The Novels of Spider Robinson
Steve Parker
like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
but a step in that direction would be nice.
That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
because it's easier to discuss them with the endings. Generally,
Robinson's surprise endings are BAD ("What? She got better?!"), so
unless you're uberfanatical about not knowing ANYTHING about the end
of a book, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Stardance
_STARDANCE_ (1979) with Jeanne Robinson
The short story that this was based on was one of my favorite SF
short-stories. However, the Deus Ex Fireflies at the end was one of
the most obnoxious, horrible, frustrating authorial cheats I've ever
read. The middle part was...eh. I remember it was the first time I'd
encountered gay characters, and being kind of shocked (I must've been
15 or so). Basic premise: A dancer who (because of the current dance
culture) is unable to have a career in dance explores the
possibilities of Zero-Gravity dance. Aliens show up just as she's
about to be shipped back to earth (she'll be permanently acclimatized
to zero-G). She decides instead that the firefly aliens communicate by
dance (a la a swarm of bees) and she dances to/with them, essentially
saying (in dance) "Geddouta here!") They do, and she dies falling into
the atmosphere. Heroism, sacrifice, loss. Beautiful. In the novel, she
gets better in the last chapter. Bleah. The rest of the novel deals
with the fact that the aliens are back and hanging out around
Saturn(?). There's also a guy who's a creepy Jewish stereotype (and
the fact that Robinson acknowledges it doesn't make it better) that
didn't work at all.
First third, HIGHLY recommended. Second third, Recommended. Last
third: Dire. Avoid at all costs.
_STARSEED_ with Jeanne Robinson
I read it, thought it mostly harmless. Don't remember much of the
plot.
But there's a symbiote that'll make you immortal, telepathic and able
to survive in space. This upsets some people. Stuff happens.
_STARMIND_ (1994) with Jeanne Robinson
Read it, thought the "for your own good" philosophy was abhorrent.
(The telepathic, immortal supermen decide that since THEY'RE happy as
telepathic, immortal, space-based supermen, EVERYONE must be and seed
the earth with the symbiote, with a built-in anti-gravity agent) Yuk
If you ignore the "We think it's good for you, so the hell with what
you want" philosophy, it's not a horrible story.
Eh.
Callahan
I'm gonna treat the Callahan's collections (the first several) as
novels.
The Callahan's books started as just one of a tradition of "weird
stuff happens in a bar" books. DeCamp and Pratt did "Galavan's
Bar"(sp), Clark had _Tales from the White Hart_. Robinson added an
interesting depth of characterization and a nice dose of puns to the
mix to make some excellent short stories.
_CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON_ (1977)
The first of the series, and by far the best. One of the stories ("The
Guy with the Eyes") is a true classic. This is a fantastic collection,
and ranks high on my reread list.
Highly recommended
_TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH_ (1981)
or "Callahan's was hot, but we don't have enough stories.". About 1/2
Callahan's stories, the remaining half include a couple of poems/filk
songs, a review or two, and some assorted short stories. Good stuff,
but feels slapped together.
_CALLAHAN'S SECRET_ (1986)
Remember how I griped about _Stardance_ and how the magic resurrection
of a character undermined a great short story? Here, a magic
revelation destroys a character who's been in the two previous books.
Jake, who's been narrating the books, lost his wife and infant
daughter in a car accident that he caused. Throughout the last couple
of books, we watched him start to heal and grow. Then magic time
travelers say "Oopsie! You didn't do it! Everything's groovy now!"
completely undermining the character. Oh and Callahan is a time
traveller from a groovy future (which may be in the same timeline as
_Mindkiller_ et al, but further along)
Good, until the ending. The series was SUPPOSED to end here. Sadly, it
didn't.
_CALLAHAN'S LADY_ (1989)
Callahan's wife is a Madame. Stuff happens in her "house of
ill-repute". Stuff surprisingly like what happens at Callahan's.
Actually, this one isn't bad at all.
_KILL THE EDITOR_ (1991)
Novella length story (I've got it in a chapbook-type format). I don't
remember it (someone has a memory editing device?), but it's not bad.
_LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
_Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
"super-hypnosis" that's well told.
_THE CALLAHAN TOUCH_ (1993)
Uh-oh. The zombie corpse of Callahan's has risen from the grave. Jake,
now happy and gleeful is also a moron. This book and the next one have
blended into one horrid blur. One of 'em has a sentient computer and a
serious semi-psychotic rant about how John Varley's nifty little story
"Press ENTER" winning the Hugo means that all SF fan's are
xenophobically anti-sentient machines.
_CALLAHAN'S LEGACY_ (1996)
See the above. Neither is recommended.
_CALLAHAN'S KEY_ (2000)
This is one of the worst novels I've ever read. GOR novels had better
constructed plots. *PIERS ANTHONY* has written better late Xanth books
(_Question Quest_) than this. Bad, bad, bad. Um...everyone from the
old bar decides en-masse to move to Florida. And they meet a bunch of
people who are apparently fans. And they've got a parrot that shrieks
crude sexual statements. And there's something about true vacuum
and/or zero point energy, and Jake's kid is a precocious superbaby and
there's a special guest appearance by Pixel (the cat from Heinlein's
_The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_. Gibberish plot, gibberish
characters. Utter crap.
It's an Oedipus book (It's better to poke your eyes out than read it).
If you care, search Google. I did a long review of this when it first
came out.
The inverse of recommended. Avoid at all costs lest it stink up your
house and cause your friends to shun you..
Mindkiller
_MINDKILLER_ (1982)
A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
Recommended
_TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
bollux up a *good* future.
I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
wouldn'tt.
_LIFEHOUSE_ (1996)
Again very loosely connected to _Mindkiller_. Main plot: Con man
cheats a couple of SF fans. Secondary plot. Time Traveler from distant
future is/may be discovered and his discovery may bollux up time.
Eh. Mostly harmless, if a bit twee.
Novels
_TELEMPATH_ (1976)
Another in the "I *LIKE* my heroes so I'll solve all their problems
for them!" series (actually, the first one). An interesting story
about an earth-after-disaster where human's sense of smell is
increased a million(?) fold (Sort of a Stinky Catastrophe novel). Our
hero discovers A) He's Telepathic. B) There's giant, high altitude
space-amoebas floating around that fed off our pollution and now are
pissed that we stopped (it stinks, that's why) and C) his father's the
one who unleashed the virus that screwed with our sense of smell.
He promptly murders his father and spends the next 1/2 of the novel
dealing with it. Then dad gets better. < barf >
_NIGHT OF POWER_ (1985)
This one's weird. A pro-black separatist novel. Blacks and whites
CANNOT get along unless they're separate. I hate every character in
this book. I hate that Robinson swiped an urban legend and made it a
major plot point (angry wife discovers husband is cheating on her:
give him a tube of superglue and says "Lube up!"), I hate the
philosophy. I hate the chapter on porn-shops.
That said, it's a compelling read. But shower afterwards.
_THE FREE LUNCH_ (2001)
Imagine combining Star Trek's Holodeck, Disneyland and Dreampark. Our
heroine lives here illicitly behind the scenes. She meets a kid who
also wants to live there. They get mixed up with time travelers from a
not-happy future.
Actually a good book and a return to form for Robinson. He also
resists the temptation to make everything all better for the
characters.
Recommended in paperback
Robinson works best in short story format, IMHO, if only because he
doesn't have a chance to get too attached to his characters. He had
(and still has) the potential to be great. He's been great,
occasionally. But he's gotta stop with the treacly, sappy. "aaaawww!
Didums getta booboo? Deus Ex Author make it go bye-bye" stuff. And I'd
really like to see Robinson never do another Time-Travelers from the
future come to the present and may screw up their own timeline story.
Steve
--
My review pages have moved.AGAIN. The new address is
http://home.attbi.com/~sparker9/home.html
Mike Schilling
> I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
> like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
> I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
> out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
> his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
> I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
> but a step in that direction would be nice.
>
> That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>
No you're not; most of them come pre-spolied.
Josh Kaderlan
> I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
> like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
> I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
> out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
> his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
> I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
> but a step in that direction would be nice.
>
> That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>
> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>
>
> Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
> have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
> time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
> _Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
> "super-hypnosis" that's well told.
Not bad (except for the puns) until the final part, where the main
character and his telepathic twin girlfriends become (mostly)
invulnerable superheroes. The fact that Robinson kills one of the twins
off barely mitigates it.
I never want to read another Callahan's book ever again.
> Mindkiller
> _MINDKILLER_ (1982)
> A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
> of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
> can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
It's good, even if it doesn't really hold up to examination. But dear
lord did he screw it up with the sequel...
> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
> bollux up a *good* future.
>
> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
> wouldn'tt.
Words can't adequately express how much I hated this book. I've spent 15
minutes trying to describe how much I hated it, and deleted everything
because it hasn't done my hatred justice. I hated the hippies. I hated
the time-travelling group mind. I hated the fact that Robinson felt the
need to resurrect everyone who ever died, all throughout history, and I
hated the fact that he made the *Macintosh* the key to the future utopia.
If I had a higher opinion of Robinson, I might think he had his tongue in
his cheek while he was writing this, but unfortunately I think he really
thinks this is good stuff.
> Robinson works best in short story format, IMHO, if only because he
> doesn't have a chance to get too attached to his characters. He had
> (and still has) the potential to be great. He's been great,
> occasionally. But he's gotta stop with the treacly, sappy. "aaaawww!
> Didums getta booboo? Deus Ex Author make it go bye-bye" stuff. And I'd
> really like to see Robinson never do another Time-Travelers from the
> future come to the present and may screw up their own timeline story.
Amen to that.
-Josh
Hetta
> _LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
THIS is where I stopped reading Spider Robinson. Whoa, what a LOAD of crap.
The extremely fast pace and the sex (IIRC - I don't have it anymore [1], so
can't check) is supposed to distract from the crappy writing and the deus ex
machina plot resolution (wheee! <spoiler rot> gvzr geniryyref pbzr gb fnir gurz
nyy!</spoiler rot>), but it falls far short of that. A book Spider should never
ever have written, and, after it was written, a publisher should never ever have
published. It not only is a very bad book in and of itself, it also highlights
Spiders faults as a writer so much that it spoils his other books, which,
without this one, might have still be readable.
Don't bother, unless you like to be bamboozled and bedazzled into not noticing
that you've been horribly cheated.
> And I'd
> really like to see Robinson never do another Time-Travelers from the
> future come to the present and may screw up their own timeline story.
Ah, but how can he? That's the one story he has, so he's telling it over and
over and over and over and over again.
Yawn.
Hetta
[1] I threw it out the minute I'd read it. Others in the "don't bother"
category, IMO, are
- "Rainbow Mars" by Niven - it's so bad that I won't buy any more Niven. This
annoying "The brave soldier Svejk" carbon copy (which he's used earlier, and
which was just as annoying then), and the rest of the cast being cardboard
cutout characters, too? Feh.
- Resnick. He sucks, except for "Santiago". I can't see how he could've won a
hugo or such for ANY of his books. Clunky style, weird endings, an attitude I
don't happen to share ("Americans are the center of the world^Wgalaxy and you
better live with it"), but what's worse, his characters are _stupid_. Like
this sideshow manager, who decided to take strippers to <spoiler> gur nyvraf,
jub nera'g nyy gung rapunagrq jvgu jvttyl gvgf naq ovgf </spoiler> ... and
_that_ is a major plot point? Spare me. Sorry, don't remember the title, and
that's one of the books that went _straight_ into the recycling pile.
--
he...@saunalahti.fi Hetta Kress Helsinki, Finland
Best of RHOD - http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html
Nancy Lebovitz
Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
>I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
>like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
>I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
>out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
>his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
>I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
>but a step in that direction would be nice.
The other (and to my mind, more) annoying thing about Robinson's
writing is his assumption that all good people like the same things--
the same jazz, the same coffee, the same fiction, the same excessive
overload of puns.
I find Robinson compulsively readable except for the action sequences
in _The Free Lunch_. He's the only really guilty pleasure author
I've got. With other writers, if I enjoy them, I enjoy them, even
if (as with John Barnes), I need to be in rather a weird mood to
do so. With Robinson, especially his more recent work, I feel like
I'm being conned, but I read it anyway.
I noticed in his recent collection, _By Any Other Name_, that every
story was about lying. I'm not sure where to go with that, but I
like noticing pervasive themes.
>That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>
>***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>
(.....)
> _STARMIND_ (1994) with Jeanne Robinson
>Read it, thought the "for your own good" philosophy was abhorrent.
>(The telepathic, immortal supermen decide that since THEY'RE happy as
>telepathic, immortal, space-based supermen, EVERYONE must be and seed
>the earth with the symbiote, with a built-in anti-gravity agent) Yuk
>If you ignore the "We think it's good for you, so the hell with what
>you want" philosophy, it's not a horrible story.
>
>Eh.
>
This one has another annoying Robinson feature: his "I want peace
and love, but I'm not a wimp, so here's the karate scene".
Oops. Deleted a little too much, but let it be said that I think
Callahan being a time traveller is just plain wrong. The tone
of the earlier books was "look at what we humans can do if we
just care". Mike Callahan is descended from humans, but he
isn't part of "us"--what the reader might be able to do.
> Mindkiller
> _MINDKILLER_ (1982)
>A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
>of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
>can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
>
>Recommended
>
> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>bollux up a *good* future.
