Callahan's Key (The Place, #1; Callahan's Series, #8) by Spider Robinson

Callahan's Key (The Place, #1; Callahan's Series, #8) Reviews

• 
  M.M. Strawberry Library & Reviews

  Well, it's been a trek through the Callahan's series, and this is the eighth, and thus far, next to last novel in the series.
  
  Part of me is happy for this volume because there's more fun puns and creative writing. But then part of me also feels like the series got played out. This book isn't quite as good as the first few, but it's still a pretty decent book that garners 4 stars.
  
  Most of the story is about the usual cast of Callahan's/Mary's Place, with a few newcomers to this very extended family and their move down to the Florida Keys to set up a new Place. The actual world-saving bit is less spectacular than I expected, but as I said, it's still a good book. It's also nice to know Robinson is a Heinlein fan because I am one too, though I notice that just like with Heinlein, some of Robinson's later books could get weird and overly sexual sometimes.
  
  Eh. I still recommend these authors on the whole as solid authors in the science fiction community, and this book was certainly fun. Now there's just one book left, so onwards I go!
• 
  Wanda Pedersen

  This is a tribute novel to Robert A. Heinlein (and to some extent other authors of his vintage). If you don't know his work or that of Theodore Sturgeon, you'll miss some of the point of this book. As Jake Stonebender, his family, and his clan of weirdos migrate to Key West, Fla., from Long Island, NY, they make a stop close to where Heinlein's widow lives and they consider (and reject) the idea of visiting her. Instead, they acquire a new misfit to add to their number: Robert Heinlein's cat, Pixel, the cat who can walk through windshields (get it?). There are lots of obvious and subtle references to RAH fiction. (Including a sign that Zoey puts up by the door of their new home: “Did you remember to dress?”)
  
  I really enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of each chapter—nuggets from the many silly things said by George W, Bush's vice-president, Dan Quayle. That there are 20 of them is amazing and sad somehow. I bet many people barely remember the poor guy or how much the press loved his flubs. Public speaking just wasn't his jam, plus he seems to have had a pretty loose grip on facts.
  
  The absolute best part of the book is the description of the space shuttle launch that the clan attends during their drive south. Did Robinson attend one? Because it reads like he did. The excitement and awe seem completely authentic and it has the feeling of an eyewitness account.
  
  For some reason that I cannot put my finger on exactly, I find Robinson's authorial voice in this series highly annoying, so I am glad that I am almost finished with the Callahan books. Only one left, next year. My library has weeded them, but I bought them second hand (before I realized how irritated they made me). I'm stubborn enough that I intend to read them before I recycle them back to the second hand bookstore.
  
  Book Number 428 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
• 
  Robert

  Even wanted to watch an author masturbate? Here's your chance. Our hero Mary Sue, I mean Spider, I mean 'Jake' has a wonderful wife, a precocious daughter, is universally loved by everyone he meets, takes all his friends along on a road trip where he runs across places or steals characters lionized by better authors, name drops better musicians and writers than himself to borrow their glory, smugly opens every chapter with political quotes for no known reason (other than as a form of primitive virtue signaling) and then trumps this by actually writing that some strangers came into his bar but he can still confidently state (even though they were strangers) that the presence of minorities drove them away because the strangers were assholes, it never crossing his mind that it might be the doped out owner and his crew that were unlikable.
  
  One more book in the series and at this point it's only morbid curiosity that keeps me reading. Don't fall into that trap if you can avoid it.
• 
  Sean

  I loved this series. Really did. "Callahan's Chronicles" was easily one of the best reads I'd had in years. Lady Sally's place that followed was...different. A downgrade, but good fun.
  
  But the last few books in the series have gotten too "big". Callahan's works best when it's a collection of drunk oddballs helping out more drunk oddballs with their drunk oddball problems, not saving the country/world/universe from annihilation, eg. nuclear terrorist pacifists in Lady Slings the Booze, saving the world in Callahan's Legacy and here, the Universe.
  
  The first half of Key is sneakily done. A fine return to form as, for reasons that really aren't that important, Callahan's company embark on a road trip from dreary New York to sunny Key West (which sounds like a pretty rad place, to be honest). On the way, they piss off cops, see a rocket launch, and steal Robert Heinlein cat. It's...better than I make it sound.
  
  Then they arrive in Key West, and gosh it's lovely. Perfect. Everyone's cheery, real estate agents are no longer fire-breathing demon spawn, the cops wear shorts and ride bicycles and it probably rains pot. Which is good news, considering they then have to band together to find some way to save the Universe (dun dun dun).
  
  Thankfully though they're all able to figure out the cause, circumstance and solution to this omnicidal disaster through...well, some sort of moon logic, far as I can tell. With absolutely no specific idea how, when or where the cosmos is going to end, they manage to utilise 1960s Adam West-ian Bat Deduction to figure out it's all thanks to a satellite called "the Deathstar", a honking big hurricane and a sort of magical cosmic ray that apparently exists now.
  
