane like 1 in 4 launches goes kablewey.

At a billion dollars per launch, thats an expensive kerblewey.

Posted February 22, 2006 11:11 AM by Greg London

crap, it's called Sea Launch, and they have a freakin web site. Call now operators standing by.

Posted February 22, 2006 11:16 AM by Greg London

they also mention a satelite they're launching that has a service life of 15 years... Well, I can still count them on my fingers anyway. the rest of you may have to include some toes.

Posted February 22, 2006 11:19 AM by Greg London

In a previous life, I worked at Space Systems/Loral, doing ground control software for various spacecraft, e.g. Intelsat 7, GOES I-M, N-Star a & b.

The thing that wears out sooner with most orbital spacecraft is the fuel they need to keep their gyroscopes running and the command and telemetry radios pointed at the ground station. They're built with a fixed life-span, sent up with enough fuel to live that long, and lifted out of their allocated orbits when they reach the end of their lives to make room for their replacements.

I was told that a lot of them are sent on final trajectories that eventually land them in the lunar L4 and L5 points. I don't know how long it takes for them to get there.

Posted February 22, 2006 1:31 PM by j h woodyatt

final trajectories that eventually land them in the lunar L4 and L5 points.

Also known as Earth's Garbage Dump. Real estate prices here are cheap, but you don't want to be downwind on a hot summer day....

Posted February 22, 2006 1:44 PM by Greg London

Thanks for the recommendation. Picked it up, blew through it with stops only because "OMG I don't want to read any more if it means I'm getting closer to the end."

Really excellent. A novel with people, sensawonda, Big Ideas, and grammatical sentences.

Referencing earlier comments, it reminded me more of the Benford man vs. machine universe, but I do remember Mote giving me that same toe-curling sense of deep time (the age of the Moties) and Big Ideas.

Thanks for publishing this book!

Posted February 22, 2006 4:57 PM by DaveL

I'm talking to rocket scientists/rocket software developers. How cool is that? ;P

I keep underestimating the effect radiation has. Still, something that woodyatt said seems to raise another Spin question: if most satellites are designed to leave the Earth's orbit at the end of their lives and drift toward the moon, why would the satellites fall from the sky? But I'll stop discussing a book I haven't read now ;P One to three weeks minus 2 days.

Why can't I live in a country where I can walk into a bookstore and pick up an English language book that doesn't say "Irving" or "Brown" on it? (okay, to be fair, one of our larger chains here actually had Gaiman's Anansi Boys in their shelves)

Posted February 22, 2006 8:14 PM by Daniel

Meanwhile, irradiated or not, Voyagers 1 & 2 keep on truckin'.

Those are amazing little spacecraft.

Posted February 22, 2006 9:25 PM by Linkmeister

A little more about the Voyagers:

Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock and entered the heliosheath in December 2004, at 94 AU. It is expected that Voyager 1 will reach the heliopause in about 2015.

Voyager 2 could cross the termination shock between 2008 and 2010 and reach the heliopause about 10 years later.

Posted February 22, 2006 9:27 PM by Linkmeister

The Voyager probes... Goodness, that reminds me of our tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early 1985. Not a guided tour. A backstage tour, with someone who worked there. That was neat, especially coming to the building where they have a room that recreates the vacuum of space: the room was open, and, sitting there was Galileo.

Back to the Voyagers... There was a scene near the end of Stephen Baxter's Titan. It is far in the future, so far that our sun has become a red giant. And we are shown a Voyager probe still drifing Out There, but it's been reduced to a flimsy origami.

Posted February 22, 2006 10:49 PM by Serge

Makes one wonder about those generation-ship stories of yore and how they probably would have had to replace the whole hull a few times...

I suspect that generation ships would have it much easier than local satellites; we keep finding more \stuff/ out in what was once called "interstellar space", but it's still pretty empty compared to the area inside the asteroid belt.

