- ROBINSON, Spider
- (1948-)US-born writer who became a Canadian Landed Immigrant in 1975. His first story was "The Guy with the Eyes" for ASF in 1973, inaugurating his long-running Callahan series of CLUB STORIES. He has sometimes written tales as by B.D. Wyatt. The first few years of his career were honour-laden. He shared with Lisa TUTTLE the 1974 JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for Best New Writer; topped the 1977 Locus Poll for Best Critic, mainly for his Galaxy Bookshelf column for Gal June 1975-Sep 1977; received a 1977 HUGO for the ASF publication (as "By Any Other Name") of the first 4chapters of his first novel, Telempath (1976 US); and won both Hugo and NEBULA in 1978, along with his wife and collaborator Jeanne Robinson, for"Stardance", which became the nucleus of STARDANCE (1979 US) with Jeanne Robinson. (In 1983 he won another Hugo, for "Melancholy Elephants" (1982). ) At this high point of his career, his punchy optimism about the human condition and his adroit use of generic materials to express that optimism seemed to have established him as a legitimate heir to Robert A. HEINLEIN, a writer he deeply admired. Telempath, a complicated story set in a post- HOLOCAUST Earth after a decimating virus plague, cleverly promulgates asense that the surviving humans, in conjunction with the telepathic Muskies - gaseous beings imperceptible before the plague - can earncohabitation with a vast empathic net of species. STARDANCE similarly presents its audience with a protagonist - this time a dancer too big for Earth work - who helps propel humanity upwards into a Galaxy rich withcommunicating species.The Callahan sequence makes use of the capacity of the club story to reassure both participants and readers, and conveys a sense of real community (as in the tv series Cheers) through a wide range of tales - sf and fantasy predominating - which reveal human and alien frailties while simultaneously affirming the group. The series comprises Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (coll 1977 US), Time Travelers Strictly Cash(coll 1981 US) and Callahan's Secret (coll 1986 US), most of the stories from these 3 vols being assembled as Callahan and Company: The Compleat Chronicles of the Crosstime Saloon (dated 1987 but 1988 US) and a smallerselection being issued as Callahan's Crazy Crosstime Bar (1989 UK). Callahan's Lady (coll 1989 US), set prior to the main series in awhorehouse run by Callahan's wife, assembles similar tales; further titles include Lady Slings the Booze (1992), The Callahan Touch (1993) and Off the Wall at Callahan's (coll 1994). Kill the Editor (1991 US) is also set in the whorehouse. SR's club stories differ from some older models mainly through the amount of action that occurs in the saloon itself, so that their ultimate effect is, at times, complex.The 1970s were the high point for SR's somewhat insistent cheer, and subsquent work has proven considerably grimmer in tone. Mindkiller: A Novel of the Near Future (1982 US) - for which the RECURSIVE Time Pressure (1987 US) serves as bothprequel and sequel - complicatedly shifts time-schemes and identities in an attempt to depict a crime- and computer-ridden world; the succeeding volume, even less coherently, re-invokes the 1973 Nova Scotia of SR's own memories, introducing a nude time-traveller who nurses the psychically wounded protagonist back to the point at which he can begin to understand his significance in the scheme of things. SR's style in these later books - exclamatory and burdened with Heinleinesque exaggerations - does littleto sustain their rollercoaster plots. Night of Power (1985 US), more controlled, aroused some negative response for its depiction of a Black-power revolt in New York City. His stories, on the other hand, havebeen more stable and consistent. Collections include Antinomy (coll 1980 US); Melancholy Elephants (coll 1984; with 1 story dropped and 2 added,rev 1985 US), his only book to be initially released by the feeble Canadian publishing industry; and True Minds (coll 1990 US).JCOther works: The Best of All Possible Worlds (anth 1980); Copyright Violation (1990 chap); Starseed (1991) with Jeanne Robinson.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.
