(I wonder what that must be like. Partying with people whose date of death you can just look up. I think I’m glad I’m not a time traveler…or an immortal.)
I waste an occasional idle moment wondering what the hell Mike and his family are up to, Out There, that’s so relentlessly pressing they can’t spare an hour to visit past friends on Earth. But in the first place, Mike Callahan doesn’t owe me a God damned thing—it’s way the other way around: I owe him every single thing I care about—and even if he did, my best present understanding is that what he and Lady Sally and Mary and Finn and Tesla and their whole posse basically do for a living is keep the universe intact, crash-protect the cosmos, preserve this fragile reality in which I am privileged to watch and help my beautiful daughter enter puberty and my beautiful wife enter menopause and my presentable self approach the dotage I’ve trained for all my life.
If that has to take priority over taking phone calls from old combat buddies…so be it. Perfect or not, it’s a universe worth preserving.
Spider Robinson
photo by Greg McKinnon
www.spiderrobinson.com
www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/robinson.htm
Spider Robinson was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1948, the year Robert A. Heinlein married Virginia Gerstenfeld—and in 2006 he became the only author ever to collaborate with Mr. Heinlein on a novel, VARIABLE STAR. Since 1973 he has published over thirty-five books, and won three Hugos, a Nebula, the John W. Campbell Award, and numerous other international honours.
He moved to Canada in 1974, and became a Canadian citizen in 2004. His Callahan’s Place stories inspired the creation of the long running Usenet newsgroup alt.callahans and other cybernetworks. From 1995-2004 he published an op-ed column (“The Crazy Years,” later called “Future Tense”) in Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. In 2006 he became the first Writer In Residence at Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and in 2010 he was named sixth Writer In Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. He has written songs with David Crosby and Todd Butler, and recorded original music with Amos Garrett and Michael Creber. His award-winning podcast Spider On The Web has appeared regularly since 2007, and he has been Toastmaster at two World Science Fiction Conventions.
He was married for 35 glorious years to Jeanne Robinson, a dancer, writer and Buddhist priest with whom he co-authored the Hugo- and Nebula-winning THE STARDANCE TRILOGY. In 2004, they were both separately invited by First Lady Laura Bush to appear at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Since Jeanne’s death in May 2010, Spider has lived alone on an island in Howe Sound, British Columbia. He suspects his granddaughter Marisa Alegria da Silva might just be the long-awaited Maitreya Buddha, who will bring enlightenment to all sentient beings.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Spider Robinson
Author's Note
Chapter One: Another Day in Paradise
Chapter Two: Little Nuts
Chapter Three: Big Stones
Chapter Four: Dog Deer Afternoon
Chapter Five: Pros and Cons
Chapter Six: When she was seventeen
Chapter Seven: Telling the tale
Chapter Eight: Burying the hook
Chapter Nine: Ba-da-sting!
Chapter Ten: Who knows where or when?
Chapter Eleven: Need in a haystack
Chapter Twelve: God's idea of slapstick
About the Author
Callahan's Place 09 - Callahan's Con (v5.0) Page 26
