The first of these books won a Hugo award a couple of years ago, and while Hugo-award-winning books aren’t always to my taste, I’ve rarely found books so honored to be badly-written.

The premise of the first book is that, in our not-too-distant future, the Earth is inexplicably wrapped in a force-field or “membrane” that shuts out the stars, and after some investigation is understood to slow the passage of time on the planet while the universe outside passes by, thousands of years for each day. The discovery of purpose of this envelopment, and the nature of the entities responsible - eventually labeled “the Hypotheticals” - consumes much of the book, and the well-drawn characters that inhabit it.

The story is told through the eyes of three characters, brother and sister Jason and Diane Lawton, and their friend and neighbor Tyler Dupree. Jason becomes involved at the center of the scientific and technological response to the “Spin” as it comes to be called, Diane retreats into a series of religious cults and communities, and Tyler acts as a narrator and observer.

One of the things that struck me as interesting about the first book is that Wilson shows a respect for the religious impulses of his characters - when faced with something immensely larger than oneself that changes the destiny of the entire world, the question “Is this God’s will?” isn’t entirely unreasonable. That’s unusual in a genre that often treats religion and belief in God with a Gene Roddenberry-esque amount of disdain.

Because of the accelerated passage of time outside of the Spin membrane and the inevitable expansion of the Sun as billions of years pass outside, Jason puts in motion an audacious plan to terraform Mars and send humans to live there, to develop and possibly understand the purposes of the Hypotheticals. What ultimately happens is unexpected, and Jason, Diane, and Tyler are all literally transformed by the end of the book by the alien technology that has come to determine to course of their lives.

The second book follows the events of the first. The Spin has ended and the Hypotheticals have placed an Arch in the Indian Ocean which leads to another habitable world (and other Arches with other, less hospitable worlds, beyond). But while the New World is being colonized and exploited, the still-unscrutable purposes of the Hypotheticals are working themselves out as a group of scientists try to engineer a human being who can communicate with what are now understood to be alien machines.

Ultimately some of the big-picture purposes are worked out, although the answers aren’t entirely comforting or expected.

These are good page-turners, particularly the second book, with a good mixture of Big Ideas, exciting plotting, and vividly-drawn and sympathetic characters. Wilson does a good job of mixing his speculative “What If” questions that are the hallmark of good science fiction with real, and very human people.