An excellent book, with a startlingly new spin on some basic tropes (alien life, the 'space marine' as a character trope, and artificial intelligence especially). After quickly finishing both this book and its sequel, Spin Control, I was disappointed to learn that Moriarty hadn't published any more in the series. The re-read which prompted this review was done in celebration of the fact that she seems to be preparing a third book, Ghost Spin, although the release date has yet to be announced.It's the Future, and humanity has moved out into space using both slower-than-light travel and some slightly hand-wavey quantum tunneling effects to transport good, services, and information across a rapidly expanding envelope of space which has been divided into UN territory (including a ecologically devastated Earth) and the worlds of the Syndicates, whose population is comprised of clones whose genetic material is tailored for specific tasks - something which is explored more in the sequel than in this novel, where the Syndicates are more a background threat. The protagonist, Major Catharine Li, is a tough UN soldier who also happens to be a lesbian, to have Syndicate genes in her background (a serious business in a UN career), and to be increasingly disenchanted with the murky politics and political games which keep getting people around her or under her command killed. In concert with a mercurial AI, Cohen, she ends up on Compson's World - a mining planet which produces the unobtanium/Spice analogue which enables the UN's quantum-spin technology to function - investigating a murder which quickly transforms into a crisis for Compson's World's inhabitants (human and non) as well as humanity as a whole.The plot is engaging and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, but what really struck me about this book was the way in which it engaged with many issues that science fiction more generally tends to background. The issue of prejudice based on genetics (Major Li) or against AIs (Cohen) are played straight but also dealt with in a more realistic and careful way than is usual. The economic situation of the Compson's World miners struck me at first as kind of unrealistic - what, we've settled other worlds but we've still got guys punching on the clock to go down shafts and get killed by explosive gas? Really? - but at the same time I give Moriarty serious kudos for suggesting that the future may hold economic and social injustices much like (if not identical to) the ones we see around us today. It reminded me of some of Richard K. Morgan's work, and not just because the two are often found near each other on the shelf.The alien, when it appears, reminded me somewhat of the lifeforms encountered in Peter Watts' Blindsight, in that it is bluntly and honestly inhuman while also drawing on the writer's knowledge of and obvious fascination with Earth's wide variety of lifeforms - in this case, with coral reefs. The creature isn't as shocking or frightening as Watts' are, and the intended point seems more geared toward the problem of environmental overexploitation and ecological disaster (hinted at by the vision of Moriarty's future Earth as well) than Watts' focus on existential horror.There are some weaknesses - as I mentioned, Irish miners IN SPAAAAACE won't necessarily be as easily believable as the Syndicates or Catherine Li and her compatriots in the UN military, and at several points in the narrative you start to lose track of what precisely is going on - the machinations and motivations of various groups and individuals involved - including Syndicate spies, UN politicians, labor unions and strike-breaking managers, a dead scientist and her genetically engineered lover, and several AIs - are cloudy at best. Spin Control, which I'll get around to reviewing eventually as well, was much more polished and clear in execution, but Spin State is well worth reading nonetheless, both in its own right and as a solid foundation for the second and - soon appearing, one can hope! - third installments.
So. Spin State is a pulp sci-fi novel set largely in a mining town on a distant planet. It’s very much a thriller, with a lot of action and characters that are unsure how much they can trust one another. The author creates a whole universe, and does so quite convincingly, but this does affect the pacing somewhat as the book is quite long and there isn’t that much plot to sustain it. Equally it means that some aspects of the universe are described that just aren’t relevant to the plot or characters. Those characters are generally perfectly serviceable. The central character is certainly tiresome at points but then most of us are. The secondary characters are a bit one-dimensional but fine for the story.As a thriller, trying to talk about central themes is always a bit redundant - that’s simply not the point of the book - but if there were such a thing it would be identity and consciousness. Unfortunately, an exploration of this theme doesn’t sit very well with the murky background to the characters because they’re simply not sketched in enough. Are the different forms of life meant to be fundamentally the same or different? It was hard to say, despite a large part of the book being dedicated to this theme This difficulty is of course shared across all sci-fi to some extent, but generally aliens are meant to be just stereotyped humans, and the stories told in sci-fi are really about the human condition. When the emphasis is on the ‘other’, then the bar for them is set much higher.Ultimately Spin State is fine. I delayed writing this review for ages because I couldn’t really think of much to say about it, but this isn’t by any means an indictment of the book. It’s an enjoyable read, but if I had one piece of advice it would be to not read it critically.
What do You think about Spin State (2004)?
I greatly enjoyed this read. While not ground breaking, the plot is interesting, and combines some common scifi tropes in unique ways. All the characters felt real, with real motivations and problems, even unimportant ones.The universe is interesting, complex and well built, as is the political situation overall and in detail. While I would classify this as "hard scifi", a lot of the tech is a reasonable (I feel) extrapolation of things we know, or theorizing about today. It's complicated, and there's _some_ hand waving about it, the core technology of the era (which is a main plot point of the book) is well explained, and not unreasonable.I'll be reading more in this series (if there are any).
—Jon
Stayed up until the wee hours finishing this one. I must admit that a lot of the explanations of the technology went way above my head, but the story was top-notch. I guess that is reasonable since this book of fiction has several pages of bibliography at the end of it, all relating to quantum physics, if that gives you any idea. BUT, you don't need to be interested in quantum to really enjoy this book...there is something for everybody. Mystery, crime, romance, social commentary, etc. and so forth. Am looking forward to reading the sequel this week--I just need to start it a little earlier in the day!
—Jensownzoo
Oh my yes. Oh MY yes. Some years ago, I made a conscious effort to switch my home genre from hard SF to fantasy. Fantasy had more women writing in it, and it seemed to be growing and developing as a genre, while SF stagnated. There seemed to be far fewer fantasy books where women existed only as prizes, as nonsentients, as set dressing, as motivation for the Man to do Manly Things for Manly Reasons. There were fewer (though still many, sadly) fantasy books where queer people and brown people just didn't exist. There was heart in fantasy, too, that hard SF seemed to have lost. At first it was rough, trading spaceships for dragons. But I adjusted.But this book. This book is everything I once hoped to find in hard SF and gave up on ever seeing there. It's smart and fun and imaginative and there's enough science to make you salivate. The characters are real people, the future comes in all colors, and queerness appears to be standard-issue. The technology and science affect society and politics. People remain people, but the world has changed. And this book is good. It's compelling, it's twisty, it's smart. (Yes, okay, there was a point at like 60% in where I went, "Okay, that's it, that's one twist too many," but I got better.) I read it in a day. (After waiting several days to start it because it begins in my least favorite place: Right Before Everything Goes to Hell. But it's all up from there.) And I finished it wanting more. (And realized it's basically just the setup, and I'm not sure the rest of the series can follow through on the promise of this one. But I'm looking forward to finding out.)And at the end there was a delightful bonus waiting for me. Most SF books are other genres filtered through an SF lens. Action adventure (but in space)! Court intrigue (but with clones)! Mystery (but with robots)! Literary fiction (but by Philip K. Dick)! It took me until the last 10% of this book to see what genre it's blended with, and once I did, I loved it even more. (view spoiler)[It's a romance, a romance between an AI and someone who genuinely believes she's incapable of love and has put so much distance between herself and her feelings she can't remember where she put them. (In other words, a romance between my two favorite kinds of people.) And that's something I hardly ever saw in SF in the bad old days (romance is for girls, don't you know). I love it. (hide spoiler)]
—thefourthvine
