Spin

4.5 stars
This is a fantastic example of a science fiction story that can be both accessible and full of wild concepts and “hard sci-fi” ideas. It hypothesizes what the world would be like if all of a sudden, the world was fast forwarded through time so that the sun would age to the point of swallowing the earth in one life time, while everyday life on Earth appeared to be the same up until that point.
Not much changes at first. Everything seems more or less normal, there doesn't seem to be any solution, and the end of the world is not tomorrow but maybe 60-100 years away, so it's easy to go on living like nothing's wrong. There is of course much much more to the book then that, but it is what I enjoyed most: this book really gets the every day human perspective. You do not follow the scientist discovering the mysteries or the family that gets trapped in a dangerous cult. Instead, you follow an unexceptional character who just happens to be around all the big events as they unfold.
Basically, this book is like a tribute to old sci-fi insofar as it centres around a big event in space that warps our understanding of physics. But it adds the 21st century twist of focusing on humanity rather than the science. And in an age of apocalyptic books, it's refreshing that the people don't just transform into crazy nutjobs, but act like actual people who deal with problems in their own personal way.