It was lovely in its intrinsic glow, a rainbow shining in colors without names. It was an arch for things to pass through, but it didn’t lead to another planet.

Things were passing through it now. From the utter blackness inside it, where even Isaac couldn’t see, luminous clouds ascended to the stars.

Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won the 2005 Hugo for best novel and praise within and without fandom. The sequel, out this past September, looks at events some years later. The stars have returned, humans have settled on Equatoria, and the 34th of August brings something from the heavens….

Continue reading →

William Gibson made his name with the cyberpunk trilogy, written in the 1980s and set in the twenty-first century. Since the twenty-first century increasingly looks like something from a Gibson cyberpunk novel, he has been setting his recent work in the present. This novel follows Pattern Recognition. Although the two works share some characters, references, and plot elements, this is not in the usual sense a sequel.

Continue reading →