>
>I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>wouldn'tt.
>
> _LIFEHOUSE_ (1996)
>Again very loosely connected to _Mindkiller_. Main plot: Con man
>cheats a couple of SF fans. Secondary plot. Time Traveler from distant
>future is/may be discovered and his discovery may bollux up time.
>
>Eh. Mostly harmless, if a bit twee.
I read the three of them together, and was pleased with how the
plots intertwined. Details forgotten by now, though.
_Lifehouse_ is wildly wrong about fans. Not every fan is convinced
that they could deduce the nature of time travellers from tiny
clues and then do the right thing.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Mary Kay Kare
> _THE CALLAHAN TOUCH_ (1993)
> Uh-oh. The zombie corpse of Callahan's has risen from the grave. Jake,
> now happy and gleeful is also a moron. This book and the next one have
> blended into one horrid blur. One of 'em has a sentient computer and a
> serious semi-psychotic rant about how John Varley's nifty little story
> "Press ENTER" winning the Hugo means that all SF fan's are
But, but, CALLAHAN TOUCH has me and my husband in it as characters.
That ought to make it stand out in your mind.
MKK
--
"Words are the hands of the mind"
Graydon Saunders on rec. arts.sf.fandom
Transit
>
>Not bad (except for the puns) until the final part, where the main
>character and his telepathic twin girlfriends become (mostly)
>invulnerable superheroes. The fact that Robinson kills one of the twins
>off barely mitigates it.
>
>I never want to read another Callahan's book ever again.
>
It's the only Spider Robinson book I've read. I'm never reading another. The
risk is too great.
Tony Hursh
Josh Kaderlan wrote:
> I hated the fact that Robinson felt the
> need to resurrect everyone who ever died, all throughout history,
Why would that be a bad thing?
> and I
> hated the fact that he made the *Macintosh* the key to the future utopia.
Where was that? I remember one of the characters talking about
some proto-Mac ideas he'd come up with (and planning to send
the ideas to some friends of his at Xerox PARC.... the story
was set in the early 1970s), but certainly the device used by
the people from the future to "save soals" had little or nothing
in common with a Mac.
--
Tony Hursh, a...@acm.org
Add one-click web searching to Windows.
http://www.swellfoop.com
David E. Siegel
> I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
> like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
> I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
> out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
> his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
> I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
> but a step in that direction would be nice.
>
I agree.
Note, as far as anyone knows, the dancer is dead all thorough this
book, and the aliens don't, IIRC, reapear until book 2 (Starseed). It
is not until book 3 that it is revealed that the aliens have rescued
the original dancer. The first story was wonderful. The other
stories in the forst book (which is a fixup, I think) are not bad.
Robinson really does know modern dance, although the idea that dance,
or any other art form, has inherent (and detailed) information content
which can be communicated accurately across species boundries (and to
a species so alien that they doen't even have physical bodies of
matter) struck me as so unlikely that I couldn't suspend disbelif.
Most of the rest of the first book deals with "My true love has had a
heroic and tragic death, now what do I do", which we don't see as much
of as the number of H&T deaths in SF should imply. Still, the whole
think might be better if SR had stopped after theat wondereful first
story.
>
> _STARSEED_ with Jeanne Robinson
> I read it, thought it mostly harmless. Don't remember much of the
> plot.
> But there's a symbiote that'll make you immortal, telepathic and able
> to survive in space. This upsets some people. Stuff happens.
>
> _STARMIND_ (1994) with Jeanne Robinson
> Read it, thought the "for your own good" philosophy was abhorrent.
> (The telepathic, immortal supermen decide that since THEY'RE happy as
> telepathic, immortal, space-based supermen, EVERYONE must be and seed
> the earth with the symbiote, with a built-in anti-gravity agent) Yuk
> If you ignore the "We think it's good for you, so the hell with what
> you want" philosophy, it's not a horrible story.
>
> Eh.
>
> Callahan
> I'm gonna treat the Callahan's collections (the first several) as
> novels.
>
>
> _TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH_ (1981)
> or "Callahan's was hot, but we don't have enough stories.". About 1/2
> Callahan's stories, the remaining half include a couple of poems/filk
> songs, a review or two, and some assorted short stories. Good stuff,
> but feels slapped together.
>
includes the story which bcame chapter 2 of Mindkiller, a really neat
story on its own.
>
> _CALLAHAN'S LADY_ (1989)
> Callahan's wife is a Madame. Stuff happens in her "house of
> ill-repute". Stuff surprisingly like what happens at Callahan's.
>
> Actually, this one isn't bad at all.
>
Quite fun, IMO.
> Mindkiller
> _MINDKILLER_ (1982)
> A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
> of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
> can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
>
> Recommended
Nice puzzle story, with some really neat scenes, but I didn't like the
ending much. Agian, spoiled by the effort to have everything work out
ok for the characters that SR likes.
>
> _LIFEHOUSE_ (1996)
> Again very loosely connected to _Mindkiller_. Main plot: Con man
> cheats a couple of SF fans. Secondary plot. Time Traveler from distant
> future is/may be discovered and his discovery may bollux up time.
>
Direct sequel to Time pressure. The con-game thread is fun, indeed
much of this is fun, but the basic premesis and the ending were not at
all to my taste.
>
> Novels
> _TELEMPATH_ (1976)
> Another in the "I *LIKE* my heroes so I'll solve all their problems
> for them!" series (actually, the first one). An interesting story
> about an earth-after-disaster where human's sense of smell is
> increased a million(?) fold (Sort of a Stinky Catastrophe novel). Our
> hero discovers A) He's Telepathic. B) There's giant, high altitude
> space-amoebas floating around that fed off our pollution and now are
> pissed that we stopped (it stinks, that's why) and C) his father's the
> one who unleashed the virus that screwed with our sense of smell.
>
> He promptly murders his father and spends the next 1/2 of the novel
> dealing with it. Then dad gets better. < barf >
>
Another case of a very good short story ("By any other name") spoiled
by expansion into a novel.
> _NIGHT OF POWER_ (1985)
> This one's weird. A pro-black separatist novel. Blacks and whites
> CANNOT get along unless they're separate. I hate every character in
> this book. I hate that Robinson swiped an urban legend and made it a
> major plot point (angry wife discovers husband is cheating on her:
> give him a tube of superglue and says "Lube up!"), I hate the
> philosophy. I hate the chapter on porn-shops.
>
> That said, it's a compelling read. But shower afterwards.
>
And another case of a very real modern dancer character, presumably
based on data from SR's wife. I din't mind the superglue scene, it
was a clever way out of a tight spot for the character. It had a
number of cases of things which sound clever but a few minuts of
consideration will show that they won't work being presented as wisdom
of the ages, or at least evidence of great intelligence on the part of
a character.
Think of this as being in the tradition of the 50s Galaxy stories like
_The Space Merchants_ or _Gladiator at Law_: extrapolate a current
unfavorable trend to is limit and show the result, not looking at the
limnits other factors inherently place on the trend.
-DES
Andrew Plotkin
>> _THE CALLAHAN TOUCH_ (1993)
>> Uh-oh. The zombie corpse of Callahan's has risen from the grave. Jake,
>> now happy and gleeful is also a moron. This book and the next one have
>> blended into one horrid blur. One of 'em has a sentient computer and a
>> serious semi-psychotic rant about how John Varley's nifty little story
>> "Press ENTER" winning the Hugo means that all SF fan's are
> But, but, CALLAHAN TOUCH has me and my husband in it as characters.
> That ought to make it stand out in your mind.
The scene (a long-running musical jam, as the other Bobs may not know)
was fun. Well-written description of folks having a great time. But it
wasn't particularly part of a story.
Ha. I remember reading, a *long* time ago, complaints that Spider
Robinson could be great if he would just stop trying to be Heinlein,
and develop his own voice.
Today, the thought rolled through my head: Spider Robinson could be
great if he would just write something which *isn't* another damn
Spider Robinson book.
I *liked* _Time Pressure_ -- I think it's one of his best -- but no
more time travel novels again, ever, please. _Lifehouse_ was pleasant,
but so minor that you need a microscope to read it. It's been done.
"I have read this meet-the-time-traveller scene before, and I have
read it before, and if the fundies are right and I go to hell, I will
find a comfortable chair and yet another rewrite of it waiting for
me."
(Yes, there was a gimmick. Yes, it was cute -- I said I found the book
pleasant. No, it doesn't change my reaction.)
The recent one, the one about the amusement park, had some really good
dialogue between the two protagonists. I *liked* that relationship.
Then, bam, time travellers. (You can consider that a spoiler; I call
it fair warning.)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Andrew Plotkin
> I agree.
You are correct, but confusing. :)
The trilogy of novels is _Stardance_, _Starseed_, _Starmind_.
_Stardance_ is divided into three parts. "Book 1" is "Stardance", the
original novella. "Book 2" and "book 3" ("Stardancers" and, er, I
forget the third label) are the original sequel (which I think was
labelled "Stardance 2" when it appeared as an Analog serial.)
The dancer dies at the end of "Stardance" (a third of the way through
the novel _Stardance_) and turns up alive at the end of "book 3"
(i.e., the end of that novel).
(Then a paperback edition appeared which concatenated the novels
_Stardance_ and _Starseed_, under the title _Stardancers_... or maybe
it was _Stardancer_... or maybe it was *all three* novels... Confusing
as hell.)
> The first story was wonderful. The other
> stories in the forst book (which is a fixup, I think) are not bad.
I agree.
Allen Varney
satirical essay about Spider Robinson and several other sf
writers, fashioned as a trip across a blasted American landscape
in 2026 to celebrate the masters of 21st-Century sf. After a visit
to Heinlein Colony in southern California (full of gun nuts and
Pournelle disciples) and Varley Studios in Oregon (full of very
politically correct Hollywood-style writers), I wound up in Part
III at Robinson's home inside NORAD:
http://www.allenvarney.com/av_21st03.html
My article played up a tendency in Robinson's work that I don't
see highlighted in this thread: Robinson's tendency to enshrine a
small elite of like-minded "magnificent conspirators," without
really explaining what they stand for or why they deserve this
illustrious status.
--
-- Allen Varney
http://www.allenvarney.com
Delete second Austin to reply
David E. Siegel
<large snip>
> _Lifehouse_ is wildly wrong about fans. Not every fan is convinced
> that they could deduce the nature of time travellers from tiny
> clues and then do the right thing.
It is also wrong that this is an innovation in con games -- it is
really just a varient on the false sob-story or fake charity, which
impels good people to help out those who claim to be worthy and in
need, but who turn out to be lying.
-DES
Charles Frederick Goodin
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>In article <pfnv9u8kqaic0hooc...@4ax.com>,
>Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
>>I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
>>like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
>>I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
>>out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
>>his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
>>I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
>>but a step in that direction would be nice.
>
>The other (and to my mind, more) annoying thing about Robinson's
>writing is his assumption that all good people like the same things--
>the same jazz, the same coffee, the same fiction, the same excessive
>overload of puns.
Most of them smoke pot, too. And the few times he has one of the "good
guys" _not_ like one of those things, it's like he's purposely going
against his own stereotypes.
>I find Robinson compulsively readable except for the action sequences
>in _The Free Lunch_. He's the only really guilty pleasure author
>I've got.
I feel the same way. I really like his "voice", even if some of the last
few books had plots or situations in them that kind of made me cringe.
>>That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>>
>>***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
>
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>(.....)
>> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>>Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>>of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>>traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>>bollux up a *good* future.
>>
>>I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>>it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>>wouldn'tt.
I really liked Time Pressure -- I read it some years after reading
Mindkiller and was pleasantly surprised at the connection between the two
books.
But now the two are sold bound together! It's like a built in spoiler.
(Also, in the new version of Mindkiller, a reference to audio cassettes is
updated to refer to CDs. I didn't notice any other changes.)
--
chuk
Ross TenEyck
I find Robinson often kind of frustrating -- he's so very good,
and so very bad, all at once. Unlike, say, Anthony, I find it
hard to stop reading his books -- even after being repeatedly
punished for this by, say, the most recent two or three Callahan's
books. Even _Callahan's Key_ -- a pretty wretched book -- had
enough going for it to keep me reading.
And I really did enjoy the early Callahan's stories.
>That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
> _LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
>Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
>have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
>time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
>_Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
>"super-hypnosis" that's well told.
I found this one annoying. For one thing, there's the discussion
that the protagonist (name forgotten) and Sally have about why
things always go hideously wrong for him. They discuss possibilities
(a) he's cursed (his own theory,) and (b) he's just had a run of bad
luck (Sally's theory.) They don't give nearly enough consideration to
theory (c), he's a moron.
This guy supposedly has a knack for intuitively seeing the highly
unlikely, but true, explanation for seemingly inexplicable events.
That's fine so far as it goes; but he always -- *always* -- goes
on to make unfounded deductions based on his initial insight, and
nobody ever calls him on it, even after repeated demonstrations of
why he keeps putting his foot in it.
Take the story about the time-stopping device (SPOILERS for this
story follow, natch.)
Our hero is called in to investigate various odd events occurring
in Sally's place. After examining the evidence, he concludes that
someone possesses the ability to "stop time," and is using it to
commit increasingly un-funny pranks.
So far, so good.
