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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the biggest problem since the end of Spin?

2. Why is traveling at night getting more dangerous?

3. What happens when Tyler starts walking up to the ranch?

4. What does Tyler tell Ina about the Martians?

5. How did Jason communicate with the replicators?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is in the envelope Tyler received after from Jason after he died? Why did Jason leave him the envelope?

2. Where do Diane and Tyler go at the end of the book? What was the ultimate purpose of the Spin membrane?

3. What does Jason tell Tyler about the Martian ambassador, conditions on Mars and why he was sent?

4. What does Simon tell Tyler about Diane when Tyler arrives at Condon's ranch?

5. What does Tyler do about Diane's disease and what does he tell Jason?

6. What does Wun tell Tyler about a possible cure for Jason?

7. What does Molly say when Tyler confronts her?

8. What does Jason report to Tyler about the replicators a few years after they were launched?

9. Why is Jason dying?

10. How does Tyler and Diane escape from Condon's ranch?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Cultural norms typically change fairly slowly, though inexorbitably over generations. Sometimes, though, a cataclysmic event will compress change so that it occurs rapidly, sometimes seemingly overnight. Spin is just such an event that spends up change. Discuss the following:

What happens to cultural norms at the time Spin first appears?

Does changes in the culture seem accelerated? Why or why not?

How has the American culture changed over the years from the time Spin first arrives to when Tyler and Diane leave Earth?

Essay Topic 2

When Spin first appears, the Chinese decide to "nuke" the structures at the two poles which seem to hold the membrane in place. Discuss the following:

Often, when something is not understood, it is attacked. There are other examples of this throughout Spin. Give some examples and analyze those examples to explain why you think the people behave as they do in Spin.

Enumerate and analyze examples of how the principle of attacking that which we do not understand happens in the "real" world.

Create a different model for dealing with that which is new and alien to a culture or one's individual way of life. Show how you might use your plan in specific instances in the book and/or "real" life.

Essay Topic 3

Tyler is writing a record of his past, which could be called a journal, memoir or autobiography. Discuss the following:

What is a journal? Is it the same as a memoir or autobiography? Why or why not.

What is gained by framing this story in the format of a memoir? What is lost by doing so?

Although Spin is a work of fiction, the author would have the readers "suspend their disbelief" and view it as an actual memoir describing actual events. If the reader were to assume the events described in Tyler's writings were actually true, how do you think the point of view of the narrator would bias the account?

(see the answer keys)

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