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It's the Summer solstice, and time to start a new book!

This is the discussion topic for our chosen June, 2013, Contemporary SF/F Novel read and discussion:


Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Winner of the 2006 Hugo Award

I read this about a year ago & gave it 3.5 stars. My review is short & contains no spoilers.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I'm only halfway through "Spin", so I'm just going to throw out a few first impressions.

The very first thing I noticed was in the table of content there was a chapter titled it repeated every three or four chapters: 4 x 10^9 AD. I was curious what that was all about. It took reading a couple of chapters before I figured out how clever that actually was.

Jim wrote: "The characters seemed real enough, but none of them ever really grabbed me & they should have. They were complex & strong enough in so many ways, but I never really cared if they lived or died."

I think I agree with that so far, and I think it's one reason I haven't finished the book yet. Tyler is the only point-of-view character, and he's very dispassionate and analytical, seeming to observe the more fiery Jason and Diane. They represent two very different kinds of passion, and tie wereTyler just seems to straddle the middle ground.

A lot of the hard sciences fascinating, but it's hard to make an emotional connection with the characters involved in it.

Glad to see it wasn't just me.

One of the more audacious things about this story is its time span. (Minor spoilers follow.)

Because of the nature of The Spin, the story allows a single human generation to observe a couple of billion years in the outside universe. The sun grows old, the stars move (presumably some die and some new ones are born.) This allows humanity to undertake engineering projects on unbelievably long timescales.

Where I live in the American southwest, construction of anything that takes more than a year is considered a long-term project (and subject to changes or cancellations with each election). When I had a chance to visit Paris back in the 1970's, one of the things that impressed me was not just the age of the great cathedrals, but that they had been constructed over multiple generations. The idea of people undertaking projects on such a timescale that they would never see it complete seemed both alien and inspiring. Ken Follett captured the same feeling in his historical novel, The Pillars of the Earth.

Because Spin's time anomaly allows humanity to execute projects of a billion years in a single lifetime, it neatly finesses the constraint of seeing enormous engineering projects being completed. So we have giant terraforming projects and the glacially slow exploration of the galaxy at sub-lightspeeds.

There aren't a whole lot of science fiction stories that try to play on that kind of timescale. Poul Anderson's Tau Zero comes to mind. (I also thought of Charles Stross's novella Missile Gap (and the deep-future themed anthology One Million A.D.), though those don't have the single generation observer quality, except from a historical perspective.)

Jim wrote: "The characters seemed real enough,.... They were complex & strong enough in so many ways,...."

I think the female characters get short shrift in the "strong" department. Certainly Tyler, Jason, and E.D. are strong (Won, also, I suppose.) Maybe even Simon.

Diane, on the other hand... Her reaction to the Spin, seeking meaning in cult religions, really isn't hers. It's Simon's. She just follows him from cult to cult, even when it's clear she isn't a true believer. It's only in the 4 x 10^9 AD future that she chooses her own course (after becoming a Fourth.)

As for the other women, Carol is an alcoholic. I guess one can consider Molly a strong character, but not a very sympathetic one.

G33z3r wrote: "Jim wrote: "The characters seemed real enough,.... They were complex & strong enough in so many ways,...."

I think the female characters get short shrift in the "strong" department. Certainly Tyle..."

I agree. I also find the characterizations somewhat simplistic like you said but I do like the premise & the fast-paced plot very much.

Got this as part of Humble Bundle 2 and been meaning to check it out - making my way through the non genre but heavy genre referencing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Will check it out, read more of the comments and post my own thoughts soon but it will be a little after the 20th.

Ben wrote: "Got this as part of Humble Bundle 2 and been meaning to check it out..."

Hey, Ben. That Humble Bundle was an awesome deal! (I posted a note about it in the Promotions folder - I hope people took advantage while it was still open. Unfortunately, I already owned all the original books except the Wil Wheaton biography, so I didn't cash in myself.)


Ben wrote: "Will check it out, read more of the comments and post my own thoughts soon but it will be a little after the 20th...."

None of our discussions ever close. They sit right here in the Book Discussions folder. (Not really forever, of course. Eventually the sun will go nova and swallow the inner planets, but I figure we have 4 billion years or so.) The 20th date is just when it comes off the front page as our "currently reading" and migrates down to the past reads bookshelf. So join in when you get a chance. I'd love to hear some more thoughts.

I read this book at the start of the year and found it to be an excellent scientific novel.

I found the overall concept a fascinating one. How would man cope when confronted with not just their own mortality, but that of the planet they inhabit. How would they cope knowing that not only would they cease to exist, but so would future generations, historic records, any consequence to their actions?

This, for me, is where the story fails. Whilst the scientific aspects of the story are excellent, the human factor is limited and perhaps should have been explored more. I myself had no empathy for the people stuck in this scenario.

Perhaps the author had a larger story in mind, there are two follow up.novels, and hence concentrated on other aspects of the story to convey the bigger picture.

I did enjoy this novel and will be reading the others with anticipation to see how the story unfolds.

Steven wrote: "I read this book at the start of the year and found it to be an excellent scientific novel.

I found the overall concept a fascinating one. How would man cope when confronted with not just their ow..."

Steven, I definitely agree with you on these points. The human factor was definitely missing from this novel, and like others in this group, I felt no sympathy toward Tyler and Diane. (Jason fascinated me, though.)

I felt as though Wilson was trying to cram so many ideas into this novel that he failed in many respects. I would rather have seen this done in a manner such as in Frederick Pohl's Gateway series -- one novel on the temporal membrane, one dedicated to the Martian colony (particularly on the nature of the Fourths), and one focused on Jason's 4.1 and 4.2 experiments. I shall have to look at these follow-up novels when I have time.

Finally got to picking this up. I am about halfway through. I think I am so far agreeing with the fact that I am liking the scientific aspect. I am liking the overall ideas in the book, but it does feel like it's missing the human aspect a bit. It is almost like the characters humanity and emotions were an after thought. It is interesting enough to keep me reading and I do wonder what the other books in the series would be like.

Terri - you may be on to something there. Too many ideas crammed in and falling short.

Looks like SyFy is moving forward with making a miniseries out of Spin. ()

I finally read this - a tad late for the group read - and I really liked it. I'm curious if anyone has read the second book and if it was as good as this one.

Rose wrote: "I finally read this - a tad late for the group read - and I really liked it. I'm curious if anyone has read the second book and if it was as good as this one."

I've read the 3 books and liked them all, but I really loved Spin and I'd say it is a cut above the sequels.
If you liked it you should enjoy the sequels, though, if only because of the explanations you'd get.