by Robert Charles Wilson
Library Journal When Tyler was ten years old, he and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, witnessed the night the stars "disappeared," leaving a protective barrier separating Earth from the rest of the universe and slowing the passage of time within the barrier. Jason becomes a scientist devoted to finding a way to break through Earth's artificial shell before the acceleration of time outside the barrier brings about the death of the sun within the world's foreseeable future. Diane joins an apocalyptic cult, and Tyler dedicates his life to preserving the sanity of the people he loves best-even when he discovers Jason's hidden agenda. The author of Darwinia and Blind Lake crafts a tale of apocalyptic proportions, blending the best of hard science and speculative fiction with a poignant tale of childhood's end. Recommended for most libraries. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. (c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. Publishers Weekly One night the stars go out. From that breathtaking "what if," Wilson (Blind Lake, etc.) builds an astonishingly successful m?lange of SF thriller, growing-up saga, tender love story, father-son conflict, ecological parable and apocalyptic fable in prose that sings the music of the spheres. The narrative time oscillates effortlessly between Tyler Dupree's early adolescence and his near-future young manhood haunted by the impending death of the sun and the earth. Tyler's best friends, twins Diane and Jason Lawton, take two divergent paths: Diane into a troubling religious cult of the end, Jason into impassioned scientific research to discover the nature of the galactic Hypotheticals whose "Spin" suddenly sealed Earth in a "cosmic baggie," making one of its days equal to a hundred million years in the universe beyond. As convincing as Wilson's scientific hypothesizing is-biological, astrophysical, medical-he excels even more dramatically with the infinitely intricate, minutely nuanced relationships among Jason, Diane and Tyler, whose older self tries to save them both with medicines from Mars, terraformed through Jason's genius into an incubator for new humanity. This brilliant excursion into the deepest inner and farthest outer spaces offers doorways into new worlds-if only humankind strives and seeks and finds and will not yield compassion for our fellow beings. Agent, Shawna McCarthy. (Apr. 14) FYI: Wilson's novel The Chronoliths won the John W. Campbell Award; three of his novels have been Hugo finalists. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
