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 worlds artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though theyd 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 terra forming 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 Earths 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. Wilson has become one of the most exciting talents in SF today? In Spin , he outdoes himself, juggling numerous philosophical, moral and scientific ideas, including a fascinating Martian civilization created by humans, but he never neglects the emotional underpinnings of what the Spin comes to mean to humanity? Spin to paraphrase Bogie, is the stuff that (SF) dreams are made of. -- The Globe and Mail Like most of Wilsons books, Spin is an intelligent and inventive page-turner, with compelling characters and enough surprises to keep readers guessing right to the end. I recommend it highly. -- The Times-Colonist
Author: Robert Charles Wilson
Language: English
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction