Spin, Volume 1One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard 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, 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 day 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. |
Contents
4 X 109 AD | 9 |
THE BIG HOUSE | 12 |
COMING OF AGE IN BOILING WATER | 22 |
TIME OUT OF JOINT | 37 |
4 X 109 AD | 45 |
RUMORS OF APOCALYPSE REACH THE BERKSHIRES | 49 |
NO SINGLE THING ABIDES | 64 |
4 X 109 AD | 80 |
THE COLD PLACES OF THE UNIVERSE | 192 |
SACRIFICIAL RITES | 208 |
THE TICKING OF EXPENSIVE CLOCKS | 219 |
4 X 109 AD | 238 |
DESPERATE EUPHORIA | 244 |
HOME BEFORE DARK | 264 |
4 X 109 AD | 278 |
BY DREAMS SURROUNDED | 284 |
UNQUIET NIGHTS | 88 |
UNDER THE SKIN | 100 |
CELESTIAL GARDENING | 112 |
SNAPSHOTS OF THE ECOPOIESIS | 121 |
4 X 109 AD | 140 |
HOSPITALITY | 156 |
FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE KIRIOLOJ DELTA | 167 |
4 X 109 AD | 179 |
THE MORNING AND THE EVENING | 294 |
SPIN | 306 |
THE ABYSS IN FLAMES | 319 |
ARS MORIENDI | 327 |
4 X 109 AD WE ALL LAND SOMEWHERE | 338 |
NORTH OF ANYWHERE | 360 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 363 |
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Common terms and phrases
aerostats asked bedroom began Big House Carol clinic close Condon couple course CVWS dark Diane Diane's door drug Dupree E. D. Lawton Earth ecopoiesis Event eyes fucking guess hand happened head heard human Hypotheticals Ibu Ina Jala Jase Jason Jordan Tabernacle kind knew launch lawn least light living Lomax looked Malmstein Marcus Dupree Mars Martian mean Minang Minangkabau Molly morning never night nodded okay Oort Cloud orbit Padang Perihelion planet Reformasi replicators road ROBERT CHARLES WILSON seemed Simon Simon Townsend sleep smiled solar system Sorley sorry sound Spin membrane stars stood stopped talk tell Teluk Bayur terraforming there's thing thought told took turned Tyler walked watched week what's window Wun Ngo Wun Ngo Wen Wun's Ο Ο Ο