Our hero then goes on to make the following conclusions:
- The ability is contained in a technological device
- This device resembles a wristwatch
- This device is activated by "winding" the watch
- The guy he saw with an unusually large wristwatch is the culprit
There is *not one* shred of evidence for any of these conclusions,
beyond the fact that our hero read a science-fiction story once
where they happened to be true. In fact, the good guys get tripped
up because the third assumption turns out to be false; our hero
excoriates himself for not realizing that -- while never realizing
that none of his other assumptions were valid either.
Sheesh.
This story also has the annoying idiocy of a ridiculously complicated
plan to kill this guy. (Fortunately, they found independent evidence
to corroborate his identity as the culprit, beyond "he wears a big
watch.") The question is: how do you kill someone who can stop
time? The answer would seem to be pretty obvious: you shoot him
in the head before he has a chance to react. From the back, for
instance. (ObRedDwarf: "You'd shoot a man in the back?" "Of
course. It's only a pity he's awake.")
Instead, they come up with this peculiar plan to tackle him in a
contrived manner designed to make it impossible for him to wind
his watch... and *then* shoot him in the head. Unfortunately for
the good guys, the bad guy doesn't need to wind his watch to turn
it on. Fortunately for the good guys, the bad guy is an even
bigger moron than they are.
Sheesh again.
> _THE CALLAHAN TOUCH_ (1993)
>Uh-oh. The zombie corpse of Callahan's has risen from the grave. Jake,
>now happy and gleeful is also a moron. This book and the next one have
>blended into one horrid blur. One of 'em has a sentient computer and a
>serious semi-psychotic rant about how John Varley's nifty little story
>"Press ENTER" winning the Hugo means that all SF fan's are
>xenophobically anti-sentient machines.
Another thing that bugged me: the Callahan's crowd is scared stiff
of Solace (the sentient computer) on the grounds that it has the
power to kill off most of humanity if it decides it wants to. Much
angst ensues about this. But Finn has repeatedly been stated to
be able to vaporize the entire *planet* if he ever gets grumpy,
and nobody at Callahan's ever appeared to lose a moment's sleep
over this possibility.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Kenneth Brown
I'm new. Just discovered your group today and thought I'd toss in my
two cents. Let me begin by saying that I really like reading
Robinson's stuff. Back in the 70's a teacher gave me a copy of C's
Crosstime Saloon. I loved it. At the time I lived outside of a small
rural town, so I also enjoyed his reviews. He pointed me to a lot of
great books and writers(Dune series, Peter S. Beagle). I read
everything he wrote up untill around 1987. After that I began to have
a hard time finding anything new. I'm glad to hear that he is still
writing, but sorry that some of you don't like the new stuff. Now that
I know about the new stuff I'll buy it though. If to just say thanks
for the memories.
Thanks, Ken
Steve Parker
><possible spoilers>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Where was that? I remember one of the characters talking about
>some proto-Mac ideas he'd come up with (and planning to send
>the ideas to some friends of his at Xerox PARC.... the story
>was set in the early 1970s), but certainly the device used by
>the people from the future to "save soals" had little or nothing
>in common with a Mac.
I believe theree was an off-handed comment that if whatshisname--the
protagonist killed/badly hurt whatshisname...the brain-damaged guy
who'll go on to create/help create/suggest the Mac...um..Nazz, I
think, that the entire course of history will unravel. It was at the
big "he remembers he left the Moose and the maple syrup up there for
all these months" scene.
Steve Parker
wrote:
>In article <pfnv9u8kqaic0hooc...@4ax.com>,
>>Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
>>I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
>
>I find Robinson compulsively readable except for the action sequences
>in _The Free Lunch_. He's the only really guilty pleasure author
>I've got. With other writers, if I enjoy them, I enjoy them, even
>if (as with John Barnes), I need to be in rather a weird mood to
>do so. With Robinson, especially his more recent work, I feel like
>I'm being conned, but I read it anyway.
In large part I think your last sentence summarizes my feelings about
Robinson. But even though I've been conned, I rarely feel completly
cheated. Maybe a little burned about the third and second-to-last
Callahan's but mostly OK with having spent the money. ( _Callahan's
Key_ on the other hand was such a brain-destroying rip-off, that , if
were told that I could go back in time and never read it, but in
return, I'd have to read two late Xanth novels dealing with Pier's
weird ideas of teenage/old person sexuality AND Pier's underwear
fixation, I'd take the trade in a heartbeat.)
>>
>>***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>(.....)
>
>Oops. Deleted a little too much, but let it be said that I think
>Callahan being a time traveller is just plain wrong. The tone
>of the earlier books was "look at what we humans can do if we
>just care". Mike Callahan is descended from humans, but he
>isn't part of "us"--what the reader might be able to do.
Again, great point that I hadn't considered. I was so fixated on the
butchery of Jake that I didn't notice the butchery of Mike Callahan.
Kenneth Brown
found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
Tony Hursh
>
> On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 10:29:23 -0600, Tony Hursh <a...@acm.org> wrote:
>
> ><possible spoilers>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> >
> >Where was that? I remember one of the characters talking about
> >some proto-Mac ideas he'd come up with (and planning to send
> >the ideas to some friends of his at Xerox PARC.... the story
> >was set in the early 1970s),
> I believe theree was an off-handed comment that if whatshisname--the
> protagonist killed/badly hurt whatshisname...the brain-damaged guy
> who'll go on to create/help create/suggest the Mac...um..Nazz, I
> think, that the entire course of history will unravel. It was at the
> big "he remembers he left the Moose and the maple syrup up there for
> all these months" scene.
>
I have the book at hand and I don't see that bit, though perhaps
I'm missing it. There is something about the Mac paradigm forestalling
nuclear war in the 90s (a somewhat dubious assertion, even given
Spider's well-known...err...enthusiasm for the Mac), but nothing
about it being related to the Mindtalk technology. Certainly neither
the "crowns" in this book nor the related devices in Mindkiller
seem very Mac-like to me.
Tony Zbaraschuk
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>David E. Siegel <sie...@acm.org> wrote:
>> Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote in message news:<pfnv9u8kqaic0hooc...@4ax.com>...
>>> I really like Spider Robinson's prose. I often like his stories. I
>>> like his style of reviews (though his tastes differ from mine a lot).
>>> I can empathize with his characters. But...Robinson annoys the hell
>>> out of me at times: he's often unwilling to let bad things happen to
>>> his characters and as a result, a good (or great) story is undermined.
>>> I'm not looking for Robinson to become George R.R. Martin necessarily,
>>> but a step in that direction would be nice.
I once described Robinson as a malignant optimist -- having dei ex
machina characters solve everyone's problem isn't really a _solution_.
The early Callahan's stories are still worth reading, though, as is
much of _Stardance_ _-- everything up till the ending, more or less.
(I'm not entirely sure why I feel this way, since I'm a Christian
and the whole _Stardance_ trilogy is at least partly a riff on the
Christian concept of the savior who dies and lives again to show us
a new way of life and take us all to heaven -- probably it's at least
partly the fact that it's (a) so badly executed and (b) Robinson doesn't
seem to have a real notion of the _cost_ that would be involved.)
>>> That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>You are correct, but confusing. :)
>
>The trilogy of novels is _Stardance_, _Starseed_, _Starmind_.
>_Stardance_ is divided into three parts. "Book 1" is "Stardance", the
>original novella.
The original novella is brilliant and powerful and _works_. The
second part of _Stardance_ is OK. Run awaay from the third.
Tony Z
--
"The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stays will die for naught, and home there's no returning."
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.--A.E. Housman
Steve Parker
wrote:
>BTW, what about Antinomy(1980)? Only Spider Robinson book that I ever
>found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
Since it's a short story collection (and apparently rarer than hell) I
didn't mention it. It's got some good stories though. Isn't "Half an
Oaf" in it? And a Damon Runyon pastiche?
Steve Parker
Yeah, but...
In _Mindkiller_ there's a war that Joe and The Bear(?) were in. If
that war went nuclear, Joe wouldn't be around to deal with Pierre and
be one of the big four.
Even if it's totally different war, given the fragility of the
timeline in Robinson's universe, an unplanned nuclear war would be
BAD.
I get the feeling that if Rachel steps on the wrong butterfly, the
entire future will end up seig-heil-ing (yeah, I know she says
otherwise regarding whatshisname's future, but I still feel that way)
Bill & Sue Miller
Steve Parker wrote:
> On 26 Mar 2002 17:19:30 -0800, khb...@zebra.net (Kenneth Brown)
> wrote:
>
> >BTW, what about Antinomy(1980)? Only Spider Robinson book that I ever
> >found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
>
> Since it's a short story collection (and apparently rarer than hell) I
> didn't mention it. It's got some good stories though. Isn't "Half an
> Oaf" in it? And a Damon Runyon pastiche?
>
You're right about "Half an Oaf." Perusing the table of contents and
flipping through the pages didn't turn up anything that screamed "Runyon"
at me. I didn't like the book enough to read it again and find out for
sure.
I used to like Robinson, but I now find him un-re-readable. I may try
_Time Pressure_, though after some of the comments in this thread. But
from the library. No way I'm buying it...
Bill
--
Home: wbmi...@ghg.net
Work: william....@jsc.nasa.gov
Homepage: http://www.ghg.net/wbmiller3
Andrew Plotkin
> On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 10:29:23 -0600, Tony Hursh <a...@acm.org> wrote:
>><possible spoilers>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Where was that? I remember one of the characters talking about
>>some proto-Mac ideas he'd come up with (and planning to send
>>the ideas to some friends of his at Xerox PARC.... the story
>>was set in the early 1970s), but certainly the device used by
>>the people from the future to "save soals" had little or nothing
>>in common with a Mac.
> I believe theree was an off-handed comment that if whatshisname--the
> protagonist killed/badly hurt whatshisname...the brain-damaged guy
> who'll go on to create/help create/suggest the Mac...um..Nazz, I
> think, that the entire course of history will unravel. It was at the
> big "he remembers he left the Moose and the maple syrup up there for
> all these months" scene.
But note that according to Spider's precepts of time travel (and I
think he's consistent in using them in all his time-travel novels)
almost *anything* can unravel all of history. Any change that can be
detected by a historian at the traveller's point-of-origin, I think is
the criterion -- no, that's not stated explicitly. But detectable
paradox *is* explicitly stated to cause immediate end-of-everything.
Interfering with Apple's release of the Macintosh in 1984 is certainly
a detectable change in history, assuming computers have any long-term
effect at all.
Andrew Plotkin
> On 26 Mar 2002 17:19:30 -0800, khb...@zebra.net (Kenneth Brown)
> wrote:
>>BTW, what about Antinomy(1980)? Only Spider Robinson book that I ever
>>found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
> Since it's a short story collection (and apparently rarer than hell) I
> didn't mention it. It's got some good stories though. Isn't "Half an
> Oaf" in it? And a Damon Runyon pastiche?
Just about all the stories in it have been republished since. Many of
them twice -- I think the collections _Melancholy Elephants_ and _User
Friendly_ overlap.
Rachel Brown
Great to see you back reviewing books, Steve. Your "interstellar
yenta" review of Card's SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD was the only time anyone
has ever convinced me that a book I thought was good was actually bad.
When will we see more Hugo reviews?
> That said, I'm spoiling a LOT of Robinson's books
>
> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>
> because it's easier to discuss them with the endings. Generally,
> Robinson's surprise endings are BAD ("What? She got better?!"), so
> unless you're uberfanatical about not knowing ANYTHING about the end
> of a book, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
>
> Stardance
> _STARDANCE_ (1979) with Jeanne Robinson
> The short story that this was based on was one of my favorite SF
> short-stories.
I loved it once, and there's certainly some good stuff in it, but I
have now become so allergic to Spider's I love you, you love me
touchy-feely space hippies that I like it less now.
> First third, HIGHLY recommended. Second third, Recommended. Last
> third: Dire. Avoid at all costs.
I think the second third is where the rot begins to set in, with the
hideous Linda (remember her?) the commune baby who's won't let anyone
have any mental privacy, er, objects to anyone "holding a stash on
anyone else." Spider loves her. I loathe her. The third third, as you
said, is painfully bad.
> _STARSEED_ with Jeanne Robinson
> I read it, thought it mostly harmless. Don't remember much of the
> plot.
> But there's a symbiote that'll make you immortal, telepathic and able
> to survive in space. This upsets some people. Stuff happens.
NOOOO, NOT mostly harmless! This is the one with the stupidest deus
ex machina ever, in which the main character triumphs over a hopeless
situation by meditating and achieving enlightenment... so she becomes
telepathic, and her telepathic buddies are able to help her kill the
bad guy. In my opinion, this plot twist is even worse than the space
cockroach and the convenient suitcase nuke.
> _CALLAHAN'S SECRET_ (1986)
> Remember how I griped about _Stardance_ and how the magic resurrection
> of a character undermined a great short story? Here, a magic
> revelation destroys a character who's been in the two previous books.
> Jake, who's been narrating the books, lost his wife and infant
> daughter in a car accident that he caused. Throughout the last couple
> of books, we watched him start to heal and grow. Then magic time
> travelers say "Oopsie! You didn't do it! Everything's groovy now!"
> completely undermining the character.
This is, however, completely in line with Spider's approach to
telepathy, in which nobody is ever freaked out or even disturbed by
anyone's deep dark secret thoughts, but rather knowing someone
completely only makes you love them completely for their wonderful
self. The truth, in his books, is always beautiful.
