Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - Spin State

Spin State
Spin State
Author: Chris Moriarty
From a stunning new voice in hard science fiction comes the thrilling story of one woman’s quest to wrest truth from chaos, love from violence, and reality from illusion in a post-human universe of emergent AIs, genetic constructs, and illegal wetware... — SPIN STATE — UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li has made thirty-seven faster-than-light...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780553382136
ISBN-10: 0553382136
Publication Date: 9/30/2003
Pages: 496
Rating:
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 18

4.1 stars, based on 18 ratings
Publisher: Spectra
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Spin State on + 3 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
I found this story so uninteresting it made me break my long-running rule that I had to finish every book I started. From the first few pages describing the "raid on Metz" to page 278, where I abandoned the story almost halfway through the book, the transitions between scenes were jarring in spite of the fact that the entire story is told from the viewpoint of a single character, and the author dances around innuendo about sexuality, intelligent crystals being mined for profit, a cybersphere that is barely identifiable from physical reality, and an AI that uses brain shunts in specially wired humans, to roam the physical world. It's a slow dance that hints at truth but delivers so slowly that by the time the author begrudgingly hands you the secrets you've stopped caring about 20 pages ago.

All of this serves as the backdrop of a murder mystery that takes place in what is essentially a coal mine.
reviewed Spin State on + 26 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This turned into a very engrossing story, with many philosophical questions being raised about what constitues "human", issues of ethics and independence regarding AI's, and the struggle between acting on duty versus acting on one's conscience. And there's a very bizarre love story, too.

I have to admit that much of the science/physics was over my head, but I appreciated the gist of it, nonetheless. Reminded me of a hard-boiled, noir version of Tepper's After Long Silence, and also more generally of Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.
reviewed Spin State on + 19 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Well told story of the future involving A.I.s, high risk interstellar travel and bleeding edge scientific subjects. The sophistication of the physics is impressive yet doesn't overwhelm the story.
reviewed Spin State on + 73 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Masterful world-building. Fully formed set and setting painted with a maximum economy of brush strokes, peopled with three dimensional characters, some of whom can scarcely be called human but for the heart at their cores. Todays far frontier of quantum physics is the infra-structural under pinnings of entire interstellar civilizations, civilizations fast approaching a collision at the crossroads of history. In the center of that crossroad, used and abused to the point that she can barely tell who she is stands a soldier..
Read All 6 Book Reviews of "Spin State"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

reviewed Spin State on
Excellent. Moriarty does a wonderful job revealing both the story and the science in a way that keeps the reader interested while not overloading him or her with the fascinating science upon which the story is built.

I can't wait to read the follow-up


Genres: