时间轴 (2007)

《时间轴》（英语：Axis）是一部科幻小说。作者是罗伯特·查尔斯·威尔森，于2007年出版。也是威尔逊两年前出版的雨果奖得奖小说时间回旋的续集。这本小说是2008年约翰·W·坎贝尔奖的最终入围名单

剧情概要

《时间轴》的故事发生在时间回旋的结尾出现的新行星“赤道洲”，一个“假想智慧生物”所改造的世界，足以支撑人类生存，并经由印度洋数百英里上空的“大拱门”和地球相连。人类殖民了这个新世界，可以预见的是资源的大量开采，尤其是赤道洲西部沙漠的大量石油的开发。

莉莎．亚当斯是一个年轻的女人，试图揭开她的父亲失踪10年的谜团。而塔克．芬德利是个前任水手，但现在有时会被当成流浪汉。当彗星尘埃雨和微小残余的假想机器一起在这星球上播种时，他们聚集到了一起。不久，这个看似好客的世界变得很陌生，因为不明的实体再次扭曲了时间的自然性。

一个来自地球的第四年期准宗教组织，由阿夫拉姆德瓦利博士领导，住在受落尘播种的沙漠。他们创造了一个小孩，称为艾萨克，并让他像火星人一样进化（对成人来说是致命的），让他和假想智慧生物连结。狩猎第四年期人的“基因安全部”正在寻找这组人或任何不赞成创造艾萨克的火星第四年期人。

Axis is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer Robert Charles Wilson, published in 2007. It is a direct sequel to Wilson's Hugo Award-winning Spin, published two years earlier. The novel was a finalist for the 2008 John W. Campbell Award.

Plot summary

Axis takes place on the new planet introduced at the end of Spin, a world the Hypotheticals engineered to support human life and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world — and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when showers of cometary dust seed the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world becomes very alien, as the nature of time is once again twisted by entities unknown.

A quasi-religious group of "Fourths" from Earth, led by Dr. Avram Dvali, lives in the desert seeded by falling dust. They've created a child they call Isaac with a Martian upgrade (fatal to adults) that connects him with the Hypotheticals. The Fourth-hunting "Department of Genomic Security" is searching for this group or for a visiting Martian Fourth who disapproves of Isaac's creation.

Sequel

A third book in the series, titled Vortex, was published in July 2011.