Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

[lightreads]

Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Mild-mannered sequel to the ass-kicking (kick-assing? Where did that come from, brain?) Spin. Hostile geopolitics, more attempts to understand what the hypothetical alien intelligences are doing, etc.



Spin is so good partly because it has the breath-catching scale of good hard SF – literal galactic mega years – while not losing the accessibility of a single personal narrative, and a good one, too. Axis loses the sensawunda, and the personal narrative – a woman forging new connections after the end of her marriage, a child who can communicate with the hypothetical powers – is fine, but not exciting. Wilson often writes practice books, I think. Chronoliths is clearly his warm-up pitch at the themes and scale he nailed in Spin, and this book is a clear echo of the themes from the claustrophobic and creepy Blind Lake. Unfortunately, Blind Lake might have done it just as well. Axis’s pat thematic movement about scales of time and identity as a memory game fell a bit flat for me.



Still, a Wilson book is far and away better written than 80% of the scifi out there, on a purely esthetic level. I am frankly derisive of anyone who would prefer that Sawyer hack to Wilson in the Canadian SF pond.





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