Book of the Week :: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

The Book of the Week is Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, winner of this year's Hugo Award for Best Novel. In Spin, the stars go out one day, after a mysterious intelligence places a barrier around Earth. Scientists later discover that time is passing dramatically faster within the barrier than outside, so much so that the sun will expire in about 40 years of our time.

Spin is the 12th novel by Wilson, a Canadian author whose work has consistently been well-received, even by The New York Times Book Review. Wilson has been nominated for the Best Novel Hugo four times, but Spin is his first to win. Hard-core science fiction fans were pleased to see the Hugo Award go to a serious SF novel; four of the previous five winners were fantasies. On the other hand, Spin is accessible to readers who do not read much SF (in praising the book, Stephen King said it has "zero geek factor"). Congratulations to Robert Charles Wilson!

A collector's note: This book is too recent in vintage to be terribly valuable, but the first edition of a Hugo-winning novel often appreciates tremendously over time. It can't hurt that Robert Charles Wilson signed this copy for me the day after he won the award, and drew a little picture of the Hugo Award in the book.