Posted February 22, 2006 11:30 PM by CHip

Daniel - Given that Germany is a big place and I've only been to a small bit of it, I can point out that Dussmann in Berlin has a reasonably good selection of English language books. I don't know how useful that would be to you, though.

When I was in Germany, I was surprised to see big piles of The Corrections (which I had brought with me from the US) in both English and German in the stores.

Posted February 22, 2006 11:55 PM by Larry Brennan

Also Daniel; knowing Germany's laws about denying 'the Holocaust' as it's called these days, I'm assuming those piles of "Irving" books aren't examples of the works of David Irving.

However, I'm heroically (ok, wimpishly) resisting the purchase of new (or 2nd-hand) books. For some while now I've been trying to cram all my dear-departed parents' decades of household accumulation, and the contents of the family home of my late husband, and my own (mumblety)-years of accumulated books'n'stuff all into one habitable space of some sort. For a while back there I draped some surplus soft material & bedclothes over a neat(ish) pile of gomi to use as a bed-replacement because getting to any of the proper bedsteads wasn't practical.

Book-avoidance isn't just for space & inventory reasons, tho'. It can be tempting in the extreme to retire into the world of a good book and ignore difficult reality. Sometime before 2010, I shyly hope for 'a room of my own' which isn't purely inside my mind.

Posted February 23, 2006 1:40 AM by Epacris

Ah, yes, Titan. That came out while I was at university, dealing with the simultaneous problems of a) producing a Beckett play, b) an behaviour research project c) finals and d) acute appendicitis. I saw this shiny new book in Blackwell's and thought "Aha! A new Stephen Baxter! I'll treat myself, because I feel a bit overwrought and need cheering up."

Hah.

Posted February 23, 2006 4:56 AM by ajay

Now, ajay, who is foolish enough to start a Baxter book when in need of cheering up?

Actually, his books usually ARE optimistic. They show that, no matter what, even if the Universe ends, Life Endures. If one takes the long view. In the short view though, not so good.

Posted February 23, 2006 6:26 AM by Serge

True, CHip, there IS less crap floating around in interstellar space than within the Belt. As for that satellite visited by the shuttle after flights resumed, I think it had a very thin skin, and I presume that a generation ship would be thick-skinned. One thing though, space is Hell on paint jobs.

Posted February 23, 2006 6:30 AM by Serge

I'm guessing that Wilson's "Big Blackout" is supposed to cause what spacecraft operators would call an upset event, i.e. a total loss of avionics control and telemetry. That would prevent them from being lifted out of their orbits to make room for their replacements, and many of them— particularly, the ones in low-earth orbits— would decay into the atmosphere, like SkyLab did.

Posted February 23, 2006 6:33 AM by j h woodyatt

Linkmeister,

irradiated or not, Voyagers 1 & 2 keep on truckin'

Impressive. I did a little poking around and couldn't find any technical data about the electronics and/or shielding in Voyager. It launched in 1977, which means construction must have began a couple years earlier. the 8080 processor was released in 1974. Reading the voyager site, I can't tell if it's running with an actual integrated processor or if it is a state machine with individual gates and flops.

One advantage of the older, older technology is that it is big compared to the deep sub micron stuff being built today. And a big transistor is able to handle a lot more radiation.

Apparently they have a tape drive on board voyager, which would be pretty robust against radiation as well.

The link you provided says they shielded some of the components from radiation. I don't think anything I ever worked on ever got shielding that I know of.

Apparently they have enough electrical power from their nuclear power plants to operate some instruments until 2020. thats nearly a 44+ year (musket ball) mission, which is quite impressive.

Makes me think about doing my own Salvage 1 operation. Anyone have an old cement mixer truck? Oh, never mind.

Posted February 23, 2006 8:58 AM by Greg London

re: replacing the hull every few years.

read some sci-fi story where they solved that problem by using a block of ice as a shield against particles as the ship flew through space. Then they'd just replace the ice every once in a while. I guess they figured water would be easier to find than, say, sheet metal aluminum.

