Spin Review
I recently finished reading Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. I received this book as one of Tor’s free promotional ebooks. This is near future science fiction. I would classify it as Big Idea science fiction - the Big Idea is the core of the book.
The premise is that at some point a few years from now, the Earth is wrapped in a bubble by mysterious aliens. Time inside the bubble passes much more slowly than time in the outside universe so that seconds on Earth are years or decades for the rest of the universe. This bubble is the the Spin. The story follows a narrator whose name eludes me and two siblings as they each react to the Spin over the course of their lives.
The previous sentence sums up my problem with this book. The ideas are grand and sweeping, but I found myself totally lacking in empathy for the characters. I can’t remember the narrator’s name. I’d be hard pressed to tell you much about any of the characters or what exactly they did. I reached the end of this book more or less thinking “So what?” This book is a beautiful setup for a sequel of some kind, but I really don’t care.
I would not recommend this book to anyone. There are better stories out there for science fiction and better speculations out there for science fact.