I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but there's stuff in my head
that would curl the hair of any of my friends were they allowed to
casually peek inside any time they felt like it, and I assume the same
is true of all of us.
Even of Spider Robinson.
> _CALLAHAN'S LADY_ (1989)
> Callahan's wife is a Madame. Stuff happens in her "house of
> ill-repute". Stuff surprisingly like what happens at Callahan's.
>
> Actually, this one isn't bad at all.
It's O.K. The milieu is engaging, though, again, totally unconvincing
because it's too damn sweet and light. But there's a story involving
a person with hypnotic powers that's borderline horror and genuinely
disturbing, hence pretty good.
> _MINDKILLER_ (1982)
> A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
> of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
> can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
I recall liking the first half or so, at least. One point in it has
stuck in my mind and baffled me for so long that I'm going to request
an explanation. The hero is in a woman's apartment, trying to find out
about her. He lifts the toilet lid, sees that she's written on the
underside "It's so nice to have a man around the house," and concludes
that she's single. Huh? Why didn't he conclude that the message was a
joke for her boyfriend?
> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
> bollux up a *good* future.
>
> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
> wouldn'tt.
Yeah, it's got those perfect wonderful marvelous sensitive sf-reading
self-aware punning touchy-feely GODDAMN VOMITOUS HIPPIES WHOM I WANT
TO REND LIMB FROM LIMB!
> _TELEMPATH_ (1976)
> Another in the "I *LIKE* my heroes so I'll solve all their problems
> for them!" series (actually, the first one). An interesting story
> about an earth-after-disaster where human's sense of smell is
> increased a million(?) fold (Sort of a Stinky Catastrophe novel). Our
> hero discovers A) He's Telepathic. B) There's giant, high altitude
> space-amoebas floating around that fed off our pollution and now are
> pissed that we stopped (it stinks, that's why) and C) his father's the
> one who unleashed the virus that screwed with our sense of smell.
Yup. Very cool, intriguing premise. And then he has to go and ruin it
by...
> He promptly murders his father and spends the next 1/2 of the novel
> dealing with it. Then dad gets better. < barf >
> Robinson works best in short story format, IMHO, if only because he
> doesn't have a chance to get too attached to his characters. He had
> (and still has) the potential to be great. He's been great,
> occasionally. But he's gotta stop with the treacly, sappy. "aaaawww!
> Didums getta booboo? Deus Ex Author make it go bye-bye" stuff.
The more he loves his characters, the more I hate them.
Rachel
Mike Schilling
>>
>>***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> (.....)
>
>
>> _LIFEHOUSE_ (1996)
>>Again very loosely connected to _Mindkiller_. Main plot: Con man
>>cheats a couple of SF fans. Secondary plot. Time Traveler from distant
>>future is/may be discovered and his discovery may bollux up time.
>>
>>Eh. Mostly harmless, if a bit twee.
>>
>
> I read the three of them together, and was pleased with how the
> plots intertwined. Details forgotten by now, though.
>
> _Lifehouse_ is wildly wrong about fans. Not every fan is convinced
> that they could deduce the nature of time travellers from tiny
> clues and then do the right thing.
>
This is a Spider cliche -- inferring huge conspiracies from insufficient
evidence, and making heroic though probably hopeless plans to defeat them.
Mike Schilling
Steve Parker wrote:
> On 26 Mar 2002 17:19:30 -0800, khb...@zebra.net (Kenneth Brown)
> wrote:
>
>
>>BTW, what about Antinomy(1980)? Only Spider Robinson book that I ever
>>found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
>>
>
> Since it's a short story collection (and apparently rarer than hell) I
> didn't mention it. It's got some good stories though. Isn't "Half an
> Oaf" in it? And a Damon Runyon pastiche?
>
I used to own it, or something much like it: those two stories, plus
"Melancholy Elephants", and one whise title I don't recall about
pot-smoking, mind-reading folk musicians who save the world, which in
retrospect seems like a ripoff of RAH's "Lost Legacy". Also, "Rubber
Soul", which is about John Lennon.
The Runyon pastiche is labored and remarkably unfunny. "Rubber Soul" is
sweet, but annoying in two major ways:
Lennon doesn't sound like Lennon. He sounds like a generic Spider
protagonist. Both are smart-asses, of course.
It's footnoted to be sure you don't miss any of Spider's oh-so-clever
puns and Beatles references.
Steve Parker
wrote:
>Steve Parker
>
>Great to see you back reviewing books, Steve. Your "interstellar
>yenta" review of Card's SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD was the only time anyone
>has ever convinced me that a book I thought was good was actually bad.
> When will we see more Hugo reviews?
Thanks! Hugo reviews will resume pretty soon, I hope. Things got
pretty hectic in 'real life' for a while but seem to be calming down.
One thing I like about this format of review, it's a lot quicker to
do.
>
>
>>
>> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>
>
>
>
>
>I think the second third is where the rot begins to set in, with the
>hideous Linda (remember her?) the commune baby who's won't let anyone
>have any mental privacy, er, objects to anyone "holding a stash on
>anyone else." Spider loves her. I loathe her. The third third, as you
>said, is painfully bad.
>
She's awful and I kept wanting her to die (and she wouldn't oblige,
dammit). The worst part was that the mix of her and the uptight
businessman should have caused both characters to grow towards less
extreme personalities. Instead, uptight businessguy becomes more
hippie-like and the hippie-chick becomes more hippie-like too. Aargh,
Nonetheless, the Elton John clone and the G. Harry Stein clone were
interesting, and...it was an interesting look at "what happens after"
>> _CALLAHAN'S SECRET_ (1986)
>> Remember how I griped about _Stardance_ and how the magic resurrection
>> of a character undermined a great short story? Here, a magic
>> revelation destroys a character who's been in the two previous books.
>> Jake, who's been narrating the books, lost his wife and infant
>> daughter in a car accident that he caused. Throughout the last couple
>> of books, we watched him start to heal and grow. Then magic time
>> travelers say "Oopsie! You didn't do it! Everything's groovy now!"
>> completely undermining the character.
>
>This is, however, completely in line with Spider's approach to
>telepathy, in which nobody is ever freaked out or even disturbed by
>anyone's deep dark secret thoughts, but rather knowing someone
>completely only makes you love them completely for their wonderful
>self. The truth, in his books, is always beautiful.
>
>I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but there's stuff in my head
>that would curl the hair of any of my friends were they allowed to
>casually peek inside any time they felt like it, and I assume the same
>is true of all of us.
>Even of Spider Robinson.
Spider never acknowledged this, except once in....
>> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>> bollux up a *good* future.
>>
>> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>> wouldn'tt.
>
>Yeah, it's got those perfect wonderful marvelous sensitive sf-reading
>self-aware punning touchy-feely GODDAMN VOMITOUS HIPPIES WHOM I WANT
>TO REND LIMB FROM LIMB!
The protagonist, who I *like*, shares our feelings about hive-mind
style telepathy (which is one of the reasons I actually like the guy).
He has a really good rant at one point that nicely expresses my
feelings about hive-mind telepathy (as opposed to mental-radio
telepathy, which I'm OK with)
And, as long as we're talking about insufferably smug hippies, leave
us discuss Malachi (the Manson-esque "leader" of the icky-cute hippie
commune. He's the one who decides if you have 'issues' that you need
to work through). Spider's single most obnoxious character ever,even
including the creepy Jewish stereotype guy from _Stardance_. If there
was any justice, or Spider wrote more to my tastes, Malachi would pull
the "Let's discuss your issues." crap on one of the local subsistance
farmers and get a shotgun blast to the face in return. Boy I hated
that character. Even better though: Lock him and Ender Wiggins in a
room where they can "speak the truth and work out each other's
issues". Then nuke the room.
>
>The more he loves his characters, the more I hate them.
Heh....well said!
Captain Button
> Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
>> On 26 Mar 2002 17:19:30 -0800, khb...@zebra.net (Kenneth Brown)
>> wrote:
>>>BTW, what about Antinomy(1980)? Only Spider Robinson book that I ever
>>>found in the local drugstore back home. :-)
>> Since it's a short story collection (and apparently rarer than hell) I
>> didn't mention it. It's got some good stories though. Isn't "Half an
>> Oaf" in it? And a Damon Runyon pastiche?
> Just about all the stories in it have been republished since. Many of
> them twice -- I think the collections _Melancholy Elephants_ and _User
> Friendly_ overlap.
IIRC, either _ Antinomy _ or _ Melancholy Elephants _ or both were
remaindered or recalled or some such almost instantly after
release due to the publisher being reorganized or bought out
(or something like that), and therefore supposedly almost no one has
seen it/them.
Although I've managed to find both, as have a fair number of other
rasfwians. Bu then we are meaningless and statistically insigificant
in the larger SF market, or so we keep getting told.
:-)}
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Steve Parker
wrote:
>
>IIRC, either _ Antinomy _ or _ Melancholy Elephants _ or both were
>remaindered or recalled or some such almost instantly after
>release due to the publisher being reorganized or bought out
>(or something like that), and therefore supposedly almost no one has
>seen it/them.
_Antimony_ was remaindered upon release.
James Nicoll
Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
snip
>She's awful and I kept wanting her to die (and she wouldn't oblige,
>dammit). The worst part was that the mix of her and the uptight
>businessman should have caused both characters to grow towards less
>extreme personalities. Instead, uptight businessguy becomes more
>hippie-like and the hippie-chick becomes more hippie-like too. Aargh,
>Nonetheless, the Elton John clone and the G. Harry Stein clone were
>interesting, and...it was an interesting look at "what happens after"
Shades of Alan Moore's take on the Demon. There's a line
of dialogue from Jason Blood about he and Etrigan (A demon he shares
an odd relationship with, switching places from time to time) agreeing
to become more like each other, with the result that Jason became more
like Etrigan and Etrigan became more like Etrigan as well.
--
"I think you mean 'Could libertarian slave-owning Confederates, led by
SHWIers, have pulled off a transatlantic invasion of Britain, in revenge
for the War of 1812, if they had nukes acquired from the Sea of Time?'"
Alison Brooks (? - 2002)
Nancy Lebovitz
>wrote:
>
>>Steve Parker
>>
>>Great to see you back reviewing books, Steve. Your "interstellar
>>yenta" review of Card's SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD was the only time anyone
>>has ever convinced me that a book I thought was good was actually bad.
>> When will we see more Hugo reviews?
>Thanks! Hugo reviews will resume pretty soon, I hope. Things got
>pretty hectic in 'real life' for a while but seem to be calming down.
>One thing I like about this format of review, it's a lot quicker to
>do.
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> _CALLAHAN'S SECRET_ (1986)
>>> Remember how I griped about _Stardance_ and how the magic resurrection
>>> of a character undermined a great short story? Here, a magic
>>> revelation destroys a character who's been in the two previous books.
>>> Jake, who's been narrating the books, lost his wife and infant
>>> daughter in a car accident that he caused. Throughout the last couple
>>> of books, we watched him start to heal and grow. Then magic time
>>> travelers say "Oopsie! You didn't do it! Everything's groovy now!"
>>> completely undermining the character.
Imho, one of the worst things Robinson did was to make it not the
case that Jake's brake job caused the car accident. It was only
somewhat-earned guilt anyway, but it was a lot of the basis for
the character.
Has Robinson ever had a character redeemed from something that was
really, reasonably, their own fault? Some damage that they did with
a reasonable amount of foreknowledge and not thoroughly coerced
into it?
>>This is, however, completely in line with Spider's approach to
>>telepathy, in which nobody is ever freaked out or even disturbed by
>>anyone's deep dark secret thoughts, but rather knowing someone
>>completely only makes you love them completely for their wonderful
>>self. The truth, in his books, is always beautiful.
Sturgeon's _The Cosmic Rape_ is at least somewhat more sophisticated
about hive-minding. In that, the hypothesis is that human badness is
caused by isolation, and once people join, the fears which drove
them to evil acts aren't there any more, they'll consciously reject
such behavior, everyone can be sure they've rejected it, so why
not welcome them? Admittedly, Sturgeon doesn't include the hard
case of people who've caused tremendous damage to millions.
What's the name of the Poul Anderson story on the subject? He wrote
one where telepathy with almost anyone is revolting, though more because
almost everyone hates themselves rather than because most people are
hateworthy.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Lee Ann Rucker
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> The recent one, the one about the amusement park, had some really good
> dialogue between the two protagonists. I *liked* that relationship.
> Then, bam, time travellers. (You can consider that a spoiler; I call
> it fair warning.)
I started it in the bookstore, thought it looked promising, but before
I bought it in hardcover I skimmed it to see if there were telepaths or
time travellers. There were, so I put it back.
Lee Ann Rucker
Brown <khb...@zebra.net> wrote:
> I read
> everything he wrote up untill around 1987. After that I began to have
> a hard time finding anything new. I'm glad to hear that he is still
> writing, but sorry that some of you don't like the new stuff. Now that
> I know about the new stuff I'll buy it though. If to just say thanks
> for the memories.
Buy them in chronological order - you may find that you don't like them
either, and the only way to convince him not to write any more
telepathic time travellers is not to buy them.
I liked parts of _Callahan's Key_ - you probably will too, if you liked
the other Callahan stories - I just didn't like the book as a whole.
