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Spin State | 
 enlarge | Author: Chris Moriarty
Publisher: Spectra
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy Used: $2.89
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Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 94118
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 640
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0553586246
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780553586244
ASIN: 0553586246
Publication Date: November 23, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
In her debut novel, the terrific thriller Spin State, Chris Moriarty melds cutting-edge science with post-cyberpunk fiction and neo-noir suspense to create a complex, believable future inhabited by one of the most intriguing characters in modern science fiction. Major Catherine Li is a veteran United Nations Peacekeeper in a future of world-nations. Humanity has spread across interstellar space by "jumping": teleportation enabled by quantum physics and a bizarre crystal found only on Compson's World. The jumps destroy memory, so jumpers back up their memories on computer. Despite this precaution, frequent jumpers still lose some memories, a fact that poses a far greater problem for Catherine Li than it does for other Peacekeepers. For Li has a dangerous, potentially deadly secret: she's an illegal clone. When a UN mission goes awry, Li finds herself shipped on solo duty to Compson's World--her home world, to which she'd vowed never to return. Her mission initially seems simple: to determine if the death of brilliant physicist Hannah Sharifi was a crystal-mining accident or cold-blooded murder. Like Li, Sharifi is a clone--in fact, she's Li's genetic twin. Li swiftly finds herself enmeshed in the intertangled politics of the UN, the multiplanetary corporations, the miners, and the human-created Artificial Intelligences, who have enigmatic agendas of their own. --Cynthia Ward
Product Description
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 jumps in her lifetime—and has probably forgotten more than most people remember. But that’s what backup hard drives are for. And Li should know; she’s been hacking her memory for fifteen years in order to pass as human. But no memory upgrade can prepare Li for what she finds on Compson’s World: a mining colony she once called home and to which she is sent after a botched raid puts her on the bad side of the powers that be. A dead physicist who just happens to be her cloned twin. A missing dataset that could change the interstellar balance of power and turn a cold war hot. And a mining “accident” that is starting to look more and more like murder...
Suddenly Li is chasing a killer in an alien world miles underground where everyone has a secret. And one wrong turn in streamspace, one misstep in the dark alleys of blackmarket tech and interstellar espionage, one risky hookup with an AI could literally blow her mind.
Download Description
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... UN Peacekeeper Major Catherine Li has made thirty-seven faster-than-light jumps in her lifetime -- and has probably forgotten more than most people remember. But that's what backup hard drives are for. And Li should know; she's been hacking her memory for fifteen years in order to pass as human. But no memory upgrade can prepare Li for what she finds on Compson's World: a mining colony she once called home and to which she is sent after a botched raid puts her on the bad side of the powers that be. A dead physicist who just happens to be her cloned twin. A missing dataset that could change the interstellar balance of power and turn a cold war hot. And a mining "accident" that is starting to look more and more like murder... Suddenly Li is chasing a killer in an alien world miles underground where everyone has a secret. And one wrong turn in streamspace, one misstep in the dark alleys of blackmarket tech and interstellar espionage, one risky hookup with an AI could literally blow her mind.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 59 more reviews...
 I gave up half-way through August 21, 2008
Robert Arning
Maybe I'm getting too old, but I just gave up. I realized I didn't care what happened to any of the characters and the technologies/realities were too vague and confusing to keep straight. YMMV.
 Amazing posthuman debut novel June 14, 2008
Brian Hawkinson (San Jose, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I picked this one up on a whim. I had wanted a good sci fi that was hard, real and written well. I couldn't have found a better book than Moriarty's Spin State. I stumbled upon a style of writing in sci fi that focuses on posthuman, or humans genetically engineered or altered in such a way that they are, essentially, no longer the human that we know today.
Spin State's main character Li fits this perfectly with reinforced muscle and built in "online" connection, although online doesn't necessarily describe accurately what this world revolves around, being so much more vast and huge with AIs lurking around every corner.
Beyond all the sci fi attributes that make this book so great there is also a well written storyline that is backed up with a nicely researched science background as well. When a strong storyline is backed up with well researched science and interesting characters then you can only sit back and enjoy the ride.
Moriarty's debut novel is an engaging, fun and exciting ride that I want more of. In fact I now want to find many other books that are "posthuman". Bravo Moriarty, I look forward to reading a lot more from this author.
5 stars.
Great Hard SF Read May 9, 2008
Shaun Duke (Santa Cruz, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Spin State is probably the best hard hard SF book I've read in the last couple years. I say 'hard hard' because this book is more deeply rooted in certain sciences than a lot of other hard SF novels that focus on more visual technologies. Spin State is a novel of AI's, genetic constructs, quantum mechanics, and the Matrix-type world of Streamspace. There's string theory thrown in there too. The interesting thing about Spin State is that despite all the heavy research Moriarty had to do for this novel--research he provides at the end of the novel--it doesn't force you to understand the concepts. You don't have to know quantum theory or entanglement to get this novel, and you certainly don't need to know string theory.
Summary: Li is a genetic construct. Essentially she's human, but not like your or me.
