Special Circumstances

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson is consistently good, always delivering new and sometimes old science-fiction ideas that deserve attention with characters and plotlines that never disappoint.

Spin has many old science-fiction ideas contained within it, but all of them are carefully re-considered within a storyline that is already compelling: a coming-of-age story of the main character, Tyler Dupree. But this story is set within a grand and far more painful coming-of-age for humanity itself.

Tyler, ever since he was a young child, has been close friends with twins: Diane and Jason Lawton. The class distinctions that produce a simultaneous envy, fear and affection between Tyler and the rich and powerful Lawton family is wonderfully rendered. If nothing else fantastic happened in this novel, that story would be reason enough to read it. However, fantastic things do happen: while adolescents, Tyler and the Lawton twins witness first hand the creation of a planet-spanning shield around the Earth, presumably by aliens, which blocks out the universe. Experiments quickly show that time passes slowly inside the Spin, so while 30 years pass on Earth, 300 billion years pass outside the shield. Humanity does what it can, taking advantage of the temporal difference to first terraform and then colonize Mars. There is a fateful meeting of the human-descended Martians with the Earthbound variety in the third act, which literally transforms humanity: one human at a time. Together the two groups get closer to piecing together the nature of the puzzle: why does the Spin exist? What is its ultimate purpose? Is it benign or punitive?

Lomax quoted a poem by a nineteenth-century Russian poet named F. I. Tiutchev, who couldn't have imagined the Spin but wrote as if he had:

Gone like a vision is the external world
and Man, a homeless orphan, has to face
helpless, naked and alone,
the blackness of immeasurable space.
All life and brightness seem an ancient dream,
while in the substance of the night,
unraveled, alien, he now perceives
a fateful something that is his by right

Then Lomax departed the stage, and after the prosaic business of backward counting, the first of the rockets rode its column of fire into the unraveling cosmos behind the sky. A fateful something. Ours by right.

The idea of an enforced isolation for Earth from the universe is similar to other ideas in science-fiction: like in "Quarantine" by Greg Egan, a novel in which the solar system in encased in a impenetrable Bubble. But in Spin, this isolation will turn out to be closer in spirit to what the monolith represents in "2001: A Space Odyssey". In other words, the isolation will paradoxically result in a journey for all of mankind by the end of the book.

Wun knew (or had been coached to understand) how unlikely this event seemed to the average Earthling. ... So he thanked us all for our hospitality in his best mid-Atlantic accent and talked wistfully about his home and why he had left it to come here. He painted Mars as a foreign but entirely human place, the kind of place you might like to visit, where the people were friendly and the scenery was interesting, although the winters, he admitted, were often harsh.

("Sounds like Canada," Carol said.)

If you like Spin, other science-fiction novels written by Robert Charles Wilson are: The Chronoliths and Bios.

Update (Sep 10, 2006): I removed the comment about RCW being underrated. Spin won the Hugo for best novel of 2006. Links to the World Science Fiction Convention: WSFS page and the 64th WSFS Convention.

%T Spin
%A Robert Charles Wilson
%I Tor
%D 2005
%G ISBN: 0-765-34825-X (pb)
%P 454
%K science-fiction

Review written: 2006/2/19

Nepal vs. the British in Tibet from 1769 to 1861

From The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet & Central Asia, by Derek Waller. 1990 (paperback, 2004). The University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 0-8131-1666-X.

The East India Company viewed trade with Tibet both as desirable for itself, particularly with respect to Tibetan exports of gold and silver, and also as a back door to the lucrative markets of China proper, bypassing the officially sanctioned entry point of Canton.

Unfortunately, this interest on the part of the East India Company coincided with the closing of many of Tibet's doors to the outside world. This occurred partly as a result of the increasing imposition of the Chinese authority and partly because of the overthrow, by 1769, of the traditional Newar rulers by the Gurkhas and the establishment of a Hindu kingdom in Nepal. Racial and religious bonds between Nepal and Tibet were broken, and the traditional trade routes through the Nepalese passes between India and Tibet were largely closed. In addition, the Gurkhas did not look kindly on the British, who had rendered military assistance to the Newars. As a result, the East India Company began to look for alternative routes through Bhutan or Assam which could open Tibet to trade and which did not pass through Nepal.

...

