Wilson, Robert Charles. Spin. New York: Tor, 2006. 454pp.

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin is as good a science fiction novel as you will ever read. Period. It has it all: good science, good characters, mystery and a big dollop of Wilson's characteristic transcendance. I won't summarize the plot, as the Wikipedia entry does a great job of that.

I want to talk a little about what a thrill it is to read a good sf novel. It doesn't happen very often, but it's worth noting when it does. I've been lucky lately, the last really good sf novel I read was John Scalzi's Old Man's War, before that, a bit longer ago, when I finally got around to reading To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer last year around this time. What really signals that reading experience for me? Well, it's when the book stops me in my tracks while I'm reading it and makes me think very deeply about the characters and/or issues raised in the book. Spin is one of those books, that stopped me in my tracks. The characters, the transcendence, the aliens, the Martians, the decline and decay, this is a great book.