She has quick reflexes, super strength, and a way to jump in and out of Streamspace whenever she wants. Think of her as a computer link node, able to go into the mainframe and rummage around, much like an AI would, only at a slower pace--since she's human. She lives in a universe where people can wipe their memories, where AI's are actually intelligent and almost human in their own right, and where a war between an organization known as the Syndicates has ended. Li is what you might call 'special forces', and a bit of a 'hero' from the aforementioned war with the Syndicates. When one of her intel gathering assignments goes wrong she is suddenly plunged right into the middle of a mysterious murder of a scientist named Sharifi, the same women her genetic makeup was modeled after, and she finds herself in a twisted battle of alliances as not only the UN but the Syndicates and the AI collective ALEF all vie for the information she might be able to give them.
For some the novel might seem a little slow paced. It starts right off with some action, but things sort of slow down for quite a while into this semi SF detective style piece of work. At 597 pages it does have a little tendency to slow down too much. However, once you get into the story and get an understanding of who the characters are and what motivations they have, you really pay attention to the tiny details. Moriarty has created a richly detailed world here. It's a world unlike our own on the outside, but strangely similar on the inside. What sets it apart from other novels in the same mold is that the science doesn't get in the way. It's understandable, clean cut, and interesting. You're not forced to read about quantum mechanics to know what he's talking about. It's as much a part of the flow as the characters, and entirely unpredictable. Just when you think you know what is going to happen, something entirely different takes place. At any one moment a friend could turn into and enemy. This sort of suspense is exactly what makes this book entertaining. Sure, the world is fascinating, but Moriarty has managed to create a truly intriguing SF epic.
Thumbs up from me!
so great December 28, 2007
T. Fraser (Chicago, IL United States)
Loved this book --- well plotted, strong female lead, an A.I., clones, all in a detailed and fascinating future world. This book --- and its sequel --- rock.
 Bend Space with BEC December 28, 2007
R. Aster (Maryland, USA)
This first novel seems built upon homages, large and small, to other novels, SF and other. Moriarty's key concept is a substance that is a naturally occurring Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This substance, called crystal for short, is found on only one planet in the universe and can be extracted only by the most dangerous means. The substance allows space-time to the effectively collapsed ("folded," perhaps?) such that instantaneous transport and communications can be attained. (These properties are yet to be discovered in BEC, a real substance, in our century.)
Well, 40 odd years ago in "Dune" the substance was called spice and the foiling of relativity was given a lot less scientific window-dressing, but the similarity is clear. And I don't doubt Moriarty read the many papers and books in her bibliography, and talked to the scientists she credits, but she never makes any real attempt to explain the means by which quantum entanglement might actually facilitate instantaneous transport or communications. What I expect in a good SF story that extrapolates from some real discovery is some convincing mumbo-jumbo that makes me believe, or at least *want* to believe, that the science might really work. I would refer the readers to Niven, Heinlein, Haldeman, or Clarke for many examples. (Yeah, I'm old - get over it.)
The novel opens with an action prologue a little like the James Bond movies where we meet our heroine, Catherine Li, while she is on a dangerous mission to bust into a lab to steal some technology. She is revealed to be *twice* augmented beyond a normal human, being both the product of genetic engineering and also internally wired with bionic assists that are always on the verge of injuring her more than her opponents by overstressing her remnant bones, tendons, adenoids, etc. Even 20th century fighter planes had software smart enough to prevent the pilot from breaking the wings off by pulling too many G's. You'd think her designers would have built in similar stoppers. And yes, she reminded me of Juan Rico and William Mandala in their fighting suits. This is not a bad thing, of course. But Heinlein and Haldeman seemed to put more thought into the actual engineering than Moriarty, who relies more on rapid-fire use of buzz- and coined words to convey futuristic technology.
After the prologue, we spend most of the rest of the story on the planet Compton's World where miners work in 19th century conditions mining the crystal which is threaded through veins of coal. A couple comments here--Martin Cruz Smith took a break from the great Arkady Renko series to write an excellent novel, "Rose," set in a 19th century coal mine in England. Now I have only ever read one coal mine novel, and "Rose" was it, and maybe they are all similar, but I'd swear Moriarty was channeling Smith in her descriptions of the mine and the company town. Maybe there's only one way to describe a coal town... More importantly: the mine is the only source of the most important substance in the universe, the BEC. It supports the whole infrastructure of galactic commerce. So why do the miners live in incredible poverty and filth? Surely they could have, like, middle class lives, if not outright wealth.
Oh well, the story does go on from there - there's a murder in the mine and the outsider, Li, is sent to investigate (as also happened in "Rose"). Li interacts with and is helped by Cohen, an AI who is a combination of Michael the Computer in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and Agent Aloysius Pendergast in the novels of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Cohen ends up being the best character, no doubt due to the illustrious parentage, but again seems derivative. He lives in a fabulously appointed mansion (although it is possibly a VR), is tremendously suave and urbane, and even makes great use of the "memory palace" mental trick, all reminiscent of Pendergast.
So. Three stars for nice descriptive writing, an awareness (but not convincing use) of leading-edge science, good bad guys, and Cohen. Good editing could have added at least another half star. The book is 250 pages too long for its story. The sequel, "Spin Control," is in my in-basket. If it gets up to four stars, I'll be back with another review.
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