Most of the old plans for space stations had the stations built from a processing plant on the moon, and the outside layer of the space station was aggregated moon rock, which was intended to help shield the crew from radiation and protect the hull from micrometeorites and what not.

Of course, in a generation ship, it won't matter that you've got the equivalent of a small moon wrapped around the outside of your ship. You've got a completely self sustaining biospere and all the time in the world. So if the extra weight prevents you from accelerating as fast as you'd like, who cares, its the not about the destination, its about the journey, right?

Posted February 23, 2006 9:05 AM by Greg London

Greg, I think that the ice-covered hull was in a Mike Moscoe military-SF novel from a few years back.

Posted February 23, 2006 9:33 AM by Serge

it's about the journey... Suuuure. Are we there yet?

Posted February 23, 2006 9:34 AM by Serge

Epacris - I'd bet tht the "Irving" that Daniel is referring to would be John Irving, who rotated the bulk of his characters through Vienna.

One of my German texts had a really good audio companion that included interviews with people in Vienna about what they thought was representative of their city, and one woman summoned up John Irving, right in between the Stefansdom and the Riesenrad. I've even got a couple of German translations of his books.

I don't know who this Brown person would be, though. Daniel, a clue please?

Posted February 23, 2006 9:53 AM by Larry Brennan

Serge, I don't remember it as a military sf story, but I could be wrong. What I do remember is some odd bits and pieces:

Earth launched some old-school generation ships first. A bunch of them. Then, someone figured out a warp drive or hyperdrive or some such thing, so they sent out some more ships that arrived to the same destinations that the generation ships were going. But they arrived before the generation ships.

This generation ship comes into orbit around a planet to fix its ice-shield. When the ship launched, the planet was uninhabited, but when they get their, they find that a hyperdrive ship had already gotten there and turned the planet into something habitable.

The generation ship pulls some sheets of ice out of the ocean using a space elevator approach, a long cable dropped down from the ship in orbit to the surface of the planet. Unfortunately, some guy from the planet is standing on the ice when the reel the cable in. They do it so quickly that the guy is knocked over and pulled into orbit with the ice and killed.

I think a bunch of the crew of the generation ship is in hibernation. The crew that is awake has a bru-ha-ha about whether they should stay on this planet, with it's lush, green vegetation, open skies, and fresh air, or whether they should continue on to their original destination, another 50 years or so down the pipe, stuffed into a tin can of a ship with recycled air and steel walls painted blue for a sky. They decide to stay.

The planet has a political system that I would call "interesting". The president is chosen at random and the person selected is basically "drafted". Same with all other government positions. The captain of the generation ship decides he wants to be president, and somehow manages to pull it off.

Meanwhile, there's a side story going on about some guy who's putting science equipment into the ocean, but all the sensors in one area keep getting mangled and destroyed. The book ends with the captain of the ship still president of the planet in an unprecedented second term, and some sort of lobster-type creatures coming out of the ocean to attack the humans.

There wasn't any shooting in the entire novel that I can remember. No clue what the title was or who wrote it. Something I read years ago.

We could play a game of "Name that book", but I'd have no way to know if the person was right or not.

Posted February 23, 2006 10:44 AM by Greg London

Hmm... You and I are thinking of another Moscoe novel, Greg. The one I had in mind is The Price of Peace ("In the wake of the war between the Society of Humanity and the Unity Party, military ship captain Inez Umboto and Lieutenant Terrance "Trouble" Tordon patrol the universe. But in the no-man's-land of Rim Space, pirates roam freely. And Umboto and Tordon will soon learn that enforcing the peace can be just as expensive as fighting the war...")

In it, the military cover their starships with a layer of ice as shielding againt beam weapons and regular ballistic crap.

