num_pages: 364
description: Spin is Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo Award-winning masterpiece―a stunning combination of a galactic "what if" and a small-scale, very human story. One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his backyard 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 world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a 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 year 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 terraforming 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 Earth's 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.
language: English
title: Spin
titlecomplete: Spin
characters: Jason Lawton, Diane Lawton, Tyler Dupree, E.D. Lawton
genres: Aliens, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fantasy, Hugo Awards, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Space
ratings_count: 40376
series: Spin
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Hugo Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Locus Award
category: Best SF Novel, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis
category: Bestes ausländisches Werk (Best Foreign Work), awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Sunburst Award
category: Canadian Novel, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: John W. Campbell Memorial Award, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire
category: Roman étranger, awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Premio Ignotus
category: Mejor novela extranjera (Best Foreign Novel), awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Prix Aurora Award
category: Best Long-Form Work in English, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: SF ga Yomitai
category: Best Translated SF of the Year in Japan, awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Seiun Award 星雲賞
category: Best Translated Long Story
publisher: Tor Books