Spin: A Review

I have just completed reading Spin , a science fiction novel by Robert Charles Wilson. From time to time SF authors come out with Really Big Concepts. When an author combines that with good fiction, then we have a winner, and Spin is just such a novel.

In this case, the Really Big Concept is that Earth is enclosed by unknown forces in a membrane (the Spin) that not only cuts off all sunlight (which is replaced by an apparently artifical sun) and starlight, but also radically alters how time passes on Earth. A specific example mentioned in the novel is that while five years have passed on the planet, 500 million years have passed in the rest of the universe, on the other side of the membrane. Now, if that's not a Big Concept, I don't know what is!

Into this Wilson gives us the stories of three persons: twins Jason and Diane Lawton, and Tyler Dupree, their friend. The novel starts with the night the the Spin is put in place. The Lawton twins and Tyler are respectively thirteen and twelve. The three of them are outside looking at stars while the twins parents are throwing a party when they suddenly realize they can no longer see any stars.

A crew of Russian cosmonauts who were in orbit when the Spin appeared spend a week unable to regain communications with anyone on the ground before they decide to risk a manual atmospheric reentry, but once they are safely on the ground they are told it is the same night the membrane appeared. Nobody believes their story of having spent as much time in orbit as they say.

But it is later discovered packages of instruments can be boosted through the membrane by rockets to record what is happening on the other side and then allowed to come back to Earth the same day. When their recorded data is examined, the realization of the changes in how time is passing occurs.

Through out this novel the author provides a exciting mix of ideas and good old fashioned science fiction. For instance, the successful terraforming and colonization of Mars occurs during the lifetimes of the three main characters thanks to the time passage differential.

All in all Spin is a very highly recommended work!