| Title | : | Time Travellers Strictly Cash (Callahan's, #2) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0812572289 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780812572285 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published March 1, 1981 |
| Awards | : | Locus Award Best Novelette for "Have You Heard the One ... ?" (1981) and Best Single Author Collection (1982), Analog Award Best Novella/Novelette for "Have You Heard the One ... ?" (1980) |
Time Travellers Strictly Cash (Callahan's, #2) Reviews
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ENGLISH
Unique genre mix in which clichés collide with Sci-Fi ideas.
A, in Sci-Fi rather rare, dry wit.
Some tropes and archetypes are mixed up together.
Bizarre situations arise from a cozy undertone.
Although the story is almost only made of retrospectives and dialogues, the narrative style is fluid.
GERMAN
Einzigartiger Genremix, in dem Klischees mit Sci Fi Ideen kollidieren.
Der für Sci Fi eher seltene Witz ist ausreichend vorhanden
Einige tropes und Archetypen werden in den Ring geworfen
Aus gemütlicher Saufstimmung heraus ergeben sich bizarre Situationen
Obwohl fast nur Retrospektiven und Dialoge die Handlung darstellen, ist die Handlung flüssig.
Gemütliche und entspannte Erzählweise, die man heute so leider nur mehr selten findet. -
Short shorts that play around with some of the classic concepts of sci-fi fiction. Perhaps my favorite of the series, but be warned: puns happen more frequently than just Punsday Night.
"Fivesight" about a woman who's husband could see negative events three hours into the future. One of the few Callahan bar stories that is told by a woman. It works well, achieving a quite poignant tone with a twist.
"Dog Day Evening" happens on Tall Tales Night, but puns also seem to be part of the agenda. A human and a dog walk into a bar... and it's a sci=fi twist what happens next, but safe to say it involves a time-traveling Temporal Agent. I enjoyed it.
"Have You Heard the One...?" was Tale Tales Night again, and an intergalactic traveling salesman steals the show. Almost literally. Another fun twist.
"Mirror, Mirror off the Wall" is another sci-fi thought experiment on closely aligned worlds. A little confusing. -
Actual rating: 2.5 stars
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that my sensibilities just do not mesh with those of author Spider Robinson. I think he is strong on writing skills, but his sense of humour and mine miss by a mile. He punning skills are high (and there is lots of it in his Callahan’s stories), but I find them more of a mental puzzle to figure out, rather than amusing. But that’s just me.
This little volume of stories has only 4 actual Callahan’s tales in it. The rest is filler—and much of it is now dated. One section became Chapter 2 of his novel Mindkiller (which I read earlier this year and was very “meh” about). There were a couple of speeches which were passably interesting, but a bit dated (hard to avoid that with thirty year old opinion pieces).
For those of you who are die-hard Callahan fans, don’t miss these stories. They were the best part of the collection. Those of you seeking time-travel tales may be somewhat disappointed—there is only one tale involving a time traveler who shows up at Callahan’s.
Robinson is a very good writer and I wish I could appreciate him more.
Book number 180 of my SF&F reading project. -
Though several of the stories here do happen at Callahan's, this book is actually a collection of both fiction and non-fiction, including an essay n the defense of Robert A. Heinlein (who happens to be one of my favorite SF authors) and that one is definitely worth reading. Robinson shows his usual wit and humor here. A solid read/collection.
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[7/10]
This book marks my return to incredibly rowdy and irreverent science fiction hangout known as Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, home to weird aliens, time travellers, talking dogs, visitors from parallel dimensions and other outcasts, fringe characters from the home planet, all ready to have a good time, according to the owner's law: Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
My only beef with the present collection is the scarcity of original material, with only 4 stories actually taking place in the bar, five other independent shorts and several examples of criticism and speech transcriptions from the author's convention visits. To add a little bulk to the volume, there are also commentaries and trivia added by the author for each included story.
