464 pages
English language
Published Feb. 7, 2006
Spin is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer Robert Charles Wilson. It was published in 2005 and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006. It is the first book in the Spin trilogy, with Axis (the second) published in 2007 and Vortex published in July 2011. In January 2015, Syfy announced it was developing a six-hour miniseries based on the book.
Spin is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer Robert Charles Wilson. It was published in 2005 and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006. It is the first book in the Spin trilogy, with Axis (the second) published in 2007 and Vortex published in July 2011. In January 2015, Syfy announced it was developing a six-hour miniseries based on the book.
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!
This was my second or third time trying to read this. The first 10-20 pages are so much like a short story I started writing back when I was in high school that I really had a hard time getting past the similarities. Once I did though, it was basically nothing like that old story of mine.
It felt like I was reading this for a long time, but I guess it was just a month. It definitely wasn’t a page turner, at least not for me, but there were some good surprises, and I liked the story well enough, even if the characters never really felt compelling to me.
I am tempted to go right into the sequel, but I’ll probably read some other stuff first.
The book's premise is great: what if we took the "if all of Earth's history were compressed into a year, here's what would happen in that year" cliche, made it real, and were able to observe it from the outside? What we do with an "oracle" that we could throw long-running experiments into and see the results nearly instantaneously? Wilson takes the premise in interesting directions, and if he didn't get to everything, I suppose that leaves space for the sequels.
The book's premise is great: what if we took the "if all of Earth's history were compressed into a year, here's what would happen in that year" cliche, made it real, and were able to observe it from the outside? What we do with an "oracle" that we could throw long-running experiments into and see the results nearly instantaneously? Wilson takes the premise in interesting directions, and if he didn't get to everything, I suppose that leaves space for the sequels.
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 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.
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.
I really enjoyed it, it is a cute story of love and potential apocalypse
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.
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.
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.
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.
