Category Archives: Science/Engineering

I read the sequel Axis first, only because it was available at the library and Spin wasn’t. Now I await Robert Charles Wilson’s conclusion, tentatively titled Vortex. Spin is pretty incredible. Apocolyptic but plausible. If you read a lot of scifi, I mean. The idea that a mystery race of sentient biotech machines would seek to save Earth by enclosing it in a living membrane, then speeding up time beyond it.

But it’s the coming-of-age, three lifelong friends’ saga and love story between two of them that sticks with you. The scifi binds them, beginning with the night in their puberty when the stars disappeared (thanks to the membrane) and only reappeared when they were in their forties. A bit heavy on the government conspiracy stuff for my taste. As I have said elsewhere I believe in the government’s innate incompetence, not it’s all-powerful whatever. And the idea that peak oil is our doom is tiresome. But, as I say, neither of those subjects dims the human story, which lingers yet in my mind.

Axis was a worthy sequel, with just enough of a hint about the original folks to send me out in search of Spin, which was reward enough for the trouble. Second books in trilogies usually pale beside the first ones, but Axis didn’t. Quite. The human tale was less compelling than in Spin, but worth the read. Now I await Vortex, curious to see how the sentient biotechs, called the Hypotheticals, will wrap it up.