Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Baen (2001), Mass Market Paperback, 448 pages
Description
FROM THE CRIME TO THE RIDICULOUSFrom the offbeat but razor-edged imagination of Spider Robinson: stranded time travelers; squabbling cosmic warriors; reincarnated rock stars; blind starship pilots; monsters both human and alien; tomorrows formed by today's trends--this Spider weaves a web of wonder.Sound profound? Nah Herein we've got a partially-disembodied Brooklynite looking for his, er, bottom half, a past-tense-ignoring player of a certain New York crap game from 1930 running loose in the present, a compendium of the silliest weapons history never had, and plenty more. The warped and the way-out combine in a book that by any name would be...really cool
User reviews
LibraryThing member gypsysmom
This book of short stories and articles was compiled by Spider Robinson in 2000. Some of the stories were written in the 1970s and were set twenty or thirty years from when they were written. So the time of these stories had come and gone and Spider freely admits he got a lot of his guesses about
Spider included a few of the columns he wrote for the Globe and Mail. I can remember reading some of those which ran from 1996 to 1999. However I don't think I read the first one which was triggered by the downing of TWA Flight 800. There was a lot of speculation at the time that terrorists had brought down the plane or that a missile launched from a U.S. Navy destroyer was responsible. Spider pontificated to a friend why either scenario was ridiculous and she told him to write it down. He did and submitted it to the Globe and Mail and then he was hired to produce more columns. It makes interesting reading given that 5 years after he wrote that column many airliners were taken over by terrorists and crashed into buildings on September 11, 2001.
The title story is probably the best in the collection but I personally really liked Rubber Soul an homage to a band that had an album of that name.
Show More
the future wrong. As he says in his forward he wasn't surprised that they were wrong but he was "somewhat surprised at just how my speculations were wrong;over and over, it seems, I was too optimistic...I find I'm proud of that." Now two decades later from when the book came out those speculations still haven't come to pass. For some of the futures I am glad they have not; the story Antimony speculates a second Civil War in the US that wiped out almost all African-Americans. I'm glad he got that wrong.Spider included a few of the columns he wrote for the Globe and Mail. I can remember reading some of those which ran from 1996 to 1999. However I don't think I read the first one which was triggered by the downing of TWA Flight 800. There was a lot of speculation at the time that terrorists had brought down the plane or that a missile launched from a U.S. Navy destroyer was responsible. Spider pontificated to a friend why either scenario was ridiculous and she told him to write it down. He did and submitted it to the Globe and Mail and then he was hired to produce more columns. It makes interesting reading given that 5 years after he wrote that column many airliners were taken over by terrorists and crashed into buildings on September 11, 2001.
The title story is probably the best in the collection but I personally really liked Rubber Soul an homage to a band that had an album of that name.
Show Less
Subjects
Original publication date
2001-02 (Collection)
Physical description
448 p.; 6.75 inches
ISBN
0671319744 / 9780671319748