The opening gambit : "Fivesight" is about a person who has foreknowledge of the future, but who can only see for about three hours in advance, without the option of intervening in order to change events. This proves to be more in the nature of a curse than a blessing, and the story serves its purpose well in reiterating the above mentioned Callahan's Law, and making the reader reaquainted with the characters from the first collection: Doc Holliday, Fast Eddie, Long Drink McGonnigle, etc. Here's the relevant quote:
"This place is magic," I told her.
"Magic? Bullshit, magic, it's a bar. People come here to get blind."
"No. Not this one. People come to this bar to see. This is a place where people care. [...] You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it. That's a basic fact of the universe, and I learned it here."
Soul Search has an interesting premise (reincarnation) , but the execution failed to make me go "wow". it was OK, but after reading an excellent collection by Bradbury before picking Robinson, I guess I raised the goal posts a little to high.
Next chapter tells the story of how Spider Robinson started to write book reviews for Jim Baen, and I found myself enjoying the anecdotes and the snarky comments better than the previous short story. There is basically little difference between Spider in confessional / commentator mode and him in the guise of the narrator from the stories. I love this about him - the sincerity, the enthusiasm for the genre, the self awareness and the humorous streak. I am reminded of the strong impression I got when reading Jo Walton's "Among Others". Before being authors / professional craftsmen, I feel that both of them are avid readers and trueblood, hardcore fans of SF. Although I would recommend being circumspect about most of Spider Robinson's tall tales, as he loves the outrageous and the improbable. He might have opted successfully for a career as a stand-up comedian (see later in the book his address to the fans as a convention Guest of Honor.)
Dog Day Evening is one of the best picks from the collection, about Pun Night (or is it Tall Tales Night), at Callahan's. Anyway, the guest who presents the wildest story with the most offensive pun wins and gets his drink tab paid by the others. This night it is the turn of Ralph the Dog to shine in the limelight. I think I picked the next quote from this story, as an example of the books general positive frame of mind:
"Life's greatest virtue is its ability to surprise."
God is an Iron is quite good for a story without Callahan but subscribing to his general law about pain and suffering, dealing with drug addiction and the kindness of strangers. Oh, and the Iron in the title is another one of Robinson's questionable word games - think of the Alanis Morisette hit song "Isn't It Ironic?.
Rah Rah R.A.H. is a longish pledoary in support of Robert Heinlein as a SF grandmaster and general sacred monster of the genre. I happen to be a fan myself of Heinlein, and especially of Stranger in a Strange Land, but I wouldn't go as far as Robinson goes in proving he is faultless and above criticism.
Have You Heard The One is once more about Tall Tales Night at Callahan and a visit from an Intergalactic Travelling Salesman, riding in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Honestly, it can only happen in this bar.
Local Champ is Spider's attempt at writing a fantasy short story about a powerful overlord and the effort to bring him down, and by the author's own admission, it's not very good. His comments about the relative superiority of the SF over fantasy might rub some of my friends the wrong way, but I would say he makes a strong case, and ultimately it is the quality of the writing and of the ideas that make the difference, not the fact that you prefer rayguns over fireballs.
The Web of Sanity is a transcript of a crazy script at a convention, full of word games and one liners, but it includes a beautiful argument for reading SF:
"You must abdicate the right to be ignorant in order to enjoy science fiction, which most people are unwilling to do; and you must learn, if not actually how to think things through, at least what the trick looks like when it's done."
Mirror / Rorrim Off The Wall is the last Callahan story, a good one about parallel dimensions and the quality of whisky in these alternate worlds: real fun and it made me thirsty. Luckily, I had a bottle of Ardbeg already open.
Serpent's Teeth is the closing story, another miss for me with an interesting premise (child emancipation) but rather lacklustre execution.
