Runo Knows...The Chronoliths
Spin was the first book by Robert Charles Wilson that I'd written up for here; it wasn't the first book of his that I'd read, though. That was The Chronoliths, a book I bought rather, well, randomly along with Revelation Space and Jennifer Government I believe because it was part of a combo with one of them at that point.
I had gotten the impression from the cover, and the style of printing, that it was an older sci-fi book - checking the publication date however showed me it was 2001. While set, at least at the beginning, in the 2020s, the passage of six years hasn't made the book feel dated, at least not yet, except perhaps in some odd wordings of things, and one passing reference that there hadn't been a nuke used in anything approaching warfare since the turn of the century.
Basically, this first person novel is the tale of Scott Warden - more rather, his memoirs, written down the road from the events of the day. He tells of how, living in Thailand as an expatriate, he was there for the arrival of the first Chronolith, a large monument sent from the future back 20 years and 3 months.
The arrival of the Chronoliths are traumatic events. They suck their energy and material from the surrounding area, and thus cause an immense thermal pulse and shockwave upon arriving. The first one, in Chumphon, isn't that big of a deal, being in the middle of the forest, but as they start to arrive in the middle of cities, and as Kuinist followers start to try to herald in their arrivals, matters tense up.
You see, the monuments are to an apparent dictator named Kuin. In fact, it's not really fair to call him necessarily a dictator at all - nothing is known about him. But the monuments appear to be to his conquests, marching through, at first, southeast Asia, impervious to even nuclear assault, and slowly moving across the globe.
Warden's story is followed through the divorce to his first wife, Janice, at least partially thanks to the fact that he was off seeing the newly-arrived Chronolith when she needed his help with their daughter, Kaitlin. As the years go on, and the economy of the world tanks, riots and wars break out, he struggles to survive, reconcile with his wife and her new husband, a "Copperhead" named Whit, and be a good dad to his daughter Kaitlin.
He is wrapped up in the Chronoliths, though, thanks to the tau turbulence - the wake of causality that links him to Sue Chopra, a physicist he knew in college that may be the key to the Chronoliths, as well as to his friend Hitch, future wife Ashlee and her son Adam, and FBI agent Morris.
One of the things that this has in common with Spin is the fact that it's a sci-fi story, it almost doesn't feel like one. It doesn't focus on technology, on "gee whiz" gadgets - they're simply there, and part of life. Sure, Sue Chopra and her assistant Ray Mosely go into some detail about it, but Scott doesn't understand it, and therefore the reader doesn't get an overly huge dose of it.
Instead, Wilson's books are character studies, watching how the characters evolve and interact through time as they attempt to solve the mystery of their universe (the lack of stars in Spin, the mysterious monuments from the future here). It's not an action book, though there is some gunplay; it's a drama. Given how much bad sci-fi I read, you might say this is sci-fi literature, not just sci-fi writing.
I had gotten the impression from the cover, and the style of printing, that it was an older sci-fi book - checking the publication date however showed me it was 2001. While set, at least at the beginning, in the 2020s, the passage of six years hasn't made the book feel dated, at least not yet, except perhaps in some odd wordings of things, and one passing reference that there hadn't been a nuke used in anything approaching warfare since the turn of the century.
Basically, this first person novel is the tale of Scott Warden - more rather, his memoirs, written down the road from the events of the day. He tells of how, living in Thailand as an expatriate, he was there for the arrival of the first Chronolith, a large monument sent from the future back 20 years and 3 months.
The arrival of the Chronoliths are traumatic events. They suck their energy and material from the surrounding area, and thus cause an immense thermal pulse and shockwave upon arriving. The first one, in Chumphon, isn't that big of a deal, being in the middle of the forest, but as they start to arrive in the middle of cities, and as Kuinist followers start to try to herald in their arrivals, matters tense up.
You see, the monuments are to an apparent dictator named Kuin. In fact, it's not really fair to call him necessarily a dictator at all - nothing is known about him. But the monuments appear to be to his conquests, marching through, at first, southeast Asia, impervious to even nuclear assault, and slowly moving across the globe.
Warden's story is followed through the divorce to his first wife, Janice, at least partially thanks to the fact that he was off seeing the newly-arrived Chronolith when she needed his help with their daughter, Kaitlin. As the years go on, and the economy of the world tanks, riots and wars break out, he struggles to survive, reconcile with his wife and her new husband, a "Copperhead" named Whit, and be a good dad to his daughter Kaitlin.
He is wrapped up in the Chronoliths, though, thanks to the tau turbulence - the wake of causality that links him to Sue Chopra, a physicist he knew in college that may be the key to the Chronoliths, as well as to his friend Hitch, future wife Ashlee and her son Adam, and FBI agent Morris.
One of the things that this has in common with Spin is the fact that it's a sci-fi story, it almost doesn't feel like one. It doesn't focus on technology, on "gee whiz" gadgets - they're simply there, and part of life. Sure, Sue Chopra and her assistant Ray Mosely go into some detail about it, but Scott doesn't understand it, and therefore the reader doesn't get an overly huge dose of it.
Instead, Wilson's books are character studies, watching how the characters evolve and interact through time as they attempt to solve the mystery of their universe (the lack of stars in Spin, the mysterious monuments from the future here). It's not an action book, though there is some gunplay; it's a drama. Given how much bad sci-fi I read, you might say this is sci-fi literature, not just sci-fi writing.