  High stakes, right? Expecting a nail biting, edge-of-your-seat space-heist, then? HA! No. Erin, Jake's 14 month old super-baby, can teleport, so she shimmies herself into a rocket to type out some magical computer code that sorts the whole problem out (minor subsequent hiccup notwithstanding).
  
  This is the problem with the key (hurr hurr) focal point and newly introduced heroine of this novel, Jake's super-spawn - she is boring. She's a superpowered, super-intelligent (it involved a computer AI and a three-breasted space-lizard. Long story) magical plot solving machine and occasional author mouthpiece. She's not even a character, she's a tool.
  
  The problem is such: when you combine supreme intellect with good ol' "from the mouths of babes", what you're giving yourself is a character that screams "THIS PERSON IS ALWAYS RIGHT. NO DISAGREEMENT WITH THEIR KNOWLEDGE OR QUAINT, INNOCENT WISDOM WILL BE ALLOWED. SERIOUSLY, JUST STOP IT. DON'T EVEN TRY." Meaning she pingpongs from being insipid to downright creepy. To whit:
  
  

  "I'm going to start fucking when I'm sixteen, would you like to take a number? I can work you into the single digits if you hurry,"

  The 14 month old child said (to Nikola Tesla. Long story. Again).
  
  I...umm...riiiiiight...
  
  But let's not be too critical. Let's look at some touching father-daughter bonding time, about when Erin was still in her mother's womb?
  
  

  "Probably the first things that ever tickled you were some of my sperm."

  
  
  ...Ok, seriously, what the actual flippity fudge? Is that stuff meant to be cute?
  
  Finally, there's Robinson's tone. He's a child of the 60s, no doubt, and book by book, he seems to have gotten less and less concerned with keeping a lid on it. It can basically be summed up as: "Woah, man. Everyone's such a square, man. Stop being so uptight, dude. Smoke joints and free love! Rock on!" (slight exaggeration added for comedic value).
  
  Which makes his utter intolerance of anyone other than pot smoking, beer swilling hippies (or someone who has nothing but love and respect for pot smoking, beer swilling hippies) more than a little jarring (read: the NASA security guard, his next-door neighbour, pretty much every single public servant or cop in the book). And I like hippies. But preaching tolerance tends to not work that well when you have no time for anyone that isn't in your group of ridiculously free-spirited, telepathic friends who, conveniently, happen to agree with 99% of what you say.
  
  Buuuuuuuuuuuut...despite my lengthy whining, I still didn't hate it. The goal/intent is still positive (ie. love and friendship wins out over guns and violence) and the puns are still awful. I just...really wish Spider hadn't let his own worldview run away from him like he has. Still, only one more left in the series, so why not?
  
  tl;dr - Read "The Callahan Chronicles", then stop.
  
• 
  John Desmarais

  A couple of weeks ago I felt an inexplicable urge to re-read Spider Robinson's "Callahan's" novel. Not an unheard of urge on my part, as I occasionally enjoy taking a stroll down memory lane re-reading books that I read many, many years ago. I find myself most of the way through Callahan's Key, and it has struck me that - apparently - I had missed this one my first time around. I remembered quite well (well, in general terms) the original stories set in Mike's place, the side trip stories at Lady Sally's, the stories from Mary's Place, and - more recently - reading about the gang in Key West. What I have no memory of at all though is how is gang of misfits found themselves in the Keys.
  
  So, what's better then revisiting an old literary friend? Finding something completely new while doing so - and a fine road trip story it is too. I cannot say for certain how I missed this book - and Travis McGee is no longer with us to figure it for me - but it has turned into a great and entertaining read,
• 
  Aiyana

  As usual, Mr. Robinson offers us a highly enjoyable, fast-paced adventure story that is really, after all, just about reminding us how cool humanity can actually be when it bothers to get its collective head out of its collective rear. Clever absurdities and bad puns abound, and life is good.
• 
  Ginger Vampyre

  Another wonderful book in a beautiful series. Jake gets a visit from Tesla who tells him that once again the end of the world is nigh and it is up to Jake and his motley band of bar flies to save it. Jake decides that it is time to reopen the bar, but not in Long Island. Jake, Zoey, and super intelligent baby Erin move to the Florida Keys, and take the rest of the Callahan crew with them. Parts of the book were a little bittersweet for me, reading about the drive through Florida, especially when they stopped at the Kennedy Space Center to watch a shuttle launch. Reading the wonder and magesty of a shuttle launch through the eyes of someone with child-like wonder and appreciation reminded me how much I miss living there some days. A brief summery is that mankind has managed to create a situation the ends the universe and everything in it and the Callahan crew must figure out what it is and how to stop it. And of course they do. For me, the best part isn't the problem and solution, but how it is solved. The way they work together, the way everyone cares about and for one another. If every one read these books and treated other humans the way Spider's characters act the world would be a very different place. One that would not require so much saving.
• 
  Steven Cooke