To conclude, Time Traveller's Strictly Cash provided some quality entertainment and confirmed Spider Robinson as the one author I would most like to get drunk with, but it felt like a rushed project where they included all kinds of outtakes and filler in order to get the correct number of pages. Hopefully the third Callahan book will be better. -
This was supposed to have been the second Callahan's book, but of the eleven pieces collected only four of them are Callahan's stories. There are four other stories and three non-fiction pieces and quite a few introductory and explanatory pages. All of them are quite all right on their own, but they don't really fit together thematically and make for something of a hodgepodge. God is an Iron appeared as a chapter in the novel Mindkiller, and we already knew Heinlein was cool... Not a bad book by any means, but not what the cover promises. Lots and lots of clever puns, though.
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A short story collection with a few greats, a few stinkers. I liked that there was a better focus on the outlandish and unusual, as Mr. Spider Robinson gets more of his voice. Sometimes, though, he has gotten so carried away in an aspect of the story (often the path to the reveal or the punchline, that the storytelling suffers. Still, a great showing and one hundred times finer funner writing than I could produce!
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The first collection of Callahan's stories was far from belles-lettres but it had a fetching charm and originality that came off as sweet and clever if a bit naive. Having worn that charm thin and still not succeeded in fulfilling his sequel publishing contract, Spider proceeds to dump the kitchen sink of unrelated manuscripts in to meet his contractual word count: some banquet speeches attended by northern adolescents, a chapter from a novel he's writing, some completely incoherent drivel scarcely surpassing the quality of RPG manuals...
Filling the pages are ephemera from the nauseating echo chamber of sci-fi fandom and Mr. Robinson's own amazement at the fact that he's making a living off this. In the end I came to share his amazement.
I don't generally care to know a great deal about authors' personal lives, let alone read about the minutiae of their personal taste or heroes or the sausage making anecdotes about their employment history.
But the most crushing moments are not those where SR is phoning it in for a paycheck. They are those where SR's self congratulating humanism shows itself as shallow and unconsidered. He can't seem to decide if he's a hippy dippy free lover or a facile libertarian caricature. That's fine, but this nonchalance erodes authorial trust, and because the Callahan stories are essentially fabulist, and fables must have a cogent moral center, this creates an unpleasant dissonance. The whole project manages to come off as both amateurish and cynical.
I will still read the next slim volume in deference to the first, which I thoroughly enjoyed; everyone deserves a second chance and I have read much worse stinkers. But it wouldn't bother me if this one disappeared down the memory hole. -
Book reviews, both scathing and complimentary.
A convention speech that praises sci-fi fandom for its overwhelming sanity.
A speech honoring Heinlein by refuting the most common complaints hurled around by his detractors.
Lots of forewords and afterwords, explaining context or inspiration or just offering more things to be thinky about.
And stories. Some take place in Callahan's, but not all of them. That came as a surprise -- and a little bit of a disappointment. After all, I came here looking for Jake and Doc Webster and the big man himself.
But having finished, I'm glad for the opportunity to read more of Robinson's work. The stories set outside Callahan's possess the same sci-fi slant, the same wry yet hopeful view of human nature that makes Robinson so interesting to read. It makes me all the more eager to try his other offerings. As such, I deem the anthology a definite success. -
In most collections of short stories, a few are fantastic, a couple are awful and the majority are mediocre. In this one, none were horrible, lots were fantastic, a couple were kind of bewildering (mainly 'cause I couldn't figure out the punchlines) and one, "God is an Iron" was perhaps one of the best short stories I've ever read.
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To be fair, after a while, I just skipped the rest of the stuff in this collection and stuck to the Callahan stories. However, while I REALLY like the Callahan stories in here, everything else was a bust. If I were you, I would just pluck out the Callahan stories and skip the rest of this collection’s content.
I am giving this one a 3 out of 5 stars. -
“Callahan's Law: Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased."
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This is a different take on Time Travel.
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I was a little disappointed that a lot of this book was not Callahan stories. I tend to really like the Callahan stories, and a good chunk of them were unrelated or nonfiction pieces Mr. Robinson has published. The good news is, I enjoyed those stories that took place at the saloon--for the most part--and I really like the concept of the bar. That said, I noticed some stuff that put me off a bit more than such things used to, and because of the addition of the Heinlein defense/review in the book, I started to put some pieces together that made me less inclined to excuse what I thought I saw.