Andrew Plotkin
> I recall liking the first half or so, at least. One point in it has
> stuck in my mind and baffled me for so long that I'm going to request
> an explanation. The hero is in a woman's apartment, trying to find out
> about her. He lifts the toilet lid, sees that she's written on the
> underside "It's so nice to have a man around the house," and concludes
> that she's single. Huh? Why didn't he conclude that the message was a
> joke for her boyfriend?
Because it's not funny unless the toilet lid (er, "seat", I assume)
can be presumed to have been down for a very long time.
Lee Ann Rucker
Brown <rpho...@mediaone.net> wrote:
> This is, however, completely in line with Spider's approach to
> telepathy, in which nobody is ever freaked out or even disturbed by
> anyone's deep dark secret thoughts, but rather knowing someone
> completely only makes you love them completely for their wonderful
> self. The truth, in his books, is always beautiful.
>
> I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but there's stuff in my head
> that would curl the hair of any of my friends were they allowed to
> casually peek inside any time they felt like it, and I assume the same
> is true of all of us.
> Even of Spider Robinson.
Actually, the first time telepaths showed up in a Callahan story, one
of the telepaths *was* totally freaked out by his first look inside
someone else's mind. But, as always, he got better.
Lee Ann Rucker
<spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>
> _KILL THE EDITOR_ (1991)
> Novella length story (I've got it in a chapbook-type format). I don't
> remember it (someone has a memory editing device?), but it's not bad.
>
>
> _LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
> Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
> have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
> time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
> _Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
> "super-hypnosis" that's well told.
_KtE_ is the first part of _LStB_, I kept it and dumped the other
because of the *stupid* way one of the twins gets killed in the second
half - Spider is the greatest Heinlein fan on the planet, he's got a
pair of telepathic twins a la _Time for the Stars_, and they're
communicating with *radios* with a range shorter than the distance
they're apart?
Josh Kaderlan
> Steve Parker wrote:
>
>> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>
>
>> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>> bollux up a *good* future.
>>
>> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>> wouldn'tt.
>
> Yeah, it's got those perfect wonderful marvelous sensitive sf-reading
> self-aware punning touchy-feely GODDAMN VOMITOUS HIPPIES WHOM I WANT
> TO REND LIMB FROM LIMB!
Thank you for putting this better than I did.
-Josh
LizM7
> > ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
> >
> > because it's easier to discuss them with the endings. Generally,
> > Robinson's surprise endings are BAD ("What? She got better?!"), so
> > unless you're uberfanatical about not knowing ANYTHING about the end
> > of a book, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
> >
> > Stardance
> > I read it, thought it mostly harmless. Don't remember much of the
> > plot.
> > But there's a symbiote that'll make you immortal, telepathic and able
> > to survive in space. This upsets some people. Stuff happens.
>
> NOOOO, NOT mostly harmless! This is the one with the stupidest deus
> ex machina ever, in which the main character triumphs over a hopeless
> situation by meditating and achieving enlightenment... so she becomes
> telepathic, and her telepathic buddies are able to help her kill the
> bad guy. In my opinion, this plot twist is even worse than the space
> cockroach and the convenient suitcase nuke.
Isn't this the one with the "hands on my vagina ... hands on my
keyboard" line?
The only reason I wasn't irritated more by this book was because I was
in the middle of a major depressive episode at the time, and suffering
from altitude sickness to boot. As a result, I was pretty much
apathetic to Robinson's awfulness. (Pratchett, OTOH, got through to
me. In a good way.)
> > _CALLAHAN'S SECRET_ (1986)
> > Remember how I griped about _Stardance_ and how the magic resurrection
> > of a character undermined a great short story? Here, a magic
> > revelation destroys a character who's been in the two previous books.
> > Jake, who's been narrating the books, lost his wife and infant
> > daughter in a car accident that he caused. Throughout the last couple
> > of books, we watched him start to heal and grow. Then magic time
> > travelers say "Oopsie! You didn't do it! Everything's groovy now!"
> > completely undermining the character.
>
> This is, however, completely in line with Spider's approach to
> telepathy, in which nobody is ever freaked out or even disturbed by
> anyone's deep dark secret thoughts, but rather knowing someone
> completely only makes you love them completely for their wonderful
> self. The truth, in his books, is always beautiful.
>
> I can't speak for anyone else, obviously, but there's stuff in my head
> that would curl the hair of any of my friends were they allowed to
> casually peek inside any time they felt like it, and I assume the same
> is true of all of us.
Telepathy is like masturbating in public. It's not objectionable in
theory, perhaps, but in practice....
The planet would be *much* ruder were we all telepaths.
*frowns* OTOH, it's questionable whether one could in fact have
emotional reactions to telepathic broadcasting - at least, if the
telepathy broadcasted emotions + thoughts. After all, you can have a
person doing almost anything ... and yet, since their behavior tends
to be internally rationizable (i.e. it can be rationalized by that
person's own worldview), and since you're getting the worldview at the
same time as you're getting the behavior, the action isn't shocking.
Or would it be anyway ...?
(Idol speculation here: Autism - which is characterized by a failure
to respond to stimulii from the outside world (among other things) -
is caused, paradoxally enough, from hypersensitivity. Your brain
can't sort out all the various stimuli, and thus it just shuts
down.... So, would a telepathic character - or, an involuntary
telepath (one who wasn't *choosing* to be telepathic, but was just
telepathic all the time by default) at least - wind up with the
symptoms a high-functioning autistic? (Le Guin, at least, recognized
this and used it - in one of her short stories ("Vaster than
Empires"?), the telepath of the group is essencially autistic.))
- Liz
David Cowie
after reading the initial posts in this thread. I'm now convinced that
seeing rasfw slap Spider Robinson around is far more fun than actually
reading his books could ever be. Thanks everyone!
--
David Cowie
There is no _spam in my address.
"You had to do WHAT with your seat?"
Louann Miller
wrote:
>I liked parts of _Callahan's Key_ - you probably will too, if you liked
>the other Callahan stories - I just didn't like the book as a whole.
I didn't like the whipsawed pacing. (We have an urgent crisis! but not
so urgent that we can't have a leisurely interlude in the meantime...)
And once the main plot did get going, it was awfully similar to David
Palmer's "Emergence." At least IMHO.
Andrew Plotkin
I liked them.
They don't think like me, of course, but what else is science fiction
for? I doubt I could live in their house.
I don't think Spider thought they were perfect, either. The person
from the future was perfect. The hippies were a mixed bag, with some
rather explicit personality problems that rather explicitly caused
social problems in their little group.
Note that the protagonist *also* decided he couldn't live in their
house, although he (also) liked them, and went over there for dinner
sometimes.
Andrew Plotkin
> I saw _Stardance_ in a second-hand bookshop, and decided not to buy it
> after reading the initial posts in this thread.
Not even to read the first third?
> I'm now convinced that seeing rasfw slap Spider Robinson around is
> far more fun than actually reading his books could ever be.
I wouldn't be this tied up in the subject if I didn't *love* a
*little* of Spider's lifetime output of words...
Hetta
> Rachel Brown <rpho...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> > about her. He lifts the toilet lid, sees that she's written on the
> > underside "It's so nice to have a man around the house," and concludes
> > that she's single. Huh? Why didn't he conclude that the message was a
> > joke for her boyfriend?
>
> Because it's not funny unless the toilet lid (er, "seat", I assume)
> can be presumed to have been down for a very long time.
Ah. The male point of view. Toilet lids do have to be cleaned every now and
then...
Hetta
--
he...@saunalahti.fi Hetta Kress Helsinki, Finland
Best of RHOD - http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html
Hetta
> http://www.allenvarney.com/av_21st03.html
> My article played up a tendency in Robinson's work that I don't
> see highlighted in this thread: Robinson's tendency to enshrine a
> small elite of like-minded "magnificent conspirators," without
> really explaining what they stand for or why they deserve this
> illustrious status.
Wow, COOL!
Hetta (So how _did_ you escape?)
Josh Kaderlan
> Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>> In article <9884ad1c.02032...@posting.google.com>, Rachel Brown
>> wrote:
>>> Steve Parker wrote:
>>>
>>>> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>>>
>>>
>>>> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>>>> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>>>> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>>>> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>>>> bollux up a *good* future.
>>>>
>>>> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>>>> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>>>> wouldn'tt.
>>>
>>> Yeah, it's got those perfect wonderful marvelous sensitive sf-reading
>>> self-aware punning touchy-feely GODDAMN VOMITOUS HIPPIES WHOM I WANT
>>> TO REND LIMB FROM LIMB!
>
>> Thank you for putting this better than I did.
>
> I liked them.
I was going to ask you why you liked *Time Pressure*. Hearing that you
didn't hate the hippies the way I did goes a long way toward answering my
question.
> They don't think like me, of course, but what else is science fiction
> for? I doubt I could live in their house.
I don't automatically dislike people who don't think like me. There are
certain groups of people who don't think like me in certain ways who I
*do* dislike, but that's because of the specifics of the ways they don't
think like me. That's part of the reason I didn't like the hippies in
*Time Pressure*, but only part.
> I don't think Spider thought they were perfect, either. The person
> from the future was perfect. The hippies were a mixed bag, with some
> rather explicit personality problems that rather explicitly caused
> social problems in their little group.
I don't recall the book well enough to remember precisely what you're
talking about, but I definitely got the sense at the time I read the book
that Spider *did* think they were pretty damn perfect. IIRC, they
had a number of the characteristics of Good People in Robinson's books.
> Note that the protagonist *also* decided he couldn't live in their
> house, although he (also) liked them, and went over there for dinner
> sometimes.
And the protagonist is explicitly presented as being emotionally damaged,
so I don't think the fact that he couldn't live with the hippies proves
anything.
-Josh
Josh Kaderlan
><possible spoilers>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Josh Kaderlan wrote:
>> I hated the fact that Robinson felt the
>> need to resurrect everyone who ever died, all throughout history,
>
> Why would that be a bad thing?
In theory, it wouldn't be. But given that Robinson keeps coming back to
this theme in his books, it makes reading them like reading the literary
equivalent of a video game. If there's no chance of anything lastingly
bad happening to any of his characters, it renders their triumphs hollow.
Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a dumb
pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson clearly thinks
it's somehow profound.
-Josh
Lee Ann Rucker
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> David Cowie <david_co...@lineone.net> wrote:
> > I saw _Stardance_ in a second-hand bookshop, and decided not to buy it
> > after reading the initial posts in this thread.
>
> Not even to read the first third?
>
> > I'm now convinced that seeing rasfw slap Spider Robinson around is
> > far more fun than actually reading his books could ever be.
>
> I wouldn't be this tied up in the subject if I didn't *love* a
> *little* of Spider's lifetime output of words...
AOL. If he were just bad, I wouldn't bother, but he has such potential
and every so often bits of it shine through. Stardance is such a
perfect example of it - by all means, read the first third, but unless
you want to join us in being upset, stop there.
Steve Parker
wrote:
>Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>> In article <9884ad1c.02032...@posting.google.com>, Rachel Brown
>> wrote:
>>> Steve Parker wrote:
>>>
>>>> ***THIS IS YOUR SPOILER WARNING****
>>>>
>>>
>>>> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>>>> Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>>>> of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>>>> traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>>>> bollux up a *good* future.
>>>>
>>>> I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>>>> it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>>>> wouldn'tt.
>
>I liked them.
>
>They don't think like me, of course, but what else is science fiction
>for? I doubt I could live in their house.
>
>I don't think Spider thought they were perfect, either. The person
>from the future was perfect. The hippies were a mixed bag, with some
>rather explicit personality problems that rather explicitly caused
>social problems in their little group.
No, but rather than deal with the fact that Malachi was an evil
jackass (Yes. I will force you to confront your deepest fears whether
you want to or not. And I'll do it so that I can have a power trip),
Robinson tries at the VERY end of the book to redeem the bastard
(during that big OM scene where the main character says "Screw it" to
Malachi's rules and starts doing some jazz riffs, rather than have
Malachi stay in character and get bent or try to lovingly smother the
main charcter, we see a twinkle in Malachi's eye and he joins in in
the rule breaking (which, I suppose, might be another attempt to take
control.)
The flaw with the Hippies is Malachi: either someone should've killed
him, or Robinson should have had the guts to show that the Hippies
were actually a personality cult.
Y'know...as little as Malachi was actually in the book, he by far, is
the character who irritated me the most.
Steve
Andrew Plotkin
> On 27 Mar 2002 21:50:47 GMT, Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com>
> wrote:
>>[_Time Pressure_, the hippies]
>>I liked them.
>>
>>They don't think like me, of course, but what else is science fiction
>>for? I doubt I could live in their house.
>>
>>I don't think Spider thought they were perfect, either. The person
>>from the future was perfect. The hippies were a mixed bag, with some
>>rather explicit personality problems that rather explicitly caused
>>social problems in their little group.
> No, but rather than deal with the fact that Malachi was an evil
> jackass (Yes. I will force you to confront your deepest fears whether
> you want to or not. And I'll do it so that I can have a power trip),
> Robinson tries at the VERY end of the book to redeem the bastard
Well, the perfect person from the future came in and made everybody
all better.
I didn't mind that, at the time. In retrospect (and after reading
everything Spider has written since _TP_), it does bother me. Okay,
only a bit. Maybe I'm a chump.
