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| Spin | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Charles Wilson
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $3.87
You Save: $4.12 (52%)
Buy New/Used from $2.21
Avg. Customer Rating:  (113 reviews)
Sales Rank: 10367
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 076534825X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765348258
ASIN: 076534825X
Release Date: February 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Best sci-fi of the decade thus far. February 14, 2008
This sci-fi novel is probably one of the top 5 I've read; the only competitors that come to mind are Dune, Dune Messiah, Rendezvous with Rama, and Canticle for Leibowitz. The story is gripping, and very interesting, and the author, Robert Charles Wilson, fashions a fantastic, nuanced, and interesting tale of an astronomical phenomenon and its repercussions.br /br /This novel is in many ways the perfect sci-fi novel. It is not Space Opera, nor is it Hard Sci-fi. There is a strong plot device in the scientific phenomenon, but the book isn't just about that. It uses the science to set up a tale, and drive the characters and their world.br /br /The story follows Tyler Dupree, and involves his life with the Spin (the aforementioned phenomenon) and the Lawtons, a family whose lives he is entwined with. The story of Tyler and his relationships and experiences is pretty good on its own, and you can see evidence of the Spin all over it. However, you are not clubbed over the head with it, but instead it helps develop his story. The structure of the novel is interesting, with two narratives occurring at different times, and the book advancing both until they are linked together. You get a great deal of suspense and curiosity as you discover more about the Spin as the characters do.br /br /Most impressively, this book pulls in many different areas to tell the story with. There are political, psychological, sociological, interpersonal, scientific, and religious aspects to the story, and Wilson uses all of them to weave a story that is not only great, engrossing, and well written, but he also produces a consistent, believable world where the experiences seem tangible and ring true.br /br /I can not recommend this novel more highly.
 Spin January 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Spin" is my first Robert Charles Wilson novel since "The Chronoliths". Like that earlier work, it mixes advanced science and technological jargon with a healthy does of soap opera. To his credit, Wilson has improved as a writer over the years. "Spin" features more interesting characters than "The Chronoliths", as well as better dialogue and more worthy descriptions and basic writing. I wouldn't describe the writing as flawless, but for a science fiction novel it will do.br /br /The spin, as you can read on the cover, is a mysterious membrane that encloses planet earth, cutting of our view of the stars and planets. That would be weird enough, but the characters soon learn that it plays tricks with the space-time continuum as well. Billions of years shoot by outside the Spin, while the denizens of Earth are trapped in a time freeze, aging only a few years.br /br /In a review of "The Chronoliths" I remarked that the title was misleading, since it wasn't about the Chronoloiths. Here, likewise, the reader eventually discovers that the Spin is really a minor character in this book. All the antics of the overbearing father, the alcoholic mother, the struggling genius kid, the long-delayed romance, and the weird religious cult have only a tangential relationship to the science fiction part of the story, or sometimes none at all. Indeed, it wouldn't be too hard to rewrite this book as your basic family melodrama with all the science left out.br /
An innovative setting for human relationships January 22, 2008
I think Spin is, above all, a story of human relationships, containing situations and feelings with which any of us could identify. The great thing about sci-fi is it lets us examine human issues and values apart from much of the prejudice that crowds our everyday lives. Spin creates an Earth that is similar to our world, but just different enough to help us suspend our worldviews and examine human relationships without our own baggage.
The 4-billion Year Crush January 14, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is the story of how eleven-year-old Tyler Dupree's infatuation with the girl next door lasts for 4 billion years. And yes, that's way too long.br /br /Frank Drake used to speculate about how the extraterrestrials must already have invented immortality, and in order to protect themselves they were itching to let all the primitive species in on the secret in order to curb our dangerous aggressiveness. (So pretty please let me build a VLA on the moon.)br /br /In Robert Wilson's story Spin the ETs instead decide to preserve all the primitive worlds by wrapping them in temporal shields. So now Tyler and his friends live to see the sun sink into senescence. br /br /Wilson intends to project the hopeful message that individuals - and the human race - can remake themselves with new modes of maturity. But this idea is severely undermined by the fact that none of the characters develop or change at all.br /br /Other weaknesses include: the lack of any intensity or suspense; no antagonists in the foreground; reliance on stereotypically depraved Christians as a plot device; and numerous dangling plot threads. The writing is pleasant enough, and the sci-fi premises are not overly implausible. But the story is just not worth an adult reader's time.
Humanity Vs. Its own primal psychosis December 14, 2007
While shrouding Earth in a "bubble" isn't a new SF idea, the plot and direction which Robert Charles Wilson takes it all is fantastic. Humanity in The Spin probe many things over the course of its silent struggle with the "bubble" - probe the "bubble" itself, probe the Hypotheticals but in the end the humans, as we always are as a collective group, are short sited. In the face of a great mystery, the humans continue to pettily bicker about their problems. This portrayal of human banality in times of greatness are a healthy reminder to look at the primitive mind of man and how they react to things which they don't understand. But there are also characters in the book which rise above this common ignorance to attempt a greater understanding and, ultimately, a wish for the betterment of mankind. Character driven 100% of the way through the book, the plot rarely slacks.
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