So let's just get that out of the way first: Robinson wrote a bunch of stuff about why most of the reasons people don't like Heinlein are silly and misinformed, and while I have read very little Heinlein in my time, I can say that as a female SF reader the common objections to his writing of women stuck out to me. Having a guy tell me it's silly to have these problems with how Heinlein writes women seems a little unfair. Especially since I'm quite tired of men defending a certain kind of female character written by men with "but she's empowered--she's a Strong Woman who Owns Her Sexuality (which is portrayed, by a man, over and over again, as having a lot of sex, being horny a lot, and being obsessed with having babies)." I'd honestly like to see more Strong Women Owning Their Sexuality by saying no, meaning it, and not being vilified by the story as a prude or a shrew for that. This seems a little out of nowhwere to zero in on Robinson's defense of Heinlein straight out of the gate, but it leads into this:
The women featured in Robinson's stories are more diverse than this, but the female characters kept leaving this weird taste in my mouth. A lady is empowered enough to take down a shitty time traveler, but she's also the one who offers herself up sexually to whoever wins a contest. It's Her Choice, she LIKES doing that, so why is this wrong? It isn't, necessarily, but this isn't actually a woman choosing this. This is a man writing a woman who chooses this. When men write women this way and then continuously ask what the big deal is, they just don't see to get that their own fantasies of sexually ambitious women not having so many inconvenient HANGUPS about sex and choosing to frame themselves as sex objects/sexual rewards in stories is not the same thing as having liberated characters, you know?
Taken on their own, each female character is not necessarily problematic, but when you round up all the ladies and find that you know something very intimate and formative about each of their sex lives while a dude doesn't necessarily have to have such details available to be interesting, you have to wonder what ideas about The Ladies these ol' straight white dudes have about us and why they react the way they do when we criticize this aspect of their work. Women who become interesting characters through relationships with men are starting to get very stale for me, and considering this collection contained a woman who has sex with contest winners, a woman who became suicidal after a lifetime of trying to process sexual abuse, a woman who was obsessed with getting her husband back, and a woman whose life story was defined by a husband with future-seeing powers and a child lost in an accident, I still feel like we're still not getting stories about women who aren't reacting to men/tied up with men/defined by men at this point. Women are often frustrated by stories about them being framed in terms of their relationships with men or family and so rarely focusing on their agency. Compare that with the book containing men's stories where they pair up with talking (male) dogs, invent mirrors to jump between dimensions, and attain practical godhood in wizardry, I remain suspicious.
Especially when the last afterword of the book lumps women's rights together with many others using a difficult-to-read tone carrying an overall effect of minimizing their importance. He implies that all these groups are clamoring for "rights" now that it's en vogue to claim oppression over everything from gender to dominant hand. Here's the gem: "This is the age of the Minority Group. Women's rights, Indians' rights, writers' rights, left-handed people's rights [...] ...a minority group need not even have the franchise to achieve its aims (women's suffrage, ex-cons' rights, wetbacks, etc.), although it helps. All you really need are the sympathies of enough liberals who do have the vote, and you're in." You'll notice he uncritically said "wetbacks" here too, and though this is not a super new book, that was certainly known to be derogatory in the early 2000s. Not one but two of the stories directly compare a black character with a monkey, too--one saying "his monkey face" and the other having the character mistake HIMSELF for a GORILLA in a mirror. Yikes. This character is also given a very pronounced dialect different from the white characters, apostrophes and "dem" for all the "them" and whatnot. It's distracting and uncomfortable.
