The Beamers leave the possible apocalypse of Louise Erdrich‘s Future Home of the Living God for the very different but still very possible apocalypse of Robert Charles Wilson‘s Spin.
Watch the video for the day and time of the Beamers’ discussion.
One night in October, the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier.
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. A 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.
Hugo Award winner in the Best Novel category, Spin has also won the French Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, the Japanese Seiun Award, the Israeli Geffen Prize, and the German Kurd Lasswitz Prize, among others. A Locus Bestseller.
Here’s a book that features speculative conceits as brash and thrilling as those found in any space opera, along with insights into the human condition as rich as those contained within any mainstream mimetic fiction, with both its conceits and insights beautifully embedded in crystalline prose. — The Washington Post
Spin is many things: psychological novel, technological thriller, apocalyptic picaresque, cosmological meditation. . . Another triumph for Robert Charles Wilson in a long string of triumphs. — Locus
If you’d like to participate in the discussion, please contact us through the About the Beamers page. We’ll send you all you need to connect to the virtual meeting.
We look forward to seeing (and hearing) you.