  Continuing (after a pause) from the last story, this one is essentially a road trip followed by the usual silliness. Again, these are NOT the place to try out the Callahan series! If you’re already a fan, you might like this. Personally, I am starting to get a little bit tired of personal opinions couched as novel themes that reveal a greater purpose. You can have your likes and dislikes, and you shouldn’t get hassled over them. But don’t expect people to line up to pay for your ramblings without further entertainment value. The quotes of Vice President Daniel Quale at the start of each chapter are irrelevant, uninteresting, and infantile. Other than “closing out the set”, my interest in contributing to these efforts has reached an end.
• 
  Joe

  typically entertaining & uplifting
  
  Spider always spins a good yarn & this is no exception. all the usual suspects, a few new characters, a wild tale, lots of Irish coffee. everything needed for a Callahan book. enjoy.
• 
  Ned Davis

  I can see a love / unlike relationship with Spider Robinson. This was not my kind of SciFi. Cute, witty, verbose, annoying and long. Puns aside, not enough here to make me want to read more.
  BTW: I didn't read it, I listened via an audiobook.
• 
  Juan Sanmiguel

  The gang decide to escape Suffolk County, Ny and go to Key West, FL. Jake starts up the Place. Its a great road trip which includes a stop at Kennedy Space Center to watch a launch. The gang also joined by Pixel Heinlein's last cat. Fun is had by all. Makes me want to forgive the punning.
• 
  Randy

  If you're already a fan of the Callahan Crew, you will like this. If you have not met them yet, start with an earlier book.
• 
  Karen-Leigh

  Still enjoying this series.
• 
  Jim Mason

  Took a while to get going, but ended up a good Callahan book
• 
  Wetdryvac

  A serious favorite, flaws and all.
• 
  ***Dave Hill

  Heir to Heinlein - And I mean that review title for both good and ill. Like Heinlein's last few works (everything starting with Number of the Beast), the Callahan series has (d)evolved into tales of Extraordinarily Talented and Witty People, (over)laden with cultural in-jokes, references to earlier tales, and a twee jolliness that makes for light, breezy reading when it's not just irritating.
  
  Robinson has seemingly fallen into the "How do I trump what I did last time?" trap, and while it's nice to see the old gang again, hear the awful puns, and sit back for the ride, I look back on the much warmer, more *human* early Callahan tales (and even tales of Lady Sally's House) and miss them.
  
  I don't regret having bought the book, even at today's exorbitant paperback prices. I just wish I'd enjoyed it as much as his earlier ones.
• 
  Jeff Yoak

  My first thought at first being exposed to Callahan's was that it belonged in Key West and everything reminded me of my time in Florida. It's nice that they've finally caught on and moved down there. The plot in the Callahan's stories is always on the light side and mostly it is enjoyable interactions in a bar. The plot in this one is so light that they might not have bothered and just had it be a story about moving a hundred people and a bar from New York to Florida. That element is truly excellent. I plan to listen to this during my next move.
• 
  Doug

  So-so... part of the problem may have been my hearing, which is making it more and more difficult to pick up details when there is a lot of road noise. I missed out on the payoff for quite a few puns (which may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.) Most of the book is spent telling the story of their move from Long Island to Key West, which I really didn't find all that interesting. If you are a huge fan of the Callahan books, you will want to read it for completeness, but new readers will be lost.
• 
  Barbara

  A light, easy read, especially if you have read some/most of the works that precede it in the Callahan's cluster of series.
  
  The problem was that I had trouble caring about the characters .... or about the "preventing the end of the world" plot line that has been use several times already.
  
  There were few puns, which had been the most charming part of many of the books. And I did not sense that the characters had great empathy or care for one another, which was also one of the most heart-warming traits of the first few books.
  
  
• 
  Moira Lennon Roach

  I love all of the Callahan's books, but this is one of my favorites. Aside from hurricane season, like now, most people in the Northeast, especially in the middle of winter, think about packing up and moving to the Florida Keys. I know that Key West isn't like it used to be, and I never really want to live somewhere the bugs get as big as they do down there. But, reading about a crowd of eccentric characters packing up their lives into school buses and making a caravan from Long Island to Key West is the next best thing to doing it yourself!
• 
  Kallierose

  These short stories, all tied together with a common place/cast, make you feel like maybe human beings aren't such cruel animals after all. Opening the first several Callahan books feels like a refreshing visit with old friends. You know them, and their quirks, and that if they're involved with a situation they will do whatever they can to make it better. These are good people. The in last couple of books the formula gets a little bit stale, but they are still enjoyable.
• 
  Dave

  More merriment, madcap science fiction and meandering commentary on part of the human condition that feels real to me. A road trip with literary allusions, pointed puns, inside jokes and references to classic and not so classic science fiction, space geekery, and Robinson's customary observations on community, bureaucracy, folly, bureaucracy, love and lessons we learn from life experiences. Clearly I've become a fan.
• 
  Scott wachter

  this series has some escalation issues.
  
  The original stories about drunken oddballs helping strangers out sci-fi predicaments with the power of group therapy, shots and puns. then they stopped aliens from wiping out the planet. So now everything has to find a way to top that.
  
  this book has 4/5ths road trip stories and 1/5 save the universe.