I still enjoy the spirit of science fiction that inhabits these stories, for all the problems I had with lady stuff and racial insensitivity above. (Though I must stress, it's not possible for me to just "put that aside" and judge the stories otherwise. It is part of the stories. It's reasonable to rate them as such, and to consider persistent issues I have with female characters' presentation as relevant to the stories.) I really like that there's a real camaraderie between the characters that you can feel even if you've just met them, that you can see they're really and truly there for each other and willing to cover for each other, that they have history, that they are fundamentally good people with appreciation for art and soul.
Some of the concepts are really innovative too, and easy to get invested in. I like the idea of fivesight and how it can manifest as an everyday dimension of someone's relatively mundane life. I like the talking dog helping out the mute outcast and having a ruse together. I like the soul search idea and the wizard who thinks he's above it all. I like the time travelers and the tall tales. And I remember reading the book with the full-length story that one of these included stories began with. I've had that haunting image of the woman in her chair hooked up to a pleasure machine on the edge of starvation and death for a long time. (It influenced a scene I wrote in one of my books.) I like the ideas in the stories he writes and I'm sure I'll keep enjoying his work even though I'm a bit critical of some aspects of it. -
Unfortunately I struggled with this. It's clearly one of those books that was written because the author had to write something. Quite frankly, it's a bit of a mess and doesn't do the name Spider Robinson any justice at all. It contains a few callahan's stories, some other none callahan's stories and an awful lot of gumph in between these stories which is simply the author filling-in... a great deal of filling-in in fact.
My advise would be to simply scip this one and go straight onto the next. I wish I had. -
Very funny collection of SiFi short stories. Recommended
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Robinson is an author better read than heard. Time Travelers Strictly Cash proves this maxim fairly handily, as Robinson's own editorial inserts between each short story and speech reveal a bizarre strain of cynicism which is downright incoherent when presented next to the effusive humanism of his fiction.
Some of this can be chalked up to the typical deleterious effects of time on accepted verbiage. Robinson uses words like "fag" and "wetback" as seemingly synonymous stand-ins for the appropriate terms during a speech and explanatory segment respectively.
Naturally, these phrases were, by any moral standard, as harmful back then as they are now - if not more so - but Robinson clearly lets them slip with the kind of ribbing paternalism that was easy to hawk as an acceptable "diminutive" back then. He was, for the time, clearly very liberal in his beliefs regarding homosexuality, race, and women's autonomy, which makes its wonky juxtaposition with his personal voice extra weird to digest.
You can suss out an intention to project some kind of folksy, rough-grit but tough-loving persona in Robinson's personal speeches and writing; but he evidently felt secure in dropping this image during his actual fiction, which I guess may have been a necessary defense mechanism for a sci-fi author a few decades ago, when the genre was still beset by decrepit fans and authors whose progressivism seemed to decay with their mental faculties as they aged (which Robinson's own idol Heinlein, and other writers such as Herbert, demonstrated with not-so-great aplomb).
You may claim that the amount of emphasis I place on Robinson's garrulous asides is beside the point and letting politics get in the way of good old fashioned writing and plot but, well -
1. Robinson is keen to insert socio-political commentary in his works, and so his personal politics are keenly relevant.
2. Half the damned anthology is him prattling on about it.
The most egregious example of this is his long, meandering defense of Heinlein, who, in his very own words, requires no defense. He's a sci-fi legend and no amount of modern (and semi-modern, considering the book's publication date) reconsideration is going to change that. It's a little bit telling that Robinson is seemingly oblivious to the veracity of blatant "no-duh" criticisms of Heinlein like his persistent self-inserts, flabby ability to write women, and his militaristic fetishism, because Robinson is at the least pretty guilty of poorly written women himself.
I love Philip K. Dick to an absurd degree, but I'd never pretend even his greatest books aren't held together by the most skeletal word-count and bedraggled execution. Robinson's hero worship of Heinlein seems to offset some kind of personal introspection, which might have been a premonition of Robinson's brief political swing during the Bush era (a horrific malady he thankfully recovered from).
