I'd read one other book by Wilson in the past, Bios, and I pretty much thought it sucked, no decent characters, just an idea pushing people around, typical bad "hard" SF. Given that, I didn't plan to read any more of his work, but this novel had been getting good reviews and was appearing on various best of 2005 lists, so I figured I'd give it a chance.

Since then, I've talked to a few Wilson fans who basically said that Bios was an analomy, and they thought it sucked too. Spin is completely different. While it's got big ideas, it's also got real people, and the book is as much about how these people deal with the impacts of the big ideas, as about those ideas themselves.

In other words, the characters feel like real people in a strange situation, not simply expository pawns. So I'd highly recommend this book, and I'd also not recommend reading Bios any time soon. I plan to check out some of Wilson's other work, and I hope it's more like Spin