Posted February 23, 2006 11:10 AM by Serge

You wouldn't need to cover the entire ship in ice, of course: you'd just build the ship as narrow as possible (pencil-shaped) and cover the front with ice. After all, the stuff you hit is only a problem because you hit it so hard: out in interstellar space the stuff itself won't have that much velocity, so you'll barely notice a side impact. The front impacts, though - big problem.
And, of course, you can use heavy ice and then you've got the fuel for your fusion reactor right there, doing triple duty as fuel, micrometeoroid shield and heat sink if you need one.
(If you're fighting in space, then, yes, shielding all round, obviously.)

Posted February 23, 2006 12:37 PM by ajay

Oh, and you can't have gravity, really, because the ship's too narrow for an axial spin, and end over end rather loses the point of having ice on the front in the first place. But hey.

Posted February 23, 2006 12:38 PM by ajay

Ships covered in ice and waging war among the stars... Somebody must have already written such a story and called it A Snowball's Chance in Hell. Sounds like David Drake.

Posted February 23, 2006 12:45 PM by Serge

Back to the original topic, I'm reading Spin and ejoying it. I still haven't reached the part where we find that it was all a dream!!! But seriously, folks, my bet is that it's going to turn out to be like episode Wolf 359 of 'The Outer Limits'...

Posted February 23, 2006 12:47 PM by Serge

I still haven't picked up "Spin", but my money is on it being some alien race who is out to teach us a lesson about wasting the planet's resources. You know, the ol' "force them to see the finite capacity of their planet, and then they'll appreciate how fragile life is" story...

I can't decide whether I'd bet that they'll rewind time to 2050 once we learn the lesson or not, or if they'll leave us with a dead sun and a "you've learned your lesson, now figure out how to survive" closing.

You gotta figure, if they've got the electrical power to slow down time for an entire planet, then they could do some pretty crazy things.

Posted February 23, 2006 1:17 PM by Greg London

Also Daniel; knowing Germany's laws about denying 'the Holocaust' as it's called these days, I'm assuming those piles of "Irving" books aren't examples of the works of David Irving.

Nope, that Irving's now safely locked up in Vienna. I've had personal contact with some holocaust deniers. It's mindbending, really, how people can convince themselves of stuff like that. My grandma (who's Polish) once told me a story; it was after a lot of poking from my side asking her to tell me what it was like, back then. That was the only time I can recall she talked about the time. The story boiled down to Polish partisans forcing the people of her village at gunpoint to give them food and shelter, and the nazis (that would be the other half of my genetic inheritance) deciding to kill everyone in that village for sheltering partisans. My grandma told me how she watched HER grandma freeze to death while her whole family was hiding in the swamps outside the village. Granted, it's not actually a holocaust story, but it's not far from there to, well, killing people because they happen to believe in JHWH 1.0 instead of the Christian JHWH 2.0. But that wasn't our topic ;)

I don't know who this Brown person would be, though. Daniel, a clue please?

Daniel IS indeed a good clue, but I'm not really proud to share my name with someone who earns millions by being a bad writer. Well, I guess he's a good writer, in a way: something he's doing is working. I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Anyhoo, that's the English language books we typically see on the shelves here. We have a decent selection of translated English writers, of course, and as much as I admit that translating novels *is* (or can be) an art form as well, I'd much rather read the originals whenever I can. I like this (somewhat simple ;P) language of yours.

Larry, Dussmann looks like a pretty specialized (and cool!) kind of place. However, I'm about as far from Berlin as you can get in Germany, and even though my city (Saarbrücken) is the capital of a federal state (the Saarland), it's pretty much rural. But we do have the internet here, and as much as I'd like to "support local bookstores" (a romantic idea I can very much relate to), I'm not given much of a choice.

And I just got a mail from amazon saying that my copy of Spin has been shipped! Weeks seem to be considerably shorter in the Amazon. Let's hope they shielded their satellites properly ;P

Posted February 23, 2006 1:45 PM by Daniel

I was a rocket scientist in a previous life, but was buried deep in the lab,

Ah, the Hero's journey through the Underworld. Were you buried with a shifting spanner and a flask of WFNA as grave goods, which were useful in emerging from the Stygian stygery, or did John D. Clark, in the guise of the Abbe Faria, appear to guide you to the fabulous Tsiolkovsky fortune?

