A while back I read the science fiction book 'Spin'. It won a Hugo award, which is kinda like the Oscars for science fiction literature. I'm sure these awards are tainted with politics just like the Oscars and everything else. But I still find them to be helpful in choosing books to read since I don't follow Science Fiction that closely. It also helped that my cube neighbor, Charles, recommended and let me borrow the book.
If you read a little bit of science fiction, you'll probably start to see variants on the same ideas reused across many books. That's, of course, because it's hard to think of new ideas. One of the things I liked about Spin is that it has a couple great science fiction premises that I hadn't read about anywhere else. That by itself was worth reading the book for me. I also wasn't able to guess what was behind the spin, almost right up to the point where it was spelled out for me. Even better, the premise has a certain logical purity to it that w...
was pretty satisfying once I got it. Now, I'm not saying that I think the ideas in the book are actually feasible. In fact, it seems exceedingly far fetched to me at this point. But what good is science fiction without a heavy dose of speculation.
Although I liked the plot devices by themselves, I thought they also gave the book an interesting perspective on the universe. I don't want to spoil the plot so I won't say much more about this. I just found it cool to put myself in the mindset of the Spin world, thinking outside the usual constraints.
Alas, my review is not all positive. I thought the book's biggest weaknesses were some of the clichéd interactions between the characters. At one point towards the end of the book, one of the characters actually says something like, "you always were the strong one". That's a line straight out of a Lifetime channel movie if I've ever heard one. Of course, real life people do talk in clichés like this, since people are often not very creative. But if I wanted to hear that kind of dialog, I'd go watch some Oprah or eavesdrop at Starbucks.
On a related note, a couple characters had ridiculous catharses towards the end of the book that I found to be a distraction from the main storyline. I guess these were included to give the book some extra literary weight. Obviously I don't think they were successful and wouldn't add anything even if they weren't so contrived.
Overall though, I'd recommend the book. It may start you thinking.