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{{work|wppage=Spin (novel)}}
''Spin'' is a sci-fi trilogy by [[Robert Charles Wilson]], featuring the novels ''Spin'',''Axis'' and ''Vortex''.
The first book in the series, ''Spin'', follows narrator Tylor Dupree and his childhood friends, twins Jason and Diane Lawton. As children they witness the strange phenomenon that alters the course of human history: the night the stars disappeared from the night sky. As they grow up, the world slowly discovers the truth: the Earth has been covered by a membrane (dubbed "The [[Title Drop|Spin]]") that slows down the flow of time on our planet. A ''lot''.
So much so that [[Year Outside, Hour Inside|after about fifty years]] on Earth, over ''four billion years'' will pass outside. By that time [[Oh Crap|the sun will expand into a red giant]] and [[The End of the World
Trying to find out where The Spin came from, and looking for ways to survive the destruction of Earth, forms the plot of ''Spin''.
{{franchisetropes}}
* [[Belief Makes You Stupid]]: The twins, Jason and Diane, take two different paths in life. Jason becomes an influential genius scientist, working to decrypt the mysteries of the Spin and possibly save the world. Diane, on the other hand, turns to religion and goes off the deep end, eventually ending up in a cult in the middle of desert in Arizona, playing subservient housewife to her [[Perpetual Smiler]] [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] husband. A husband who later lets Diane nearly die after she contracts a serious illness because he thinks the [[Too Dumb to Live|rapture will be happening soon and there's no point]] in [[Jerkass|getting her any sort of treatment]].
* [[Benevolent Alien Invasion]]: {{spoiler|Not an invasion, but "The Hypotheticals" planted the spin membrane to ''protect'' the people on Earth (and later Mars)}}
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* [[Child Prodigy]]: Jason Lawton. His oppressive father, [[Abusive Parents|E.D. Lawton]], realized Jason's potential and spent his entire life grooming him for power and feeding his potential, intending Jason to take over the family business after he dies.
* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Jason and Diane's father, E. D. Lawton, who cares more about making money off strategies to deal with the Spin than whether or not those strategies are actually effective.
* [[Faster
* [[First Contact]]: Not so much. "The Hypotheticals" that are presumably responsible for the Spin membrane never directly speak with humanity or even explain their motives. {{spoiler|Justified in that it's discovered that their cognition is so ''slow'' that any sort of "contact" or communication is impossible. [[We Are
* [[Inadequate Inheritor]]: Jason's father feels this way about handing off control of Perihelion, the government agency responsible for managing the Spin, to Jason.
* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Medium to hard.
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** Maybe it goes towards maintaining that time dilation field.
* [[Portal Network]]: {{spoiler|Buying time to set this up is the purpose of the Spin membrane, since the portals have to be towed into place the slow way (i.e. slower than light, which takes millions of years to get anywhere appreciable).}}
* [[Sci
* [[Starfish Aliens]]: The only character who manages something resembling "communication" with The Hypotheticals ends up ''dying'' from the episode. Without the aliens even realizing. {{spoiler|It turns out they weren't even trying to communicate in the first place. The character in question describes it as the aliens trying to ''assimilate'' him via his nanotech - they don't realize that he's an intelligent being and think that his nanotech is just an exploitable system they can absorb, which is a normal thing for them to do}}
* [[Terraform]]: As our sun expands, the habitable "goldilocks" zone around it expands, leading to Mars starting to warm up enough to become Earth-like. The humans on Earth take advantage of this, and combined with the [[Time Dilation]] of the Spin membrane, are able to easily terraform Mars into a habitable refuge.
** Simply load up a rocket with simple bacteria. Shoot it out of the Spin membrane in the direction of Mars. Wait a day (hundred thousand years outside). Load up another rocket with more advanced bacteria. Shoot it at Mars. Load up a final rocket with some colonists...
* [[The Stars Are Going Out]]: Happens at the beginning of ''Spin'', as the Spin membrane goes into place.
* [[The Stoic]]: The main character, Tyler Dupree, though he occasionally verges into [[The Spock]] and [[Extreme Doormat]]. He's perfectly fine with people treating him like crap, taking it all with hardly an eyeblink, and is able to give humble and reasonable explanations later on for why he acts certain ways. Instead of getting angry, [[Armor
* [[Time Dilation]]: What the Spin does.
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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
[[Category:Spin]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Literature of the 2010s]]
[[Category:Literature]]
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