There's not a novel in this, fortunately, but it might be worth a short story. In fact, the paragraph above is more than sufficient.

Posted February 23, 2006 2:04 PM by John M. Ford

We were buried deep in the lab, Khazad-dûm, but we dug too deep and roused the beast sleeping therin, a pointy haired manager, at which point we all high tailed it out of there.

Posted February 23, 2006 3:47 PM by Greg London

we dug too deep and roused the beast sleeping therein... and it was downhill from there.

Posted February 23, 2006 4:34 PM by Serge

actually, when we dug, it was always downhill. but what made it a whole lot easier is when we gave the shovel to the pointy haired manager and told him there was a meeting taking place 100 feet down.

Posted February 23, 2006 4:50 PM by Greg London

You could also have advised him to take a box of carriage returns and line feeds with him to that meeting.

Posted February 23, 2006 5:03 PM by Linkmeister

Re Greg London's YASID request at 1044 on 23 Feb 06, that's Arthur C Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth, or something very close to it.

JBWoodford

Posted February 23, 2006 5:41 PM by JBWoodford

JBWoodford, I had to look it up to double-check the plot, but yep, that was the one. You win a brand new box of carriage returns and line feeds fresh from the factory. Congratulations. Enjoy.

Hm, maybe I have read more sci-fi than I generally attribute myself to have read....

Posted February 23, 2006 7:53 PM by Greg London

Greg London: "I still haven't picked up Spin, but my money is on it being some alien race who is out to teach us a lesson about wasting the planet's resources."

Do you play poker, too? I'd like to invite you into our game. No, really, none of us are very good.

Posted February 24, 2006 12:25 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Akshooly just dropped by the U-Dub bookstore, picked up a copy and read the first couple of chapters over a bratwurst and a beer.

So far so good.

How's that for a four word mini-review.

Posted February 24, 2006 12:50 AM by Larry Brennan

Ah, the Hero's journey through the Underworld. Were you buried with a shifting spanner and a flask of WFNA as grave goods, which were useful in emerging from the Stygian stygery, or did John D. Clark, in the guise of the Abbe Faria, appear to guide you to the fabulous Tsiolkovsky fortune?

Appropriately, the first thing that a previous traveller did when he emerged from the Underworld was to look up at the stars: ...E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. And the next thing he did was to head for them.
I'm sure one could find WFNA in one of the Circles, if one looked hard enough; probably that devoted to engineers who give in to management's orders to cut corners.

Hit a ship covered with ice with a maser tuned at the right frequency, mind you, and the beam goes straight through and either heats the hull (if metal) or boils the occupants. Liquid water absorbs microwaves very well at frequencies at which ice is microwave-transparent, which is why microwave ovens take so long to defrost stuff. (an Interesting Fact which I cribbed from David Langford's account of Professor Kurti's Reverse Baked Alaska.)

Posted February 24, 2006 4:22 AM by ajay

Poker, Patrick? So, if it's not Greg's suggestion, and if it's not Wolf 359, my theory is that it's that Twilight Zone episode where a man and woman wake up in a strange town from which they can't get out because they were captured by some giant alien who gave them to his giant 3-year-old daughter to play with in her elaborate doll house...

Posted February 24, 2006 6:07 AM by Serge

Something bugs me about the setup of Spin. I'm not a scientist, just someone who uses his brain for a living (most of the time anyway) and still I think there's a problem that I'll have to handle with a pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain response. But I'll post here and see what the Real Brains can say.

By page 46, the main character learns that, since the October Event, Time has been much slower on Earth than in the rest of the universe. Wayyyyy much slower. Like, 5 years have passed on Earth, and 500,000,000 years out there. This means that during the course of one Earth year, our planet has been going around the sun 100,000,000 times.