So once you shift through this author-loaded chaff, you get to the short stories, some of which are okay, and two of which are fairly brilliant - but one of which of those doesn't really count, considering it's simply a chapter ripped out of one of Robinson's books.
Now it's a really fantastic chapter, make no mistake, and it works brilliantly as a stand-alone piece, but in context of Robinson's oeuvre it's just a cop-out to toss it into an anthology already replete with word vomit sawdust meant to stuff up an anemic supply of at-hand content.
Serpent's Teeth, the second, and valid, contender is astonishingly thought provoking and incisive, and is likely one of Robinson's most Heinlein-esque pieces, as it has two questionable parties with questionable motivations make entirely salient points in a battle of philosophy, framed in the context of insuperable emotion. It's a great finale to the anthology; gives your brain a little buzz and zap to leave you ruminating as you hit the back cover.
The Callahan related short stories are, as usual, absolute warmth in cheap paperback font type. Funny, punny, and sometimes liable to get your eyes a little runny. The highlight of these is Dog Day Evening because there is a talking dog who ends up getting a job at a radio station - so... yes - it also has one hell of a great twist.
The rest of the stories are enjoyable, if middling, with Local Champ being the circus peanut snuck into the treat bag - hard to chew and not fun to swallow.
It's a shame that this anthology is so heavily dragged down by Robinson's guttering mincing of words, because it's a terrifically enjoyable procession of tightly knit concept pieces with his signature Callahan fluff to wash them down with.
I usually don't make the recommendation to skip parts of books, even short story compilations, since some completionist part of my encephalon demands the full perusal of a hunk of fiction, no matter how agonizing full consumption may be, but I'd honestly really, really recommend it in this case.
At the very least, skip the Heinlein felation-station for your own sanity. -
★★★☆☆
(3 stars)
This is a very difficult review to write, for one simple reason: the parts of this book that were good, were good. Other parts I skipped, and while there were reasons for that, I feel I shouldn't include them in my grading- but then I have to, actually, since they are a part of the whole.
And the whole of this book is disappointing. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon was excellent, and this book could have nearly been excellent if it was actually a sequel. Now, you don't know this from the back, cover, or anything else, but this book is maybe a third Callahan's stories, the other 2/3s being miscellaneous short stories and non-fiction.
Yes, non-fiction! That is the part I skipped. Look, they might have been fine, but I didn't pick up this book to read interviews, essays, and speeches.
For what it's worth, Spider's writing continues to be Good when it counts. There's only two Callahan's stories I'd say were really great, but they were really great. The first of which is the first in the book and has a multitude of fabulous lines and wonderful emotions, the second of which is about a talking dog (and that's always fun).
" 'You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it.' "
The short stories were a strange batch. I didn't dislike any of them really, but I often struggled to 'get' the twist of them, or really understand the message that was clearly being conveyed. One of them, 'Soul Search', was just as good as the mentioned Callahan's (it was exactly like a Black Mirror episode!), but the others fell by the wayside for me.
More than last book, I found there were things I didn't follow in the story, especially in terms of punchlines. I suppose it's good comedy to not explain your punchline, but- well, a lot of this book has puns and semi-humorous twists, and you lose something by not understanding them!
This is a small book, and smaller still when you skip a third of it. The short stories are likely worth a go, but it still feels cheap to have them in there at all. It's a Callahan's book, man! I know he was probably under a contract or wanted to cash in quick, but Spider really should have waited until he had a full book before heading this one out. It's disjointed as is.
" 'You're gonna award yourself a guilt that you don't deserve, and the moment you accept it and pin it on it'll stay with you for the rest of your life. Believe me, I know. Damn it, it's okay to be glad you're still alive!' "
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Like before, there's a couple really weird bits that haven't aged well. Last book there was a line out of nowhere that one guy went to a Halloween party in good spirits and blackface, which was just a sparse detail. This book mentions there's just one black regular at Callahan's, and previously the only other black people had been a would-be robber and a soul singer. It was the 80s, but that's not that long ago!
