Callahan's Con by Spider Robinson

I discovered a "new" thrift store the other day, and while browsing its treasures I came upon the only novel in Robinson's Callahan's series that I didn't previously own. For 89 cents, whaddaya gonna do?

Jake and his wife, Zoe, and their teleporting, time-traveling daughter, Erin, are enjoying life at Jake's Place in Key West, with many of their old friends living in the various bungalows that surround the place. Unfortunately, a couple of serpents invade their paradise - a bureaucrat form the state board of education who needs to determine if Erin's home schooling meets department standards, and a mobster called Little Tony Donuts, who is trying to run the old protection racket on Jake's pied a terre.

For Spider's old fans, this book will have plenty of everything that makes his work fun and entertaining - puns, spoonerisms, wordplay, shaggy dog stories, and all that jazz (literally, Jake & Fast Eddy do a couple of numbers). But it's not really breaking any new ground. If you've read the last few Jake's Place stories, you've read them all. Lots of Irish coffee, a couple of telepathic linkups, and a time-traveling teleporter seem to be able to solve any problem, and everyone gets to lay (literally) around the cabana once more. Glad I've got the complete set now, but it's just a can of lite beer compared to the single malt whiskey days at the old Crosstime Saloon.

Callahan's Secret by Spider Robinson

Callahan's Secret appears to have been Robinson's attempt, like Doyle's in The Reichenbach Falls (which he mentions) to put the series to bed at last. I was saddened at the time, but when the inevitable financial pressures got to Spider's web... One a personal note, one of the stories has a bunch of Princes Bride references, and I believe that when I first read this book was when I was motivated to hunt high and low for a copy of the book. Of course, by now everyone in the galaxy has seen the movie.

There are only four stories in this collection, though they are lengthier than the stories in earlier collections. The first, The Blacksmith's Tale (a nod to Chaucer?) tells how Jake meets Callahan's daughter, Mary, and falls hopelessly in love with her (a theme that reappears every so often in Robinson's novels), but she gets introduced to Mickey Finn, and it's love at first sight for her, leaving Jake in the cold, so to speak. We finally get the rest of the story on Finn, which leads us to the climactic story at the end of this book. There's a throwaway line in this one about Mary's mother being Lady Sally, madame of the finest whorehouse in the area, which leads to later Robinson stories about Lady Sally's.

Pyotr's Story is actually almost an urban fantasy bit, long before the genre became so overwhelming. Where would a vampire who became an alcoholic long ago hang out? At Callahan's Saloon, of course, and his ability to filter out alcohol from the patrons' bloodstreams has helped alleviate many a hangover.

Involuntary Man's Laughter comes up with a novel solution (in an era when PCs, laptops and smart phones were either nonexistent or very very rare) to befriending a person who suffers from severely socially debilitating diseases, and including him in Callahan's magic.

The Mick of Time is the story of what happens when the alien race whom Finn once served finally shows up to find out what became of their missing spy/slave. What do you do when an irresistible force encounters and immovable object like Mike Callahan. The solution in part lies in all of the patrons of Callahan's achieving a telepathic gestalt (another them that turns up often in Robinson's works). Robinson introduces a suitcase nuke - it seems like this is long before I'd heard of them in other types of literature or media - to save the day, and incidentally destroy the bar.

Oh, no need to shed any tears, you know it's getting resurrected.

Time Travelers Strictly Cash by Spider Robinson

This is almost a sequel to Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Robinson's earlier collection of shorts about a marvelous and magical bar, but Spider was under the gun to produce a contracted number of words and didn't have enough Callahan's stories on hand, so he includes some of his other short fiction an essay or two, and a rave about Robert A. Heinlein. You'll get a little respite from the puns and a slightly broader view of his works. I really really need to review Stardance one of these days.

There's a story about someone who has "fivesight" an interesting twist on precognition. When the person with fivesight sees a disaster coming, they can't try to prevent it, it only makes it worse (sorta like the law of conservation of pain), but they are allowed to make some minor preparations to reduce the damage a bit. What do you do when you can see lightning about to strike in your life, and how do you stay sane when you can't stop it?

There's a wonderful little surprise ending in God is an Iron, which is the story that Robinson later turned into the novel, Mindkiller. It's possible in his future world to plug yourself directly into the wall socket and stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, and it's a lovely way to suicide, if you make the right preparations. Suicide may be painless, but it still seems to leave a mess for someone, even an innocent bystander, to clean up.

The only story that falls a little flat, for me, is Serpent's Teeth, Robinson's sole attempt at fantasy, for good reason.

The essay, Rah, Rah, R.A.H.!, was probably the first time I ever heard anyone express so eloquently what was wonderful about Heinlein, back when this book was published. I've been a big fan since I first read Glory Road, and have kept on being a fan long past the passing of the Master. Robinson does a marvelous job of defending Heinlein and his works against those who accused him of various perfidies such as fascism, militarism, and misogyny. I recently watched a documentary about Heinlein, where they blathered on about what Heinlein's stories were REALLY all about, and I gotta say that people, especially egghead intellectuals in the art and film world, have no clue what Heinlein really meant to say about ANYTHING.

Some great reading material here. Robinson is truly one of the most droll authors around.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson

It's difficult to believe that I've never posted any reviews of Spider Robinson's work on this blog before now. I guess it's partially because most of his works that I read were first published in the 70s or 80s. I had an urge the other day, when I was headed to the mountains for some R&R, to take along a couple of Spiders' short story collections.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is his first collection of the Callahan's stories, which were for the most part published in Analog magazine when Ben Bova was editor. They're not always exactly science fiction (which caused some complaints from diehard Analog readers), but they're nearly  always just exactly Spider Robinson, at his most amusing.

Callahan's is a bar, run by Mike Callahan, where those who need its solace the most are somehow drawn in, as if by some gravitic force. All drinks are exactly 50 cents, but if you put a dollar in the box on top of the bar, you are encouraged to utter a toast, and hurl your glass into the fireplace - which is often cathartic or leads to a story. The patrons of the bar are almost supernaturally supportive, and many hearts get healed there.

The opening story, The Guy with the Eyes, steals a page from Heinlein, one of Robinson's greatest heroes, in that the being who is uttering a toast, Michael (another similarity to RAH) Finn, is an advance scout for a race of powerful, one might say "evil" galactic overlords (Valentine Michael Smith suspects he is a spy for the Old Ones of Mars in Stranger for a Strange Land, sent to determine whether Earth needs to be destroyed like the Fifth Planet once was), who are ready to turn Earth into their own meat locker.

If you don't like puns, I'd suggest you find your entertainment elsewhere, however. The first night of the week at Callahan's is Punday, not Monday, and there is enormous competition to come up with the worst stinker. Tuesday is Tall Tales night, and you'll find only the shaggiest of dogs at Callahan's.

Robinson, like his hero RAH, anticipates a later invention in one of his stories (probably more than that, but this one I noticed on most recent reading) - music videos. This was long before MTV, but in The Law of the Conservation of Pain, a time traveler from the future who is trying to avert the suicide of a Janis Joplin-like singer brings back a globe that projects the music and accompanying video, showing the Callahan's regulars why she must be saved. We are living in the future I used to read about.

The tag-line of that story borrows once again from Heinlein. "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased." Robinson postulates that there's a certain amount of pain in the universe, and it can't be thwarted, it will just turn up somewhere else, in some other form. However, like matter and energy, pain can be converted to joy.