Damien Neil
<lru...@mac.com> wrote:
> AOL. If he were just bad, I wouldn't bother, but he has such potential
> and every so often bits of it shine through. Stardance is such a
> perfect example of it - by all means, read the first third, but unless
> you want to join us in being upset, stop there.
If he were just a bad author, nobody would care about him. What hurts
is that he's so GOOD at writing characters who experience pain in very
real ways, and yet he can't resist trying to make everything better for
them in the end.
Read his short stories. So many of them were excellent before he
turned them into novels and added happy endings.
- Damien
Doug
>
> _THE FREE LUNCH_ (2001)
> Imagine combining Star Trek's Holodeck, Disneyland and Dreampark. Our
> heroine lives here illicitly behind the scenes. She meets a kid who
> also wants to live there. They get mixed up with time travelers from a
> not-happy future.
>
> Actually a good book and a return to form for Robinson. He also
> resists the temptation to make everything all better for the
> characters.
>
> Recommended in paperback
>
> Robinson works best in short story format, IMHO, if only because he
> doesn't have a chance to get too attached to his characters. He had
> (and still has) the potential to be great. He's been great,
> occasionally. But he's gotta stop with the treacly, sappy. "aaaawww!
> Didums getta booboo? Deus Ex Author make it go bye-bye" stuff. And I'd
> really like to see Robinson never do another Time-Travelers from the
> future come to the present and may screw up their own timeline story.
I read The Free Lunch some months ago and I still can't get the bad
vibes out of my head. It was amazingly clumsy and preposterous -
basically it comes across like the rants one hears from muddle-headed
drunks who think they've figured out the solution to all of humanity's
problems sometime during the last round but have trouble explaining it
because their tongues are suddenly three sizes too big.
I've since been told that this is business as usual for Robinson, and
I see that even fans like you have trouble with his work, almost
forcing yourself to like him.
How many chances does an author get before readers realize that there
won't be some miraculous improvement and abandonment becomes
inevitable?
Doug
Mike Schilling
Spider is similar to Varley in that way -- Varley is a brilliant writer
of short stories, but he's never learned to construct a novel. I can
only think of one case hwre he's turned enlarged a short story: "Air
Raid" -> _Millenium_, and that was a complete botch.
Chris Clayton
Ross TenEyck wrote:
> > _THE CALLAHAN TOUCH_ (1993)
>
> Another thing that bugged me: the Callahan's crowd is scared stiff
> of Solace (the sentient computer) on the grounds that it has the
> power to kill off most of humanity if it decides it wants to. Much
> angst ensues about this. But Finn has repeatedly been stated to
> be able to vaporize the entire *planet* if he ever gets grumpy,
> and nobody at Callahan's ever appeared to lose a moment's sleep
> over this possibility.
My theory was always that Finn, having re-built The Regulars
to be safe from rain and nuclear explosions (don't those two
hazards always go together?), just thoughtfully removed the
ability to entertain that suspicion. Wouldn't want to worry
his friends over nothing, now.
--
Chris Clayton
cla...@di.org
Lee Ann Rucker
<tr...@cinci.rr.com> wrote:
> I've since been told that this is business as usual for Robinson, and
> I see that even fans like you have trouble with his work, almost
> forcing yourself to like him.
>
> How many chances does an author get before readers realize that there
> won't be some miraculous improvement and abandonment becomes
> inevitable?
Actually it's the other way around - I really like his early stuff, and
only pick up the later ones in the forlorn hope that he's returned to
his original form.
Charles Frederick Goodin
>
>> _LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
>>Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
>>have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
>>time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
>>_Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
>>"super-hypnosis" that's well told.
>
>I found this one annoying. For one thing, there's the discussion
>that the protagonist (name forgotten) and Sally have about why
>things always go hideously wrong for him. They discuss possibilities
>(a) he's cursed (his own theory,) and (b) he's just had a run of bad
>luck (Sally's theory.) They don't give nearly enough consideration to
>theory (c), he's a moron.
[snip big fat example]
One thing I've sort of noticed with Spider's books is that the
protagonists often come up with great, intelligent plans which are then
foiled by either bad luck or something totally obvious that all these
"geniuses" missed (like Tony Donuts and the counterfeits all having the
same serial number).
--
chuk
Andrew Plotkin
> One thing I've sort of noticed with Spider's books is that the
> protagonists often come up with great, intelligent plans which are then
> foiled by either bad luck or something totally obvious that all these
> "geniuses" missed (like Tony Donuts and the counterfeits all having the
> same serial number).
Too much like real life, then, ei? :)
J.B. Moreno
> _CALLAHAN'S LADY_ (1989)
> Callahan's wife is a Madame. Stuff happens in her "house of
> ill-repute". Stuff surprisingly like what happens at Callahan's.
>
> Actually, this one isn't bad at all.
-snip-
> _LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE_ (1992)
> Also, not bad. Not great, but ok. Either this or _Callahan's Lady_
> have a short story about someone with a John D. MacDonald-esque
> time-stopping "Gold Watch" that's powerful AND creepy. (Or was that
> _Kill the Editor_. Also there's one about someone with
> "super-hypnosis" that's well told.
I dislike both of these books -- they have the undertone of "things man
is not meant to know". And while I don't have the exact quote handy
from _Thief of Time_ I agree with Prachett -- bull!
Destroying knowledge is evil.
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Joe Bernstein
Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
> _Antimony_ [i.e., <Antinomy>] was remaindered upon release.
No, it wasn't. It may have been remaindered shortly after release,
but at least some copies *did* get shipped. I bought it new.
(It is, in fact, one of maybe three Robinson books I can still stand
to re-read, with <Callahan's Crosstime Saloon> and maybe <Night of
Power>. <Antinomy> includes stories that have actual conflicts in
them, for one thing: "Antinomy" and "The Magnificent Conspiracy"
itself are like this. Not to mention that ugly story about the guy
in prison - I can't imagine Robinson ever writing anything like that
again... Has the very pessimistic story about Douglas Bent's 60th
birthday been reprinted?)
Joe Bernstein
PS The title correction isn't just pedantry. Robinson opens the
collection by making it himself - 'No, this is not a book about
a chemical element' - and going on to define antinomy, as a state
in which two equally necessary propositions are in conflict, and
to complain that the fact more people don't know this or any other
word for this state is an example of a bad form of cultural ignorance.
Since I agree with him, I think it's worth repeating this for those
who don't have this collection and can't read him saying it directly.
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org/>
atholbrose
news:3CA332BB...@hotmail.com:
> Spider is similar to Varley in that way -- Varley is a brilliant writer
> of short stories, but he's never learned to construct a novel. I can
> only think of one case hwre he's turned enlarged a short story: "Air
> Raid" -> _Millenium_, and that was a complete botch.
I just don't see this; John Varley has written some of my favorite novels
ever. I've enjoyed each and every one of them. Then again, I see nothing
wrong with the end of _Snow Crash_ and _The Diamond Age_, and actively
enjoy Stephen R. Donaldson, so who knows, I may be in a vast minority.
Joe Bernstein
> How many chances does an author get before readers realize that there
> won't be some miraculous improvement and abandonment becomes
> inevitable?
The question is partly whether there are replacement readers later.
I started reading Robinson almost from the beginning of his career,
and he was on my must-buy list at a time when I was taking out the
trash for a bookstore and could get pretty much anything I wanted for
free. But I was unnerved by some of <Time Travelers Strictly Cash>,
<Mindkiller>, and even <Antinomy>, and *seriously* pissed off by the
next book - a Callahan's, no? Then came <Night of Power>, which for
me was a Major Wake-Up Call for extraliterary reasons I guess (I live
in one of the most segregated cities in North America, the same city
I lived in at that time, and furthermore at that time had just left
the University of Chicago, which is in one of the most segregated parts
of a barely-less-segregated city; race relations were much on my mind
just then). I was writing a journal of short book reviews at the
time, and one of my comments on this was that Robinson turned out
still to be older than me. (I was seventeen at the time.)
So I didn't give up on Robinson right away. <Night of Power> got him
enough credit that I actually bought <Melancholy Elephants>. And that
book, in turn, made me certain it really was time to give up on him.
The only time I've recanted is for <Time Pressure>, because I've come
to dislike <Mindkiller> less over the years. I've considered that a
mistake. I've been toying with the new book, thinking "Well hey,
McCaffrey turned out not to be as awful as I'd thought...", but this
thread is reminding me of why I know better.
I don't think my trajectory is all that unusual, except that I *did*
actually decide to read this thread, and there must be a lot of people
in whom this history would induce no such impulse. Yet there are those
who pick up whatever his latest book might be, having read nothing by
him previously, and think "Hey neat! Cool!" Keep in mind that many of
Robinson's biggest faults are things that are so Not Done that a new
reader will never have seen them before. It'll take a while to realise
that this doesn't mean they're interesting or worthwhile...
Joe Bernstein
Mike Schilling
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote in
> news:3CA332BB...@hotmail.com:
>
>
>>Spider is similar to Varley in that way -- Varley is a brilliant writer
>>of short stories, but he's never learned to construct a novel. I can
>>only think of one case where he's enlarged a short story: "Air
>>Raid" -> _Millenium_, and that was a complete botch.
>>
>
> I just don't see this; John Varley has written some of my favorite novels
> ever. I've enjoyed each and every one of them. Then again, I see nothing
> wrong with the end of _Snow Crash_ and _The Diamond Age_, and actively
> enjoy Stephen R. Donaldson, so who knows, I may be in a vast minority.
>
I like Varley's novels too, but they're big messes with some brilliant
bits, every one of them. And the endings are always at least an order
of magnitude too big.
Josh Kaderlan
Joe Bernstein wrote:
> In article <db01bae.02032...@posting.google.com>,
>
>> How many chances does an author get before readers realize that there
>> won't be some miraculous improvement and abandonment becomes
>> inevitable?
>
> The question is partly whether there are replacement readers later.
> I started reading Robinson almost from the beginning of his career,
> and he was on my must-buy list at a time when I was taking out the
> trash for a bookstore and could get pretty much anything I wanted for
> free. But I was unnerved by some of <Time Travelers Strictly Cash>,
><Mindkiller>, and even <Antinomy>, and *seriously* pissed off by the
> next book - a Callahan's, no? Then came <Night of Power>, which for
> me was a Major Wake-Up Call for extraliterary reasons I guess (I live
> in one of the most segregated cities in North America, the same city
> I lived in at that time, and furthermore at that time had just left
> the University of Chicago, which is in one of the most segregated parts
> of a barely-less-segregated city; race relations were much on my mind
> just then). I was writing a journal of short book reviews at the
> time, and one of my comments on this was that Robinson turned out
> still to be older than me. (I was seventeen at the time.)
>
> So I didn't give up on Robinson right away. <Night of Power> got him
> enough credit that I actually bought <Melancholy Elephants>. And that
> book, in turn, made me certain it really was time to give up on him.
This reminds me of another one of the reasons I don't read Robinson any more:
his whinging about how the fact that his later books haven't sold as well as
his older ones is proof that the midlist is dying. As soon as an author
starts complaining that his books don't sell because the midlist is dying,
it's time to cross him off the list of people it's worth reading. (See also:
Norman Spinrad.)
-Josh
Steve Parker
wrote:
>In article <1hf3au0v4h09q3ibr...@4ax.com>,
>Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> snip
>
>>She's awful and I kept wanting her to die (and she wouldn't oblige,
>>dammit). The worst part was that the mix of her and the uptight
>>businessman should have caused both characters to grow towards less
>>extreme personalities. Instead, uptight businessguy becomes more
>>hippie-like and the hippie-chick becomes more hippie-like too. Aargh,
>>Nonetheless, the Elton John clone and the G. Harry Stein clone were
>>interesting, and...it was an interesting look at "what happens after"
>
> Shades of Alan Moore's take on the Demon. There's a line
>of dialogue from Jason Blood about he and Etrigan (A demon he shares
>an odd relationship with, switching places from time to time) agreeing
>to become more like each other, with the result that Jason became more
>like Etrigan and Etrigan became more like Etrigan as well.
Heh. We read the same stuff: that's where I swiped the line from.
Steve
--
My review pages have moved.AGAIN. The new address is
http://home.attbi.com/~sparker9/home.html
John F Carr
Steve Parker <spar...@attbi.com> wrote:
> Mindkiller
> _MINDKILLER_ (1982)
>A good short story turned into a good (if yukky) novel. An examination
>of what it's like to be a TASP addict and someone invents a gizmo that
>can selectively mind-wipe. I liked this one.
Other than the first Callahan's collection, this is the only Spider
Robinson book I would consider reading again. It is an excellent
work of _intellectual_ horror, as opposed to Stephen King style
horror. The monsters under the bed, or vampires, or mind-controlling
alien spaceships, are scary, but they don't have the same effect as
the Mindkiller device.
> _TIME PRESSURE_ (1987)
>Distant sequel to Mindkiller. I loved this book, despite my awareness
>of it's...um...weaknesses. Into a hippie paradise in 1972 comes a time
>traveler. Our hero figures out what's going on and could potentially
>bollux up a *good* future.
>
>I'm torn. Most people I've talked to didn't like this book. I loved
>it. I recommend it highly, with the warning that most of my friends
>wouldn'tt.
I intensely disliked this book. Beyond the Robinson flood of peace,
love, and understanding, the characters were too alien for me.