How come there are still seasons on Earth?

Posted February 24, 2006 9:09 AM by Serge

How come there are still seasons on Earth?

While the answer to that question is never made explicit, once you Fully Understand The Situation you will see how it could be happening.

Posted February 24, 2006 10:07 AM by DaveL

By what page, DaveL? The thing is that none of the characters have yet asked themselves that question.

Well, I'm reading and enjoying. I got a big laugh out of a scene where an insurance company's CEO is heard on the radio, complaining about how the expected fate of the Earth is encouraging immorality and deficit spending. And messing up actuary tables.

"If the world doesn't come to an end in the next thirty or forty years," he said, "we may be facing disaster."

Posted February 24, 2006 10:35 AM by Serge

It has arrived, and I've started reading. Having to go to work when you just began a promising book is no fair ;) Very much liked the blackout scene. Simple and efficient narrative, and on top of that dialogues that *remind* me of things I said or thought when I was that age. This subtle and uncertain attraction he builds between the narrator and the female twin with so few lines of dialogue--highly promising.

Of course, I would have loved more detail instead of just implying how hard a hit on the internet this whole blackout was. But then again, I'm a geek ;P While to me detailed descriptions of connectivity situations might have been thrilling, most people would be bored to death.

Posted February 24, 2006 11:46 AM by Daniel Klein

Ok, ok, already. Quit shovin'.

I've taken the day off from work so that I can find the time to read Spin. I had to jump it a few score titles up the queue, as well.

There -- are you happy now?

Sheesh.

Posted February 24, 2006 12:26 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Hey! My library sent me a card to say my request for Spin and The Chronoliths has been fulfilled and I can pick the books up, but it was closed today. No spoilers, dammit!

Posted February 24, 2006 9:04 PM by Linkmeister

No spoilers, dammit!

Heh-heh. The giant ape climbs the Empire State Building and gets killed...by Lady Sharrow, who has mistaken it for her cousin.

Posted February 24, 2006 9:47 PM by mds

Just picked up a copy, sir!

Posted February 25, 2006 12:31 AM by La Gringa

Serge writes:
By page 46, the main character learns that, since the October Event, Time has been much slower on Earth than in the rest of the universe. Wayyyyy much slower. Like, 5 years have passed on Earth, and 500,000,000 years out there. This means that during the course of one Earth year, our planet has been going around the sun 100,000,000 times.

How come there are still seasons on Earth?

and:
The thing is that none of the characters have yet asked themselves that question.

I apologize if this offends, but: Wrong. The revelation about the magnitude of the time differential comes on page 44. On page 43 -- the same scene, the previous page -- a character says this:
"They gave us fake sunlight because the real thing would be deadly. Just enough of it, and appropriately distributed, to mimic the seasons, to make it possible to raise crops and drive the weather."

Posted February 25, 2006 3:01 AM by David Goldfarb

There was a copy of Spin in my Potlatch freebie bag. Also Down the Badger Hole, a Corpse Bride flip book, a Poetry on Buses 2005 book, the usual Archie McPhee catalog, chopsticks from Mashiko, a couple of magnets and a pair of binoculars.

Posted February 25, 2006 3:56 AM by TomB

Thanks, David... I had missed the comment about how the Barrier also simulates the seasonal variations even though in reality Earth wouldn't be experiencing seasons anymore. Hmm... Does the Barrier also simulate the Moon's old tidal variations? It'd have to for us to experience it at the pace we're used to. I know. Nit, nit, nit...

Posted February 25, 2006 6:47 AM by Serge

No spoilers, Linkmeister? I'm glad you didn't see my earlier post that this all turns out to be a dream. And Auntie Em will be there... And of course you know about Rosebud...

That being said, I really hate spoilers too. I have made some suggestions (not all of them as jokes) about what is really going, but I don't really know and I'll probably be so far off the mark that I'll be even more beet-red than I am when doing situps at the gym.

Posted February 25, 2006 6:54 AM by Serge