Especially for a book which is about moral support and open empathy, it was always a little dis-jarring when there'd be something like that. The main character describes someone as looking like a 'democrat', which must have meant something back then- but also we see a lot of support for women being independent, there's one guy who's a crossdresser and no one cares, the whole theme is understanding. It was weird!
Also the author uses the term 'wetbacks' in an authors note about one of his short stories. Hey dude? What's going on??
I can sort of slide past it because there's no explicitly racist attitudes in the book (the whole theme and characters are quite against that), but it makes reading a little strange. There's not a lot, but every off-color reference like that made me pause for a second and threw me out of what is otherwise a very lovely story.
So, you know, I'll likely be buying the third book in this series, but I just hope it's actually a full book this time.
" 'To my family- each and every one of you.' " -
This collection of stories was half stories about Callahan's Place and half either nonfiction or unrelated stories. It's a hodgepodge of SF/F content of one sort or another and it's worth reading. The Callahan's stories include a story about a man who can tell the future (but can't really do anything to prevent disasters), a story about a talking dog, a story about a time traveler, and story about a man from a mirror world. The nonfiction involved Spider Robinson's reviews or speeches in SF contexts, and the unrelated stories included one about an attempt to game the system of reincarnation, one about a man who helps a damaged woman recover after a suicide attempt, one about a wizard who's so confident his long-lasting competence has gotten the better of him, and one about a couple looking to get a new child after theirs divorced them.
I don't mind the nonfiction stuff, but the Heinlein apologism wasn't up my alley, especially since some of the things Robinson went on at length about how certain things should not be off-putting to women, he also seems to have incorporated less explicitly in his own writing in how women perform as characters. I'm a little frustrated that even in the early 2000s when this was put out, there was still this idea that women should appreciate that their characters have so much agency (even though the agency, as framed by straight men, is largely used to unapologetically desire sex with men, and it's fine because it's their choice, not one they're led to through subservience).
The Callahan's Place stories, predictably, are the best ones, though I think my favorite aspect of them is honestly the atmosphere, secondarily the people, and lastly the plots. The plots are innovative enough but the characters are pretty fun, and the idea of a place where the group gets together to support each other and get pretty drunk with people they trust is comforting and appealing.
The other stories were a fun breath of fresh air--all well written, though not all of them were things I'd want to read a lot more about. Usually a short story is best when it's truly a short story--there isn't more or less that you wish they could have told, which is why the excerpt of a novel stands out a little bit. (It was still good, though.) I'd like to read more Callahan's. -
Though it contains other stories and essays, people will want to read Spider Robinson's Time Travelers Strictly Cash for its four Callahan's stories. This second round of drinks features that ol' Crosstime Saloon that might just be in your area (it feels American in one tale, then makes references that sound closer to the author's own native Nova Scotia), but only if you need to share your pain. The first story brings that trademark empathy to the fore and is really quite touching. The stories that take place on Tall Tales night are replete with puns and there lies my biggest complaint - some of the ones that serve as punchlines I JUST DON'T GET! I stare and stare and stare at the closings sentence, but it's death to me. I sound it out, but deafinitely can't hear it. Oh well. And the fourth story unusually includes a villain that isn't embraced or redeemed, though upon reflection, I guess they are, sort of. Okay, not *I'm* doing it. Four stories is all it took to make me pun automatically.
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The good things about this compilation first. It had nuggets like this one:
One of the major agonies of reviewing is that you cannot recall an opinion which later reflection reveals to be fatheaded. There isn’t enough time for anything but snap judgments, and often you end up regretting them, and there’s no practical way to retract them.
I’m pretty sure seldom has a reviewer been this honest about their job and its drawbacks. Anyone who goes back and reads their reviews from before will agree with this point of view.
Then there were the stories with such beautiful one-liners, which is why I love the Time Travelers series:
And-and funny men are nicer lovers. They know about pain.