Nepal invaded Tibet in 1788 in search of the treasure housed by wealthy monastaries. Unable to oppose them, the Tibetans sued for peace and promised to pay an indemnity. The Gurkhas then withdrew, but not before Tashilhunpo had appealed for help from Lord Cornwallis, who had replaced Hastings as governor-general in 1785. Cornwallis declined, promising only that he would not assist the Gurkhas. The Gurkhas invaded again in 1791, on the grounds that Tibet had not fulfilled the agreement over the indemnity. Shigatse was captured and Tashilhunpo was sacked. A strong Chinese army then entered Tibet and defeated the troops withdrawing to Nepal. Now it was the turn of the Gurkhas to request aid from the British. Cornwallis again refused, though he offered to provide mediation, which aroused the suspicions of the Tibetans and angered the Gurkhas. Cornwallis had succeeded only in alienating all three parties -- Tibetan, Chinese, and Gurkha. A large Chinese army now occupied the most populous part of Tibet, and Britain was not to regain its influence there until the twentieth century. The Chinese Emperor Qian Long closed the frontiers of Tibet to the outside world, thus imposing on Tibet an exclusionary policy similar to that already enforced for China proper, one which kept nearly all foreigners away by restricting trade only to the port of Canton.

...

The closing of the borders stimulated British interest in Tibet. As the nineteenth century progressed, curiousity increased with the occupation of territory along the Tibetan border, acquired as a result of the deteriorating relations with Nepal. With the Chinese firmly in control of Tibet and closing its borders to Bengal, the East India Company looked initially to revive the trade routes to Tibet through Nepal. This was despite the failure of the mission of Captain William Kirkpatrick, who had been sent to mediate between the Gurkhas and the Tibetans in 1792. A second mission under Captain Knox was dispatched in 1801. Knox became the first British Resident in Kathmandu and, on behalf of Britain, signed a treaty with Nepal shortly after arrival. However, as a result of internal political developments in Nepal, Knox withdrew in 1803, and the treaty was dissolved. The continued forays by the Gurkhas into areas of British interest and protection ultimately lead to the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. The British were victorious and, by the treaty of Segauli, were given possession of territory to the west of Nepal in Kumaon and Garwhal, thus giving British India a common frontier with Tibet for the first time. Relations between Britain and Nepal, however, remained cool until a change of regime in Kathmandu in 1846. Treaties in 1817 and 1861 with Sikkim, another Himalayan state on the frontier of Tibet, gave Britain influence in that area. Sikkim was also a major trading route from Bengal to Lhasa. Further to the east, Britain acquired the province of Assam, after victory in the first Anglo-Burmese War in 1826. This opened up the possibility of alternative routes to Lhasa and southwest China. In the extreme western part of Tibet, British interest in pashm, used to make fine cashmere wool, led to the construction of the Hindustan-Tibet road between 1850 and 1858. Designed primarily to improve trade, the road went from the plains of India through Simla, the summer capital, before passing through Bashahr and terminating at Shipki on the Tibetan border.

Read my review of Trespassers on the roof of the world by Peter Hopkirk for more on China, Britain and Tibet in the early part of the 20th century.

Mongols vs. the Chinese in Tibet

From The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet & Central Asia, by Derek Waller. 1990 (paperback, 2004). The University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 0-8131-1666-X.

At the time of the establishment of the Qing (or Manchu) dynasty in China in 1644, Lhasa was ruled by Mongols from the Koko Nor area. They built up the Dalai Lama as a religious power, and it was the Dalai Lama who also began to assume secular authority following the death of the Mongol leader in 1655. His policies were generally in accordance with those of the Qing, particularly the policy of keeping a rein on the hostile Dzungarian Mongols of the Ili region. But with the demise of the Dalai Lama in 1682, a complex dispute arose around the question of his successor, intertwined with the possibility of a Mongol reunification under Tibetan auspices threatening the power of the Qing emperor. In 1717, the Dzungarian Mongols invaded Tibet. At first welcoming the invaders, the population soon turned against them and sought assistance from the Chinese in expelling them. The Emperor Kangxi was only too happy to oblige and sent an army to Tibet, which was roundly defeated by the Mongols in 1718. A second, larger Chinese force was more successful and occupied Lhasa in 1720. The Chinese army was warmly received as the savior from the Mongols and the restorer of the new Dalai Lama to his rightful position. The foundation of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet had been laid in a masterful manner, and with the cooperation of the Tibetans themselves.

Read my review of Trespassers on the roof of the world by Peter Hopkirk for more on China, Britain and Tibet in the early part of the 20th century.