
Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson's "Spin" won science fiction's highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Now, in "Spin'"s direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"--the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world--and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.
Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.
Now, in "Spin'"s direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"--the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world--and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.
Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.
Publisher:
New York : Tor, 2007.
ISBN:
9780765309396
0765309394
0765309394
Characteristics:
303 p. ;,25 cm.


Comment
Add a CommentAgreed that it really doesn't grab you like Spin did, but in my opinion it's worth getting through to finish out the trilogy. Though Vortex is also not as good as Spin, it does redeem the series from this "middle child" book.
Not quite as mind-boggling as the precursor novel "Spin," but well worth reading for a unique vision of extra-terrestrial intelligence and evolution.
Although not the tour-de-force that was Spin, Axis is a worthy successor to that novel. Axis explores the new world beyond the arch that appeared in Spin after the Earth shed its protective membrane, and follows a group of humans on a quest to discover the nature of the Hypotheticals.
A good story, but not as original or enticing as book one of the series. My attachment to the characters was diminished by an averaging out process: too many of them had 'point of view' sections in the narrative.