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Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
01/07/2005 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: TOR. 364 page hardback. Price: $25.95 (US), $35.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30938-6. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.tor.com
Tyler Dupree and the twins from the Big House stop and stare upwards when the first signs of the Spin manifest. The Moon and its celestial companions blink out of existence and suddenly the sky at night is dark. Jason, Tyler's friend and half of the twinship, is a genuine genius. He sees what has happened as something to be researched and find the answers to.
Diane, Jason's sister, takes a far more pessimistic approach to life. Resorting to a new order of religion that encompasses the post-Spin fears and anxieties and seeks the answers in the form of God.
Who has placed this membrane around the planet? Why have they done it? For what ends? Are the Hypotheticals, the ones to whom the Spin membrane can be attributed, benign or is it all some contrivance to enslave the human race to?
When a mission to colonise Mars is successful, the world will raise its arms in hope. Until Mars is shrouded in a membrane of the same kind and the questions start to flood in all over again.
The original tagging of this environmental perspective of life in the future captures a significant zeitgeist. Taking it and adding a literal spin to what we think we know, seasoning the plot with alien intervention.
All of the main characters were fresh and bold, slipping sometimes into projections of expected behaviour rather than pushing the boundaries of their scope.
Normally I would shy away from a first person narrative like the coming of another plague. In this instance, though, I was happily surprised that the medium worked so well. However, to fill 362 pages with this style of narrative in the end became one of its drawbacks.
After the initial originality of the storyline and the confounding interactions of the forerunning protagonists, it sadly starts to dwindle into an information bolt-hole that it never claws its way out of.
The repetitive nature of Tyler's feelings towards Diane are far too evident throughout and became a stale undercurrent in an otherwise well-plotted idea. The characters spend a fair few occasions in long one-sided speeches made for the benefit of our understanding of their predicament under the shadow of the Spin and the unquantifiable Hypotheticals who have placed it there.
The direction that this novel takes is one that could have been foreseen by the observant reader, maybe it even goes as far as ruining it for them. A less expositional voice would have helped this an awful lot. Seeing the situation from the other main characters would have given a more balanced viewpoint of the significant events.
If you are looking for space escapades and high octane celestial exploration, this book will fall short of your expectations. The story falls foul of the style of writing, it develops into a steady plateau rather than upping the ante on the critical moments in the plot. Eventually the ending becomes an anti-climactic expose into the nature of the Hypotheticals and then a transference of the relationships into basile expected outcomes - Hollywood style.
The basic problem I found with this book was the numerous instances of monologue retelling of information. It didn't need to be shown like this had these moments broken away from the first person narrative. Because of this and the lack of ebb and flow within the plot it made for a plodding pace which could have done with more of a gee-up towards the end.
A mediocre book that had far higher potential had the idea been explored, with a more playful outlook!
Donna Jones
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