quint@RU-BLUE.ARPA (04/19/84)
From: Anne Marie Quint [/amqueue] <quint@RU-BLUE.ARPA>
Does anybody like Spider Robinson??? A resounding Yea! He has been
around for at least 5 years, writing mostly short stories. Many of the[se are
about a bar called Callahan's, the first of which are collected in Callahan's
Crosstime Saloon. There are more in the book Time Travelers Strictly Cash, but
that book also has other short stories in it. At present he has a tendency to
write short stories and then expand them into novels; I feel the novels suffer
in comparison to the short stories. They don't have the impact that the short
stories have, through having that same impact spread through an entire book. I
suppose this may also come of the fact that I grab everything I can by him, so
that the novels are never any surprise. Here is a listing of his books that I
can remember, along with the short stories they started as:
Novels:
Mindkiller (God Is An Iron, Omni magazine)
Stardance (Stardance, Analog?)
Telempath (Telempath)
Collections of Short Stories:
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
Time Travelers Strictly Cash
Antinomy
There are more, but I can't remember them now. Almost all of my copies get
borrowed or lent out; I have a tendency to proselytize about the man. To me he
has the optimism of Heinlein, but with a much surer confidence that things CAN
work out right. As example, see the story "The Magnificent Conspiracy" in
Antinomy.
Let me stop before I write a book...
have fun
/amqueue
-------dub@pur-phy.UUCP (Dwight U. Bartholomew) (05/11/84)
Ok, I for do NOT like Spider Robinson!! There!
Well, to be truthful, I have only read Stardance , Telempath,
and a Callahan's Saloon story. Stardance was o.k. and successfully
made the transition from novella to novel. Telempath didn't; the
puns in it were so bad that at times I felt like strangling the
author. The puns DID NOT add to the story. The same goes
with the Callahan story. Robinson is too punny; blah!