So far as I can find, Spider Robinson has published nothing since before his wife’s passing in 2010. Can’t find a hint of any forthcoming books on his website, either. I’m starting to wonder if Jeanne’s death hit him so hard he decided to retire, or got hopelessly writer’s-blocked.
Dammit. Mods, please move thread to CS.
Done.
He has contracts to write more books (three, I think) as follow-ups to “Variable Star”. While at least one would probably be out by now, he put everything on hold while Jeanne was ill.
He’s probably being bugnuts still.
Sorry, don’t mean to be snarky…I used to like him back in his early Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon Days but he’s gone round the bend.
He became a naturalized Canadian. One must make allowances for his condition.
I read a bunch of his Callahan stuff in my early twenties, but never branched out of that to his other stuff, and stopped following him entirely years ago. What this about him going crazy?
My mom occassionally sees him in the store, (and other places around the small island town where she lives.) She doesn’t tell me anything about what he’s writing, though. (she’s not a sci-fi/fantasy nut like I am.)
Miller: His book of essays marked him as a nut, and the political ranting* in Variable Star and a few other later books showed him as a totally crazy-person. (note that his essays mirrored the spewage in Variable Star. I wouldn’t assume that the characters represent the author, but I would say that stuff he publishes in essays are his actual views and if the characters mimic that…
His book of rants (The Crazy Years) reads just like like Grandpa Simpson sounds. In addition to his crackpot political stuff, there’s also his reflections on everyday life type stuff (think Andy Rooney, but more obnoxious). He wrote like 4 columns about how all computers suxxor because they’re not always on (like a refrigerator) but that they have to warm up (like an oven). And the fact that they’ve got to boot up and take…what? 2, 3 minutes to boot is intolerable. He also wants every possible program you could ever want integrated into the OS. So if you need a CAD program, it’s in the OS. A raytracing program? In the OS. A specialized database for higher-level physics stuff? In the OS. That never gets rebooted. Oh, and the computer needs to be JUST LIKE that MS Word feature that says “It looks like you’re trying to type a letter. Here’s a template for a letter. Let me reformat your doc.”–Robinson wants you to just be able to sit down and start typing and the OS just “knows” that’s what you want. Start typing a spreadsheet and the OS knows you want a spreadsheet. (apparently this magical computer exists: the “Canon Cat” but THEY (and you know who THEY are) sunk the company deliberately!!!11!!!)
This would just be normal crank/computer illiterate crackpottery, except that he’s so damned incensed about it. You can “hear” the spittle and foam in his voice.
The guy wrote some great stuff, his short story “Melancholy Elephants” is an unsung classic and the short-story version of “Stardance” (not the crappy expanded novel) is probably in the top 25 SF short stories of all time. But the man is a a few light-bulbs short of a chandelier and has been since the early 2000s.
*This isn’t a left/right thing, this is a crazy/sane thing. Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, Carol Mosley Brown(sp?) and Strom Thurmond even, would be on the same side against some of Robinson’s drivel.
In VS, Robinson’s claiming that people like Stephen Hawking make people into fundies because Hawking doesn’t accept intelligent design and talks about quantum foam and other silly esoteric drivel like that.
He also claims that the “correct” answer to aliens who blow up the sun and kill everyone on Earth and to terrorists who blew up the WTC on 9/11 or did the OKC bombing is to forgive them and love them. You can argue about if invasion of Iraq and/or Afghanistan was right or wrong, but no sane person would argue that you just let the mass-murderers go off to do it again.
And that was just the tip of the iceburg,
That’s an interesting interpretation of Variable Star, there… I just read it and…
The obligatory Zen Buddhist that everyone looks up to pretty explicitly says that the thing to do is calm down, start popping out babies, and prepare the next generations to murder the hell out of the aliens.
I also have no idea where you’re getting that about Stephen Hawking.
Really, I love the comparisons of Robinson to Heinlein, because they both have the same tendency to insert their own prejudices and values into their stories as forces of nature.
I’ve read VS and I don’t recall any of that. Nor any other political messages of any kind.
He used to be one of my favorite authors. But in time I found his methods became too similar any annoying to me. He would set up a premise. Situation A was going to happen. Hero fights long and hard against A. Then at the end the hero realizes that all his assumptions about A were wrong and A is actually a great thing. The problem is at the end I still believe A is wrong and the hero is an idiot. And he fills his books with too many perfect ideal people. At least in his eyes.
Spider should have stuck to the outrageous puns in Callahans. But after he blew Callahans out of existence, I just kinda drifted away. I’ve read his later Callahan’s books and they just didn’t do it for me the way the first ones did.
My main problem with Robinson is that he assumes that perfect telepathy with everyone who is living, or who has ever lived, is everyone’s idea of paradise. That would be my hell. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen people that I don’t want to even talk to, much less be in constant telepathic communication with. Since many of his stories assume that perfect telepathy is a worthy goal, I just can’t get into many of them.
And Spider (or rather, his characters, but in many cases his characters are indeed mouthing Spider’s viewpoints) is all for diversity, and accepting other people’s differences, unless it’s a difference that HE doesn’t like. It’s OK if you’re an android/cyborg/robot (can’t remember which) from outer space who has come to destroy humanity, the folks at Callahan’s can accept that, and even love you. But if you’re a short fat immigrant woman with a heavy accent and questionable fashion sense, you will be mocked mercilessly, and completely humiliated. And that’s a GOOD thing.
I think he actually realized that’s a problem, eventually. One of the later post-Callahan books (Callahan’s Con, I think) ends with Jake going back and apologizing for humiliating the neighbor he was feuding with.
You want to know what Spider’s up to? Read this:
Lightning strikes twice, and not in a good way. I can’t imagine the nightmare he’s going through. If any of you would care to help out, let me know.
Jan
I’m ever so sorry to read that; thank you, Jan, for posting that here.
OMG, I can’t imagine the pain he is going through. Or Terri’s pain, or her husband and daughter as well.
I met Spider Robinson once, just once, back in the late 80’s when he signed books at a bookstore in East Lansing Michigan. I asked him to sign by the story “True Minds” as it’s one of my favorite short sci-fi stories ever. He wrote that nobody had ever told him they liked it! Whether that’s true or not I was flattered. I’d never seen a picture of him, but he looked just like I imagined from descriptions.
I wish him and the family all the luck in the world, and I will pray for them. Oh, and buy the book, that should help too.
Well, I was going to post what I thought about Robinson, but after Jan’s post maybe not.