I quit reading halfway through.
I didn't realize _Time Pressure was related to _Mindkiller_. Quite a contrast.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
cd skogsberg
>Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a
>dumb pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson
>clearly thinks it's somehow profound.
Okay, it's probably because English isn't my first language, but I
don't see the pun here.
/cd
--
Minä en puhu hyvin suomea.
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>
>>Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a
>>dumb pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson
>>clearly thinks it's somehow profound.
>
>Okay, it's probably because English isn't my first language, but I
>don't see the pun here.
Answer and ObSF: In _Reaper Man_, Pratchett says that Sgt. Colon had
heard of irony -- he thought it meant "something like iron."
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
John F Carr
cd skogsberg <d97...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
>Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>
>>Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a
>>dumb pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson
>>clearly thinks it's somehow profound.
>
>Okay, it's probably because English isn't my first language, but I
>don't see the pun here.
"iron" = "one who commits irony"
"iron" = a hot device used to press clothes smooth, or (according
to a dictionary) "a heated metal implement used for branding or
cauterizing"
The first definition may not be proper English usage but the
derivation seemed obvious to me.
It's a good line, but not a great line.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Nancy Lebovitz
is someone who commits a felony.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Michael S. Schiffer
<3ca3f31c$0$64534$892e...@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net>:
>...Then came <Night of Power>, which
>for me was a Major Wake-Up Call for extraliterary reasons I guess
>(I live in one of the most segregated cities in North America, the
>same city I lived in at that time, and furthermore at that time
>had just left the University of Chicago, which is in one of the
>most segregated parts of a barely-less-segregated city
Hyde Park is one of the most integrated neighborhoods in Chicago
(which is, as you note, a highly segregated city), and pretty
thoroughly integrated for anywhere in the US-- I get 50.9% white,
37.8% African-American, 2.3% Hispanic, and 9% Other from a Tribune
site that uses Census data (though I don't know if they're using 1990
or 2000 census).
That isn't to say that racial issues in Hyde Park or the U of C's
part in them don't involve some fairly major problems, and I'm well
aware that the population distribution within HP isn't random. (I'm
pretty sure my time there overlapped yours, and it certainly wasn't
too far from it.) But I'd be surprised if you (or anyone) could name
six Chicago neighborhoods that are more integrated than HP. The only
places I can think of that are even in the running are suburbs like
Evanston and Oak Park, plus some neighborhoods that are clearly in
the middle of a fairly rapid changeover due to gentrification or
other demographic transition. (A neighborhood that was all-black ten
years ago and will be all-white in ten years, or vice versa, isn't a
great example of integration.)
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
lazarus
>
>*frowns* OTOH, it's questionable whether one could in fact have
>emotional reactions to telepathic broadcasting - at least, if the
>telepathy broadcasted emotions + thoughts. After all, you can have a
>person doing almost anything ... and yet, since their behavior tends
>to be internally rationizable (i.e. it can be rationalized by that
>person's own worldview), and since you're getting the worldview at the
>same time as you're getting the behavior, the action isn't shocking.
>Or would it be anyway ...?
>
>(Idol speculation here: Autism - which is characterized by a failure
>to respond to stimulii from the outside world (among other things) -
>is caused, paradoxally enough, from hypersensitivity. Your brain
>can't sort out all the various stimuli, and thus it just shuts
>down.... So, would a telepathic character - or, an involuntary
>telepath (one who wasn't *choosing* to be telepathic, but was just
>telepathic all the time by default) at least - wind up with the
>symptoms a high-functioning autistic? (Le Guin, at least, recognized
>this and used it - in one of her short stories ("Vaster than
>Empires"?), the telepath of the group is essencially autistic.))
>
>- Liz
Most of Heinlein's "sensitives" were also either autistic or
otherwise incapable of caring for themselves.
--
lazarus
"This idea that you don't critically evaluate people in high positions during a crisis is nonsense,"
--Richard Shelby
"We can support the troops without supporting the President.''
--Trent Lott
lazarus
Louann Miller
wrote:
>On Fri, 29 Mar 2002 19:01:32 -0000, Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org>
>>This reminds me of another one of the reasons I don't read Robinson any more:
>>his whinging about how the fact that his later books haven't sold as well as
>>his older ones is proof that the midlist is dying. As soon as an author
>>starts complaining that his books don't sell because the midlist is dying,
>>it's time to cross him off the list of people it's worth reading. (See also:
>>Norman Spinrad.)
>>
>>
>>-Josh
>
>Dumb question: midlist?
The second tier of writers, roughly. People who don't make bestseller
lists nor get extra-special promotional help from their publishers but
who nevertheless put out a steady stream of readable books over time.
(Midlist is to bestseller as character actor is to movie star.)
In another definition they're the group of writers who, depending on
who you ask, are either:
(a) desperately dependent on local mom-n-pop booksellers for word of
mouth promoting, being as they are neglected by the big chain stores
who only want to sell Stephen King and his ilk by the metric ton, or
(b) desperately dependent on the big chain stores, who having X times
as much shelf space to fill in a given category will stock writers
other than the giants of the genre, unlike mom-n-pop stores who only
stock (1) bestsellers like Stephen King or (2) the owner's particular
favorite authors, looking down their noses at customers who want
something else.
I think Josh is really onto something with this marker of who to stop
reading. Although I would except Donald Westlake's "The Hook," which
is arguably a book-long complaint about the problem.
Louann
lazarus
wrote:
Thank you, Louann. I've learned something neat, which means the day
was worth it.
Nancy Lebovitz
lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com> wrote:
>On 27 Mar 2002 11:45:20 -0800, hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote:
>
>>(Idol speculation here: Autism - which is characterized by a failure
>>to respond to stimulii from the outside world (among other things) -
>>is caused, paradoxally enough, from hypersensitivity. Your brain
>>can't sort out all the various stimuli, and thus it just shuts
>>down.... So, would a telepathic character - or, an involuntary
>>telepath (one who wasn't *choosing* to be telepathic, but was just
>>telepathic all the time by default) at least - wind up with the
>>symptoms a high-functioning autistic? (Le Guin, at least, recognized
>>this and used it - in one of her short stories ("Vaster than
>>Empires"?), the telepath of the group is essencially autistic.))
A lot of sf has it that telepathic has a distance limit, and telepaths
need to live away from large groups of people.
>
> Most of Heinlein's "sensitives" were also either autistic or
>otherwise incapable of caring for themselves.
That may be pushing it a little--Heinlein has "sensitives" who aren't
in great shape (the viewpoint twins in _Time for the Stars_, the
cossetted clairvoyants in _Starship Troopers_), but I think those
are at least as typical as the telepaths in _If This Goes On..._.
Which "sensitives" were you thinking of?
cd skogsberg
>In article <3ca7981f$0$3931$b45e...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>,
>John F Carr <j...@mit.edu> wrote:
>>In article <slrnaaeks7....@poli.dtek.chalmers.se>,
>>cd skogsberg <d97...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
>>>Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>>>>Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a
>>>>dumb pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson
>>>>clearly thinks it's somehow profound.
>>>Okay, it's probably because English isn't my first language, but I
>>>don't see the pun here.
>>"iron" = "one who commits irony"
>>"iron" = a hot device used to press clothes smooth, or (according to
>>a dictionary) "a heated metal implement used for branding or
>>cauterizing"
>>The first definition may not be proper English usage but the
>>derivation seemed obvious to me.
>>It's a good line, but not a great line.
>The other possibly necessary piece of information is that a felon
>is someone who commits a felony.
I knew that, but I didn't make the connection. Thanks for the
explanations, folks.
/cd
--
color is just a pigment of your imagination
lazarus
wrote:
The ones in _If This Goes On_ and again in _Methuselah's Children_,
continued, if my memory serves, on throughout the Howard Families
storyline. I had completely forgotten the clairvoyants in ST, thanks
for the reminder on that, and I wasn't really intending to use the
twins, as they were a special case.
Craig Richardson
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>> Rachel Brown <rpho...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>
>> > about her. He lifts the toilet lid, sees that she's written on the
>> > underside "It's so nice to have a man around the house," and concludes
>> > that she's single. Huh? Why didn't he conclude that the message was a
>> > joke for her boyfriend?
>>
>> Because it's not funny unless the toilet lid (er, "seat", I assume)
>> can be presumed to have been down for a very long time.
>
>Ah. The male point of view. Toilet lids do have to be cleaned every now and
>then...
If she leaves it up after cleaning, she won't have anyone but herself
to blame if she falls in and drowns, or whatever it is that women
obviously fear so much...
--Craig
--
Hacking the shins is God's way of telling you to stop hogging the ball.
Craig Richardson
>In article <slrnaaeks7....@poli.dtek.chalmers.se>,
>cd skogsberg <d97...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote:
>>Josh Kaderlan <j...@zer0.org> wrote:
>>
>>>Oh, and I hated the "God is an iron" line in *Mindkiller*. It's a
>>>dumb pun, and it's made all the worse by the fact that Robinson
>>>clearly thinks it's somehow profound.
>>
>>Okay, it's probably because English isn't my first language, but I
>>don't see the pun here.
>
>"iron" = "one who commits irony"
By extension from e.g. "felon" = "one who commits felony".
>"iron" = a hot device used to press clothes smooth, or (according
>to a dictionary) "a heated metal implement used for branding or
>cauterizing"
Robinson uses it in the first sense:
"God is an iron"
"And I'm a pair of pants with a hole in the ass?"
>The first definition may not be proper English usage but the
>derivation seemed obvious to me.
>
>It's a good line, but not a great line.
If he'd just fired it off and moved on, it would have been better.
Unfortunately, like late Mel Brooks, Robinson wastes too much time
making sure the audience got it.
J.B. Moreno
> lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com> wrote:
> > Most of Heinlein's "sensitives" were also either autistic or otherwise
> >incapable of caring for themselves.
>
> That may be pushing it a little--Heinlein has "sensitives" who aren't
> in great shape (the viewpoint twins in _Time for the Stars_, the
> cossetted clairvoyants in _Starship Troopers_), but I think those
> are at least as typical as the telepaths in _If This Goes On..._.
>
> Which "sensitives" were you thinking of?
In the Future History stories that includes the Howard's Timeline,
"sensitives" seem to be an outgrowth of the Howard breeding program, the
inbreeding having caused both positive and negative
mutations/reinforcements. They have telepathic abilities, but are
otherwise not in particularly good health -- autistic being the least of
it (severely retarded and crippled being a bit more common). Check out
_Methuselah's Children_ just before they are grabbed up, and around the
time they meet the little people.
Hetta
> Hetta <he...@saunalahti.fi> wrote:
>
> >Ah. The male point of view. Toilet lids do have to be cleaned every now and
> >then...
>
> If she leaves it up after cleaning, she won't have anyone but herself
> to blame if she falls in and drowns, or whatever it is that women
> obviously fear so much...
In Japan they warm toilet seats. Over here they don't. So even if the lid's been
up only a few minutes, over here - that porcelain is _COLD_. And being of the
backing persuasion <beep beep beep beep> there's not always time to check if
it's up or not.
HTH, HAND,
Hetta
--
he...@saunalahti.fi Hetta Kress Helsinki, Finland
Best of RHOD - http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/rhod/main.html
J Greely
>If he'd just fired it off and moved on, it would have been better.
>Unfortunately, like late Mel Brooks, Robinson wastes too much time
>making sure the audience got it.
...not to mention backing it up with some extremely iffy examples,
like the "pornography is only about corrupting innocence" bit. Does
the main character actually live in a world where all nude models are
just 18, or has he just never opened up an issue of Playboy and looked
at the text next to the pictures?
-j
Louann Miller
Sitting down in the dark at 3 a.m. on cold porcelain, with a big
enough opening that your butt falls through, instead of
neutral-temperature wood or plastic which is the right size to be
sitting on. It's really annoying.
Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet seat
and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling in or
the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
never made sense to her.
--
"Hey, you know that metric ton of spam you're suddenly getting every time you open your mailbox? That was us! We sold you out to our advertisers, not just a few of them but every advertising category we've got, even though you specifically turned those ads down when you signed up! Banners, popups, and "sponsored links" in the search engine aren't enough any more -- we want to process you for every possible commercial advantage like a cow in a slaughterhouse. Start buying things, you prole, that's all you're good for." -- Yahoo 'changes to privacy policy' notification, first draft (rejected by PR dept.)
Frank Winans
> Craig Richardson wrote:
> > Hetta wrote:
> >
> > >Ah. The male point of view. Toilet lids do have to be cleaned every now and
> > >then...
> >
> > If she leaves it up after cleaning, she won't have anyone but herself
> > to blame if she falls in and drowns, or whatever it is that women
> > obviously fear so much...
>
> In Japan they warm toilet seats. Over here they don't. So even if the lid's been
> up only a few minutes, over here - that porcelain is _COLD_. And being of the
> backing persuasion <beep beep beep beep> there's not always time to check if
> it's up or not.
>
> HTH, HAND,
> Hetta
>
a toilet has components
-- <cold> porcelain bowl,
-- partial-ring 'seat', and
-- oval board 'lid'.