Not to forget brutal truths thrown in for good measures, like this one:
Of course, one of the first concerns of a colonizing country is to properly condition the colonists. To ensure their loyalty. Because a colonist is supposed to give you the things you want to have in exchange for the things you want him to have, and for this golden opportunity he is supposed to be properly grateful. It wouldn’t do for him to get any treasonous ideas about his own destiny, his own goals.
Now for the bad part. This book doesn’t just contain the Callahan stories. It includes some reviews written by Robinson, a defense of Robert Heinlein, and other short stories not from the Callahan series. The so-called defense is long and drawn out and full of sexist, homophobic, and other negative comments. I skipped most of it.
The Callahan stories included:
Fivesight
The title is a play on the word foresight and is a sad but uplifting story about a character whose husband can see a few hours ahead into the future.
Dog Day Evening
This is the story of a German Shepherd, Ralph von Wau Wau, and it is exactly Callahan-tastic!
Have You Heard The One…?
This story is about a new character who comes to visit the saloon, Al Phee, and reveals the true nature of one of the regulars, Josie Bauer. Another fun one!
Mirror / rorriM Off The Wall
This story describes the events that befall Robert Trebor and how Callahan and the narrator, Jake, help him out.
The non-Callahan stories were:
God is an Iron
It is a story about how a thief and a drug addict save each other.
Soul Search
A woman tries to reawaken her mate to life from a cryogenic sleep. Things don’t go so well. The story’s focus is on what could make reincarnation possible
Local Champ
This represents Robinson’s rare attempts at writing a fantasy story. It is about a warlock who becomes all-powerful and immortal and how he meets his demise.
Serpents’ Teeth
Kid emancipation and parenting are the focus of this story. It was a miss for me.
Also reviewed at:
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Not much to say about this that hasn't been said by other reviewers. The Callahan stories in here are absolute crackers, and would've rated five stars on their own.
The non-Callahan stories that make up much of the rest of the book are pretty good, but not what I came here for; it's like going to your favourite bar and ordering your favourite beer, but then when it's time for the second round the waitress tells you they just ran out. Oh well. I'd still say those are four-star stories, with 'God is an Iron' being the definite standout.
The essays and transcribed speeches? Well, it's hard to say much either way about book reviews, convention keynotes, and a defense of Robert A Heinlein penned roughly forty(!) years ago. It's all filler that would've been more relevant when this book was released in 1981. Worth reading for Spider's unique voice and humour only, in my opinion. Three stars for this material. -
I have read this book several times over the years. Honestly I love the Callahan stories in it the best. I am reading it for one particular story this time. God in an Iron. I have to write a literary analysis paper on a short story for my English writing class. I was lucky to be able to choose the short story. Rather than get a story I won't enjoy, I get to read on that I know any really enjoy.
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Just to combine a few... I read the originals as part of the serial installments in Analog. Spider Robinson has long been a favorite author. To love the Callahan's stories best, you DO have to love puns! They are entertaining and quirky enough otherwise, but a love of punning will put his writing on top for you.
Anyway, I'm going to enjoy rereading them in anthology form here and in the other books. THIS 'review' is to state that I think that ALL of them are EXCELLENT! -
Not as happy with this book in the series. This second addition to the Callahan works had quite a few other short stories thrown in. I was not expecting that. The Callahan stories in here are good. The shorts, were not my cup of tea so to speak. Still I would keep it in my collection as a part of the series.
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As Robinson's dives deeper into the mythology of Callahan's, he finds still plenty of opportunities to expand the cast of regulars. Still punny good fun, but the edges begin to fray as the barman drifts towards omniscience.
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Very interesting introduction. The short stories that didn't repeat from the previous book were shocking and worth reading. All the surrounding palaver, even written amusingly, was a waste of my time. Got a few names of sci-fi writers I didn't know before, but that was it.
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Enjoyed the first one a lot more. While it was interesting to see a larger body of Robinson's work, I didn't really like the non-Callahan's stories.
