One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a …
One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.
Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.
Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun--and report back on what they find.
Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
Content warning spoiler ahead
Arching a whole lifespan. No space opera. But world ending. Time passes like a wind while you read this. A family saga. And marsians!
Content warning spoiler ahead
Arching a whole lifespan. No space opera. But world ending. Time passes like a wind while you read this. A family saga. And marsians!
Conceptually interesting but characters ZZzzzzzzz
Fun and straightforward science fiction. Enjoyable ride, even if it fails to raise any questions whatsoever.
This was a real page turner for me. Great premise (although at first reminded me of Pandora's Star with the enclosure idea) and good pacing. Moving on to book 2!
This was a real page turner for me. Great premise (although at first reminded me of Pandora's Star with the enclosure idea) and good pacing. Moving on to book 2!
This was a decent novel, and I enjoyed the pacing and much of the speculation in the premise. Some ideas, like the notion of biotech platforms on which applications could be run, felt a bit incomplete (though I freely admit that this is probably because I've seen those ideas done better by others) but overall I enjoyed the book.
Got this with the humble bundle and enjoyed reading it very much. Very sciency fiction. I was puzzling about the mystery of the Spin all the time and it shouldn't have surprised me so much as it did what it turned out to be. I cannot write too much here because I really don't want to spoiler anything.
Occasionally falls victim to the common science fiction problem of writing every character with the same voice, since they're all just empty vessels for the author to express the BIG GRAND IDEAS and THEMES they're OH SO PROUD of. Despite this minor problem (and really, when it's so common as to almost be a genre trope, it is really a 'problem'?), Spin is a really interesting book and, more importantly, one that remains interesting throughout.
There are books I love on a primally emotional level (The Road, The Passage, A Wrinkle In Time, A Man on the Moon), and there are books I am enormously happy to have had the opportunity to read because they were so good, like this one, even though I never developed that emotional connection. It's not the author's fault, right? You can't set out trying to write a book people will love deeply in their souls, what an incredibly amorphous target, and what hubris that would take. This is a great book. I'm not liking its sequel much.
I loved this book, couldn't put it down! [return]With 50 pages to go I was worried that the author wouldn't be able to finish the story in time! :o)
L’histoire nous est racontée par Tyler Dupree à l’âge adulte. Le récit débute par la fin, sans trop en dire, puis se construit autour de nombreux et longs flashback. Ce qui arrive au Tyler du présent, de l’âge adulte, ne nous est révélé que petit à petit, le narrateur nous raconte l’apparition du Spin, ses conséquences sur le monde et l’Humanité. Le découpage est très habile et agréable, il contribue à entretenir une partie du mystère.
L’auteur spécule sur tous les plans, psychologique, politique, humain, social, scientifique. Que deviendraient le monde et la société si nous nous savions ou croyons condamnés dans les 50 ou 60 ans à venir ? Comment les gens nés peu avant ou durant cette période envisageraient-ils l’avenir et la vie ? Qu’en seraient-il des guerres, de l’économie, de la recherche ? Le propos de fond me fascine d’emblée, le traitement est excellent et tout contribue …
L’histoire nous est racontée par Tyler Dupree à l’âge adulte. Le récit débute par la fin, sans trop en dire, puis se construit autour de nombreux et longs flashback. Ce qui arrive au Tyler du présent, de l’âge adulte, ne nous est révélé que petit à petit, le narrateur nous raconte l’apparition du Spin, ses conséquences sur le monde et l’Humanité. Le découpage est très habile et agréable, il contribue à entretenir une partie du mystère.
L’auteur spécule sur tous les plans, psychologique, politique, humain, social, scientifique. Que deviendraient le monde et la société si nous nous savions ou croyons condamnés dans les 50 ou 60 ans à venir ? Comment les gens nés peu avant ou durant cette période envisageraient-ils l’avenir et la vie ? Qu’en seraient-il des guerres, de l’économie, de la recherche ? Le propos de fond me fascine d’emblée, le traitement est excellent et tout contribue à passionner le lecteur. On suit les personnages dans un monde inquiétant et inquiet, où la fatalité rivalise avec la recherche de la connaissance. Tyler, Jason et Diane sont aussi passionnants qu’attachants, ils sont terriblement humains, imparfaits, et réalistes. L’histoire est dense, les relations humaines complexes. La tournure que prend l’histoire est fascinante, la conclusion nous annonce une suite (en fait deux) que j’ai hâte de pouvoir lire, d’ailleurs je vais essayer de me faire violence pour attendre la traduction de Axis, la suite de Spin…..(L’important c’est d’y croire)
"Lâchez une grenouille dans de l’eau bouillante, elle en sortira aussitôt d’un bond. Placez-la dans une casserole d’eau tiède que vous mettez à chauffer à feu doux et la grenouille mourra avant de se rendre compte du problème”.
(…)
Nous naissons tous étrangers à nous mêmes et aux autres et nous sommes rarement présentés dans les règles les uns aux autres.”
