- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (Mar 10 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0765309386
- ISBN-13: 978-0765309389
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 640 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #245,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
One night the stars go out. From that breathtaking "what if," Wilson (Blind Lake, etc.) builds an astonishingly successful mélange of SF thriller, growing-up saga, tender love story, father-son conflict, ecological parable and apocalyptic fable in prose that sings the music of the spheres. The narrative time oscillates effortlessly between Tyler Dupree's early adolescence and his near-future young manhood haunted by the impending death of the sun and the earth. Tyler's best friends, twins Diane and Jason Lawton, take two divergent paths: Diane into a troubling religious cult of the end, Jason into impassioned scientific research to discover the nature of the galactic Hypotheticals whose "Spin" suddenly sealed Earth in a "cosmic baggie," making one of its days equal to a hundred million years in the universe beyond. As convincing as Wilson's scientific hypothesizing is--biological, astrophysical, medical--he excels even more dramatically with the infinitely intricate, minutely nuanced relationships among Jason, Diane and Tyler, whose older self tries to save them both with medicines from Mars, terraformed through Jason's genius into an incubator for new humanity. This brilliant excursion into the deepest inner and farthest outer spaces offers doorways into new worlds--if only humankind strives and seeks and finds and will not yield compassion for our fellow beings. Agent, Shawna McCarthy. (Apr. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Robert Charles Wilson continues to surprise and delight. I can't think of another science fiction writer who understands the strengths of the genre so well and who works with such confidence within its elastic boundaries...Wilson never loses sight of the human angle. His theme is the importance of communication, which, as his characters come to learn, should never remain one-way."
--The New York Times
"A superior SF thriller."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Blind Lake
"Fizzing with ideas...Intense, absorbing, memorable."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Blind Lake
"The steely quiet of Blind Lake draws you in like a magnet...Wilson does not ever raise his voice, which does not mean he speaks softly. How he speaks is still. In his calm, stony exile's gaze upon the prisons of the world, and in his measured adherence to storylines that say that everything may become a little better with much work, he is the most purely Canadian of all the writers brought together here, and Blind Lake is the finest Canadian novel of all these."
-John Clute, Toronto Globe and Mail
"Reads like a combination of Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen King."
--Rocky Mountain News on Blind Lake
"Wilson is a master of character development, comparable to the late Theodore Sturgeon...This superb novel, combing Wilson's trademark well-developed characters and fine prose with stunning high-tech physics, should strongly appeal to connoisseurs of quality science fiction."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on the Chronoliths
"If you read science fiction for its scientific extrapolations, then there's much here to satisfy. If, like me, you read the genre for its examinations of human lives in a crucible, then The Chronoliths also delivers the goods."
--Nalo Hopkinson, Quill & Quire on the Chronoliths
--The New York Times
"A superior SF thriller."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Blind Lake
"Fizzing with ideas...Intense, absorbing, memorable."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Blind Lake
"The steely quiet of Blind Lake draws you in like a magnet...Wilson does not ever raise his voice, which does not mean he speaks softly. How he speaks is still. In his calm, stony exile's gaze upon the prisons of the world, and in his measured adherence to storylines that say that everything may become a little better with much work, he is the most purely Canadian of all the writers brought together here, and Blind Lake is the finest Canadian novel of all these."
-John Clute, Toronto Globe and Mail
"Reads like a combination of Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen King."
--Rocky Mountain News on Blind Lake
"Wilson is a master of character development, comparable to the late Theodore Sturgeon...This superb novel, combing Wilson's trademark well-developed characters and fine prose with stunning high-tech physics, should strongly appeal to connoisseurs of quality science fiction."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on the Chronoliths
"If you read science fiction for its scientific extrapolations, then there's much here to satisfy. If, like me, you read the genre for its examinations of human lives in a crucible, then The Chronoliths also delivers the goods."
--Nalo Hopkinson, Quill & Quire on the Chronoliths
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suberb Book,
By
This review is from: Spin (Mass Market Paperback)
I'll make this short and sweet. I finished this book about two months ago and I still can't get it out of my head. This is a perfect blending of a wonderful mind expanding and original story, mixed with characters you come to care about almost immediately. A friend borrowed this book from me who is a newcomer to SF and she loved it. And now another friend is reading it and she just keeps saying, "Wow!". But the next time around, when Robert Charles Wilson releases the sequel, AXIS, in September -- I think they'll be convinced enough to go out and buy their own copies of his new novel. I'm so happy to hear SPIN won the 2006 Hugo Award. Buy it!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unforgettable,
By
This review is from: Spin (Mass Market Paperback)
I was a big fan of RCWilson ever since Darwinia and Bios. Wilson's newest book, SPIN is his best work to date. As the title of this review states, unforgettable. It truly is. It's been three weeks since I put down the book and I still fondly remember various scenes.The timeless, patient and often heartbreaking love conveyed by Tyler for Diane throughout the novel is the backdrop of a significant event that has befallen Earth. A shroud of unknown material encompasses our planet where time on Earth progresses as it should, but the rest of the universe experiences time on a furious speed. In the course of forty odd years in Earth time, the universe has aged in billions of years and the curse/shield is finally lifted. Earth and its inhabitants will never be the same again. The science involved in explaining the shroud is unsound or unsatisfactory in my opinion but that is not the plot driving device. How people cope with the spin and the lives of our protagonists are what makes the pages turn. The branching of religions, politics, technology, wars, quest for human longevity and seeking life in the universe are all caused by the spin and everyone's lives are affected for good or bad. -AD
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite a revolution, but a nice twist,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Spin (Mass Market Paperback)
Of my limited experience with sci-fi, Robert Charles Wilson's novel "Spin" stands out as a complete work. It has an interesting plot, well-developed charcters, plausible scientific concepts, a good pace, and interesting themes. How would the world react to being essentially isolated from the rest of the universe, blanketed by an unknown curtain which causes our planet to "age" slower than the rest of space? With the knowledge that mankind is hurtling ever faster towards extinction, with the sun set to burn out in a matter of decades, rather than millennia, how would Earth contend with this? Spin examines these issues from a personal level to a global level, from a scientific standpoint to a religious one. They are very minor shortfalls indeed which caused me to rate it 4 instead of 5 stars, but this is too academic a difference to prevent anyone from enjoying a solid novel, which will be classified as sci-fi but encompasses so many other elements. It merits every bit of praise it has had lavished upon it.
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