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Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Aug. 11th, 2006 10:15 pmOne day in our near future, the moon and all the stars disappear from the sky. All of them at once, all over the world. Decades later and far away, Tyler remembers that night and all the years after as he grew up part of the generation that knew the world was going to end within the next fifty years. And I really cannot describe the plot with any more exactitude, because saying anything else would spoil one of the hundred complex threads woven into this story, and that would be a damn shame.
I can say that this is what is known as a “hard SF” novel, and as such it is powered on ideas. Extraordinary ideas which test the boundaries of the universe as we know it, from the jaw-droppingly smart to the ones I just didn't buy. But this is also a book rich in people, from the very personal convolutions of Tyler’s existence in and out of the orbit of twins Jason and Diane, to the deft, evocative way Wilson describes how human societies themselves work.
And that’s what’s so brilliant about this book – it’s got range. It plays Tyler and Diane and Jason’s lives on the same stage, with the same life and sympathy with which it plays the rise and fall of civilizations, the making of worlds, the human spirit in extremity at its best in grace and cleverness, and its worst in hopelessness and fear. There’s so much packed into this just-right 370 pages, from a slow and subtle love story to penetrating insights on just how people and governments work in long, wrenching crisis, and then the hard slam. As the why and the how of the plot are slowly revealed through Tyler’s memories and the past races to meet the present, the nature of the story lets Wilson do things with scale, with everything from the passage of time on the cosmic scale to the scope of human understanding. It’s riveting, sweet, charismatic, difficult to read in places.
Which is neglecting the prose, which is lucid and adroitly theatrical and just right.
“Dreams, Diane once said, are metaphors gone feral.”
“What we were transplanting was not biology but human history, and human history, Jase had said, burned like a fire compared to the slow rust of evolution.”
“There’s a phrase Pastor Bob Cobble liked to use back at Jordan Tabernacle. ‘His heart cried out to God.’ . . . But you have to parse the sentence. ‘His heart cried out’ – I think that’s all of us, it’s universal. You, Simon, me, Jason. Even Carol. Even E.D. When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it’s a cry of joy, I think that’s what it was for Jason, I think that’s what I didn’t understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But I think for most of us it’s a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence.”
And that last quote is actually a much better portrait of the book than I’m managing.
Wow. Pieces of this one will be with me for a long time.
I can say that this is what is known as a “hard SF” novel, and as such it is powered on ideas. Extraordinary ideas which test the boundaries of the universe as we know it, from the jaw-droppingly smart to the ones I just didn't buy. But this is also a book rich in people, from the very personal convolutions of Tyler’s existence in and out of the orbit of twins Jason and Diane, to the deft, evocative way Wilson describes how human societies themselves work.
And that’s what’s so brilliant about this book – it’s got range. It plays Tyler and Diane and Jason’s lives on the same stage, with the same life and sympathy with which it plays the rise and fall of civilizations, the making of worlds, the human spirit in extremity at its best in grace and cleverness, and its worst in hopelessness and fear. There’s so much packed into this just-right 370 pages, from a slow and subtle love story to penetrating insights on just how people and governments work in long, wrenching crisis, and then the hard slam. As the why and the how of the plot are slowly revealed through Tyler’s memories and the past races to meet the present, the nature of the story lets Wilson do things with scale, with everything from the passage of time on the cosmic scale to the scope of human understanding. It’s riveting, sweet, charismatic, difficult to read in places.
Which is neglecting the prose, which is lucid and adroitly theatrical and just right.
“Dreams, Diane once said, are metaphors gone feral.”
“What we were transplanting was not biology but human history, and human history, Jase had said, burned like a fire compared to the slow rust of evolution.”
“There’s a phrase Pastor Bob Cobble liked to use back at Jordan Tabernacle. ‘His heart cried out to God.’ . . . But you have to parse the sentence. ‘His heart cried out’ – I think that’s all of us, it’s universal. You, Simon, me, Jason. Even Carol. Even E.D. When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it’s a cry of joy, I think that’s what it was for Jason, I think that’s what I didn’t understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But I think for most of us it’s a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence.”
And that last quote is actually a much better portrait of the book than I’m managing.
Wow. Pieces of this one will be with me for a long time.
