The Rest of Spider's Writings, So Far

Spider's stand-alone novels (although Very Bad Deaths is the first of a planned series), story collections, essays, and his posthumous collaboration with science fiction's first Grand Master.

Variable Star

This is based on a 1955 outline by Robert A. Heinlein and finished a half-century later by Spider Robinson. Young musician Joel Johnston discovers the love of his life isn't what she said she was. Faced with giving up everything he considers important to be part of her life, Joel opts instead to join a colony ship on an 85-light-year journey.

How did Spider come to finish this book? Back in 2003, he was on a panel at a science fiction convention. The subject was Robert A. Heinlein. and some of the rare and obscure stuff found in his archives. Next to Spider was Heinlein's archivist, who mentioned a complete detailed outline of a novel had been found. Someone in the back of the room called out, "You should get Spider Robinson to finish that book!" The comment got applause, and Spider got the OK from the Heinlein estate to write the book.

Very Bad Deaths

Spider has created a "strange and twisted crime-fighting trio who can barely stand one another: the young cop, the old hippie, and the telepath" who must come together to apprehend a serial killer who is far more strange and twisted.

Night of Power

One of Spider's most controversial novels, written in 1984, is set in Manhattan in 1996 when a race war breaks out. Fortunately, it's still fiction.

The Crazy Years

This is a collection of Spider's columns that appeared in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail and on the now-defunct website "Galaxy Online." The title of the columns and book comes from Robert A. Heinlein's Future History. in which he marked out the last few decades of the twentieth century, a period he wrote little about, as "the Crazy Years. In the book's "mission statement," Spider writes:

This book is dedicated to the notion that Heinlein was right: that future generations will look back on us as the silliest, goofiest, flat-out craziest crew of loonies that ever took part in the historical race from womb to tomb; that never before in human history has average human intelligence been anywhere near as low as it is today; and that no culture on record has ever behaved as insanely as this one now does routinely.

The Free Lunch

Dreamworld is a litigation-free stand-in for Disneyland, which Spider visited with David Gerrold and John Varley. Mike, a 12-year-old, deliberately disappears into Dreamworld's backstage areas. He soon discovers there are some very strange things going on.

Originally this was to be a collaboration with John Varley. Spider wrote the first chapter and sent it off to John, who would then write the next chapter and suggest changes to the first. Something like ten years later, Spider inquired of John how things were going. John admitted they were going a little slow, so they agreed that Spider would just write it himself. (They're still friends, by the way.)

God Is an Iron and Other Stories

This is a collection of Spider's favorite stories from 30 years of writing, including Hugo Award winners "Stardance" (the novella version) and "Melancholy Elephants."

Telempath

Spider's first novel from 1976. The first third of the book won a Hugo Award for best novella as "By Any Other Name." It's set in a world of survivors of a plague of sorts that increases the sense of smell, and there are ghosts around.

User Friendly

A collection of Spider's shorter works - 11 stories, four essays, a rap on RAH, and a speech. The rest of his short works, aside from stories of Callahan's Saloon, are in the collection By Any Other Name.

By Any Other Name

All of Spider's short work that isn't collected in User Friendly or the Callahan's books, including the title story later expanded into Telempath. Between the two, they contain stories earlier collected in Melancholy Elephants and Antinomy, which are out of print and usually not available on Amazon.