In my acquaintance, people of the female persuasion insist
the lid be left down whenever possible. I subscribe to
leaving the seat down, but never bother lowering the lid
unless I need a really stable temporary chair in the room.
lazarus
wrote:
>On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 17:29:04 -0800, Craig Richardson
><crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 00:54:57 +0200, Hetta <he...@saunalahti.fi> wrote:
>
>>>Ah. The male point of view. Toilet lids do have to be cleaned every now and
>>>then...
>>
>>If she leaves it up after cleaning, she won't have anyone but herself
>>to blame if she falls in and drowns, or whatever it is that women
>>obviously fear so much...
>
>Sitting down in the dark at 3 a.m. on cold porcelain, with a big
>enough opening that your butt falls through, instead of
>neutral-temperature wood or plastic which is the right size to be
>sitting on. It's really annoying.
>
>Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet seat
>and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
>handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling in or
>the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
>never made sense to her.
Pissing on a toilet seat is rather annoying, too. I look first, why
can't women? Do you drop your pants in the hall and back in?
Louann Miller
wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 09:14:41 -0600, Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
>>Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet seat
>>and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
>>handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling in or
>>the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
>>never made sense to her.
>
>Pissing on a toilet seat is rather annoying, too. I look first, why
>can't women? Do you drop your pants in the hall and back in?
Do you turn the lights on when you use the bathroom in the middle of
the night?
lazarus
wrote:
>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 18:41:17 -0600, lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 09:14:41 -0600, Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
>
>>>Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet seat
>>>and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
>>>handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling in or
>>>the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
>>>never made sense to her.
>>
>>Pissing on a toilet seat is rather annoying, too. I look first, why
>>can't women? Do you drop your pants in the hall and back in?
>
>Do you turn the lights on when you use the bathroom in the middle of
>the night?
I don't live underground, there's a bit of ambient light about. Or
night lights are a good alternative. How do you find the toilet if
it's pitch black?
William December Starr
loua...@yahoo.net said:
> Sitting down in the dark at 3 a.m. on cold porcelain, with a big
> enough opening that your butt falls through, instead of
> neutral-temperature wood or plastic which is the right size to be
> sitting on. It's really annoying.
I'm sorry, I really am, but I Do Not Understand. Males occasionally
have to perform certain toilet-related functions that require a seated
position too; why is it -- at least stereotypically -- only women who
have this terrible problem with finding the seat up? Is it a
gender-based religious objection to turning on the light, or is there
something about possessing a full bladder and/or bowel that induces
temporary blindness in human females, or what?
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Hetta
> I'm sorry, I really am, but I Do Not Understand. Males occasionally
> have to perform certain toilet-related functions that require a seated
> position too; why is it -- at least stereotypically -- only women who
> have this terrible problem with finding the seat up? Is it a
> gender-based religious objection to turning on the light, or is there
> something about possessing a full bladder and/or bowel that induces
> temporary blindness in human females, or what?
We have to sit _far_ more often (try it. Sit down every time you have to pee),
and the urge to urinate can be rather more urgent than the urge to defecate.
Especially with ladies having shorter leads from bladder to exit than males. And
smaller bladders.
And yes, if you're expecting the seat to be down you don't check for it
separately. It's not like we have eyes in the back of our head, either, even if
hapless males sometimes are lead to think so.
Cheers
Hetta (And somehow I think it entirely appropriate that a thread about Spider's
books has degenerated into a pissing contest.)
LizM7
> In article <1gnhau8h4t1oah3iv...@4ax.com>,
> lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com> wrote:
> >On 27 Mar 2002 11:45:20 -0800, hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote:
> >
> >>(Idol speculation here: Autism - which is characterized by a failure
> >>to respond to stimulii from the outside world (among other things) -
> >>is caused, paradoxally enough, from hypersensitivity. Your brain
> >>can't sort out all the various stimuli, and thus it just shuts
> >>down.... So, would a telepathic character - or, an involuntary
> >>telepath (one who wasn't *choosing* to be telepathic, but was just
> >>telepathic all the time by default) at least - wind up with the
> >>symptoms a high-functioning autistic? (Le Guin, at least, recognized
> >>this and used it - in one of her short stories ("Vaster than
> >>Empires"?), the telepath of the group is essencially autistic.))
>
> A lot of sf has it that telepathic has a distance limit, and telepaths
> need to live away from large groups of people.
The problem is, involuntary telepathy would probably be so
overwhelming that you wouldn't be able to be around *anyone*. It's
like ... how do you explain this to a non-autistic? You know the
sensation you get when you have two or three people screaming at you,
where you want to just throw your hands over your ears and scream with
them? It's like that, except a hundred times worse. I get sensorary
overload very easily [1] - I can't handle crowds, can't handle
parties, etc. There's too much stimulation going on. Now multiply
that a few times over, and you wind up with a person who can only be
coherent when talking to a person on the phone.
Not to add to that, consider the problem of feedback loops. You have
two telepaths in the same region. One of them breaks a leg and starts
screaming from the pain. The other one - responding to the same pain
- starts screaming as well ... and now the first person is also scared
because the second person is panicking. Amplification. (OTOH, sex
would be ... interesting.)
- Liz
[1] AND my startle reflex is cranked up on high. I jump at virtually
anything. (As an aside, I was *born* with this trait. When my mother
was pregnant with me, if she'd drop a pan, I'd try to jump out of her
uterus. (Her phrase.) And the one time she had dental work done
while pregnant (with me), it took me forever to calm down.)
revek
"lazarus" <lazaru...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:9kenauom22lpndjor...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 19:25:03 -0600, Louann Miller
<loua...@yahoo.net>
> wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 18:41:17 -0600, lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 09:14:41 -0600, Louann Miller
<loua...@yahoo.net>
> >
> >>>Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet
seat
> >>>and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
> >>>handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling
in or
> >>>the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
> >>>never made sense to her.
> >>
> >>Pissing on a toilet seat is rather annoying, too. I look first,
why
> >>can't women? Do you drop your pants in the hall and back in?
> >
> >Do you turn the lights on when you use the bathroom in the middle
of
> >the night?
>
> I don't live underground, there's a bit of ambient light about.
<piggybacking>
Not if you live in the country, or anywhere outside a major
concentration of people.
Or
> night lights are a good alternative.
Some people have trouble sleeping with a night light. Usually those
same people who have actual darkness at night.
How do you find the toilet if
> it's pitch black?
>
knowledge of the layout of your own home is generally enough.
lazarus
>wds...@panix.com (William December Starr) wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry, I really am, but I Do Not Understand. Males occasionally
>> have to perform certain toilet-related functions that require a seated
>> position too; why is it -- at least stereotypically -- only women who
>> have this terrible problem with finding the seat up? Is it a
>> gender-based religious objection to turning on the light, or is there
>> something about possessing a full bladder and/or bowel that induces
>> temporary blindness in human females, or what?
>
>We have to sit _far_ more often (try it. Sit down every time you have to pee),
>and the urge to urinate can be rather more urgent than the urge to defecate.
>Especially with ladies having shorter leads from bladder to exit than males. And
>smaller bladders.
>
>And yes, if you're expecting the seat to be down you don't check for it
>separately. It's not like we have eyes in the back of our head, either, even if
>hapless males sometimes are lead to think so.
>
Again, though, when I sit, I tend to look where I'm sitting, that's
how I know I'm not sitting on, say, the tub.
lazarus
Um, I grew up 9 miles outside of town, very rural area. Stars, moon,
that sort of thing. No night is truly black.
> Or
>> night lights are a good alternative.
>
>Some people have trouble sleeping with a night light. Usually those
>same people who have actual darkness at night.
>
In the bathroom?
> How do you find the toilet if
>> it's pitch black?
>>
>
>knowledge of the layout of your own home is generally enough.
>
Hmm. I tend to look before I just let loose, though. Saves cleanup.
revek
Congratulations on your cat-like night vision. I also live outside
town. 15 miles. Full moon is enough to see by, barely, the rest of
the time, no way. Far too many trees and there's a creek nearby that
creates fog most nights winter and summer.
>
>> Or
>>> night lights are a good alternative.
>>
>> Some people have trouble sleeping with a night light. Usually
>> those same people who have actual darkness at night.
>>
>
> In the bathroom?
The light doesn't end at the bathroom doorway. Or even the hall.
>
>> How do you find the toilet if
>>> it's pitch black?
>>>
>>
>> knowledge of the layout of your own home is generally enough.
>>
>
> Hmm. I tend to look before I just let loose, though. Saves
> cleanup.
Nobody is saying that. Even if you look (assuming you can see
anything in the dark) all you'll see is a dark toilet shaped blob. Do
you think the lid and seat glow in the dark? Besides, I am *far* more
likely to stumble and fall/stub my toe/rack my shins if I turn on a
light to see (or use a night light) and then have to navigate through
my bedroom after the light is out. And don't say 'clean your room'.
I'm not the only one who uses it. It doesn't matter if I'm on 24/7
patrol in there the man of the house will dump his steel toed boots in
the path to the door everytime-- and usually after I've already
checked for obsticles (sp?). I say if you want to never have to
mess with the toilet seat, install a urinal. Otherwise, use it the
way it was intended-- the seat in the down position with a temporary
transformation to urinal.
Mike Schilling
> In my acquaintance, people of the female persuasion insist
> the lid be left down whenever possible. I subscribe to
> leaving the seat down, but never bother lowering the lid
> unless I need a really stable temporary chair in the room.
"really stable"? You must not have the kind with the plastic hinges.
Craig Richardson
>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 18:41:17 -0600, lazarus <lazaru...@msn.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 09:14:41 -0600, Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.net>
>
>>>Louann, whose household (male and female) always left the toilet seat
>>>and lid _both_ down when they were finished using it, providing a
>>>handy seat and preventing annoyances like small objects falling in or
>>>the dog thinking it's a water bowl. The whole his-and-hers custom
>>>never made sense to her.
>>
>>Pissing on a toilet seat is rather annoying, too. I look first, why
>>can't women? Do you drop your pants in the hall and back in?
>
>Do you turn the lights on when you use the bathroom in the middle of
>the night?
_Don't_ you? How do you read?
Seriously, my apartment has such a poorly-designed bathroom - 6 feet
by 16 feet, everything up against the far walls, toilet squeezed
between the shower at the far end and the counter containing the sink
- I've just gotten in the habit, even in bathrooms that aren't (ObSF)
Johnsons. I don't find fumbling for the light switch much more, if
more at all, inconvenient than fumbling for the toilet itself.
Less seriously, how do sororities/female-only dorms/etc. avoid the
problem of backing in, in the dark, only to find the facilities
already, um, occupied?
lazarus
<nunaur...@youdontneedtoknow.invalid> wrote:
Okay. Lived on the outskirts of a national forest, but no creek.
>>
>>> Or
>>>> night lights are a good alternative.
>>>
>>> Some people have trouble sleeping with a night light. Usually
>>> those same people who have actual darkness at night.
>>>
>>
>> In the bathroom?
>
>
>The light doesn't end at the bathroom doorway. Or even the hall.
>
>>
>>> How do you find the toilet if
>>>> it's pitch black?
>>>>
>>>
>>> knowledge of the layout of your own home is generally enough.
>>>
>>
>> Hmm. I tend to look before I just let loose, though. Saves
>> cleanup.
>
>Nobody is saying that. Even if you look (assuming you can see
>anything in the dark) all you'll see is a dark toilet shaped blob. Do
>you think the lid and seat glow in the dark? Besides, I am *far* more
>likely to stumble and fall/stub my toe/rack my shins if I turn on a
>light to see (or use a night light) and then have to navigate through
>my bedroom after the light is out. And don't say 'clean your room'.
>I'm not the only one who uses it. It doesn't matter if I'm on 24/7
>patrol in there the man of the house will dump his steel toed boots in
>the path to the door everytime-- and usually after I've already
>checked for obsticles (sp?). I say if you want to never have to
>mess with the toilet seat, install a urinal. Otherwise, use it the
>way it was intended-- the seat in the down position with a temporary
>transformation to urinal.
>
I wasn't going to say "clean your room" as mine is in horrid shape
right now.
This whole debate is getting rather in depth, I was just fighting back
against the standard "men should lower the seat" canard. It's not
that hard to check. As a man, I can see whether the seat is down so I
don't pee on it, I don't see the issues for women.
Louann Miller
<crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Less seriously, how do sororities/female-only dorms/etc. avoid the
>problem of backing in, in the dark, only to find the facilities
>already, um, occupied?
The one I lived in one year had big banks of restrooms -- section of
toilet stalls, section of sinks, section of showers -- at a couple of
central locations per floor. So it's not a question of getting up,
stumbling a short distance through the dark to a bathroom shared with
one or two others, and doing one's business without the trouble of
actually waking up all the way. You get up, put on a bathrobe, walk
through brightly lit halls (24 hrs) to a brightly lit bathroom
(ditto) and use a stall. Dozing is not an option.
For the more posh dorms where you do get a private bath to every one
or two rooms, I assume it works like a house. Chances of the very few
people who share the bathroom wanting it in the same five minute
interval are low. If it does happen, then the odds are quite good that
somebody's going to notice something before actually sitting on the
other person's lap. I direct your attention to the sense of hearing.
Being in the bathroom in the middle of the night and having someone
else enter the same small darkened space would be noticeable and
probably quite startling.
(ObDisclaimer: I've never had a deaf or hearing-impaired roommate,
which might change the odds. She might well prefer having a nightlight
in the bathroom to avoid such eventualities.)