Almost seventy years ago, the mysterious alien beings known as the Hypotheticals encased Earth in a force field and built a network of giant arches facilitating overland travel to other habitable planets. With access to the fossil fuel resources of half a dozen worlds, humanity is slowly killing its homeworld, even as it expands to other stars.
All of this matters little to Sandra Cole, however. A psychologist at the State Care facility in Texas, it’s all she can do to endure another day. But all of that starts to change when a police officer brings in a mysterious boy–a boy with a message from the future.
This is the third and final book in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin trilogy, and it brings the series to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. The first book introduced the Hypotheticals and hinted at some greater scheme that they were involved in, the second book further explored the universe while raising more questions about the Hypotheticals, and the last book follows the Hypotheticals to the end of time, answering these questions while taking nothing from the truly alien grandeur of it all.
However, like the other books, the story itself is not about the aliens, but the people who make contact with them. The high-concept science fiction goodness is all in there, but it’s framed by characters who are both human and relatable. I wasn’t as invested in these characters as the ones in Spin, but I was still very interested in seeing what happened with them.
The structure of the book is a lot like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, with alternating chapters telling two stories that don’t connect until the very end. I finished the last half of it in practically one sitting, and the last chapter in a breathless sprint–much like Spin and Axis. The way everything came together, not only for this book but the entire series, was awesome.
I was really happy to see this series finish well, because the first book was a major influence for me in writing Genesis Earth. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t think anymore that this is the kind of science fiction I’ll write very often, but I sure love reading it. I wouldn’t recommend starting with this book, but if you like science fiction that makes you stand back and blink at the sheer magnificence of the universe, this is a series you should definitely check out.
