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Monday, September 07, 2026

Review: Spin

Spin was another recommendation by ChatGPT. This one was an absolute miss. The premise is that one day, the Earth is wrapped in a permeable membrane that slows down time by multiple orders of magnitude. Each day that now passes on Earth now goes for millions of years, ensuring that the sun will expand and wipe out the planet within a single lifetime.

The book describes various efforts of humanity to understand what's going on through the eyes of Tyler Dupree, a doctor who grew up with Jason Lawton, a STEM genius who becomes the scientist-administrator of a successor to NASA. He's also in unrequited love with Jason's sister Diane, who pushes him away because she's under the oppressive thumb of her father, E.D. Lawton and decides to marry an oppressive religious maniac instead.

What bugs me about the book is that despite all of humanities' attempts, Jason makes relatively little progress in understanding how this membrane works. There's really no science in this science fiction novel--all scientific progress is basically speculative and made up with only a few diseases that are based in any form at all on reality.

When the big reveal happens I wanted to groan. It's one big Deus Ex Machina (in some cases literally!). I have no idea how this book won the Hugo award. Accelerando should have won the Hugo award that year instead. Even Old Man's War was a better novel --- at least it didn't waste my time.

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