pider Robinson sold his first science fiction story in 1971 while working as a night watchman. "I had absolutely nothing else to do all night but stare into space or make something up," he explained in a recent phone interview. "So to kill time, I pecked out a little story about where I would rather be--a bar where they'd let you smash your glass in the fireplace. When I was done, I looked at the pile of paper and I said, boy, you know, that looks just like a manuscript, like real writers produce. It would fool a civilian, probably. If I was to mail it off to magazines that buy stories, well, then they would send me rejection slips, and then I could impress women! I'd be a tragic figure of a man, I'd be the Failed Artist! How romantic can you get?"
Instead of a rejection slip, Analog sent him a $400 check for the story, "The Guy With the Eyes." (Robinson discovered, he said, that $400--over a week's pay for him--impressed women even more than a rejection slip.) It was the first installment in what is now known as the Callahan Saga--a series of short stories and linked novels about a bar where magical things happen, from telepathy to time travel to meetings between strangers who heal each other's deepest hurts by honestly listening to each other. Robinson mostly writes playful shaggy-dog stories packed full of horrible puns and sly in-jokes, but the Callahan stories are also deeply humanistic, imbued with an honest joy in life and an indefatigable hope for the future.
Robinson has written other notable books. The novella Stardance, a collaboration with his wife Jeanne, won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards; the Robinsons later expanded it into a novel, and eventually a trilogy. Night of Power, a gripping novel about a multiracial family's involvement in a militant black takeover of Manhattan, deals confidently with topics that are too controversial for print even 15 years later; the book is now available only online. Robinson is also responsible for the definitive fan defense of Robert Heinlein, ("Rah Rah R.A.H.!"), and in addition he's a newspaper columnist, a folksinger and songwriter, and a hideously prolific punster. But for most fans, his name is inextricably linked with Callahan's Place.
The Callahan chronicles have been set in Long Island for 20 years, but in his newest book, Callahan's Key, Robinson moved the whole kit and caboodle to Key West, Fla. Speaking from his home in Canada, he explained why.
What prompted you to move the Callahan's setting to Key West?
Robinson: Like everything else in my life, it was more or less a matter of dumb luck. Part of it was just ... I grew up largely in the Long Island area myself, and I left there 25 years ago. And I go back every four or five years just to see how it's doing, visit family, check out some of the old sites. And each time I go back it seems to be increasingly unlikely that a place like Callahan's could survive there. It's just getting so overpopulated, grown over and built up with strip malls. The mental spot I had in my mind for Callahan's, lo these 25 years ago when I started, is long since paved over. You couldn't possibly have a bar there without being inundated by mundanes. So partially, I was losing faith in Long Island as the site for Callahan's. And partially, by accident, Jeanne and I discovered Key West. There was a science fiction convention held in Florida, in Orlando. Subsequent to that, we and another couple rented a car and drove down the Keys to see what was there. We found Key West an absolutely magical place, we had just a wonderful time, and we've since been back every time we could afford to. ...
About the fourth or fifth time we visited, as we were leaving with great reluctance, I turned to Jeanne and said, "I hate to leave here. You know, this is where Callahan's Place really belongs." And this light bulb appeared in the air over both of our heads.
She said "Yeah! My God, when you think about it, you bring the gang down here, and nobody'd even look twice at them in this town! Key West is the kind of place where a talking dog, a little green man, a cyborg warrior who's eight feet tall--no problem! They've probably got one already!"
Is your depiction of Key West fairly accurate, or are you just extrapolating on what you like about it?
Robinson: Well, accurate for the period the story is set in, 1989. Key West has been squaring up a little in the last few years. ... It's getting to be less fun than it was. I've been going there for, geez, at least 10 years now, since the late '80s, and then it was a totally magical place. Even today, most of the magic is still there. They haven't been able to spoil it.
You seem to take a lot of your writing directly out of personal experience.
Robinson: Well, the description of the space shuttle takeoff, for instance, is as accurate as I could make it. On that same trip where we discovered Key West for the first time, we stopped to see a shuttle launch, the 50th ever. Not the one mentioned in the book, but nonetheless a shuttle launch. And it was just as--boy!--just as inspirational and impressive as I try to make it sound on the page.
Are any of the Callahan's regulars based on real people as well?
Robinson: No. That's the thing, I try in my stuff never to take a person from real life and put them in a book, because it's just not fair, you know? They've got no way to shoot back. You make a fool out of somebody in print, how are they supposed to retaliate? I will take bits and pieces of many people I know, but I always try to create characters that aren't meant to be anybody that I know. Anybody who thinks he's recognized himself in one of my books is mistaken.
You've mentioned in various essays that you get desperate calls and letters from fans who have gone to Long Island just to find Callahan's Place, and failed. Do you think it's possible that you're going to be responsible for a wave of fans moving down to Key West?
Robinson: [Laughs.] Well, I'll tell you, I'd like to think so. If anything could reverse this trend ... of the place tending to square up a little, it'd be a whole bunch of science fiction fans descending on the town. Actually, that would be my ideal outcome. I would just love to have Key West fill up with enough science fiction fans that they'd decide to throw a convention and invite Jeanne and me to come be the guests of honor.
Have you ever actually considered moving to Key West?
Robinson: Yeah, I'd love to, it's just an expensive place to live. I've got to find something that pays better than science fiction writing to afford to live there. If Hollywood ever calls, and I get rich enough to live any damn place I have a mind to, that'd be high on my list.
If Hollywood called and they wanted Callahan's, would you give it to them?
Robinson: Oh, yes. Negotiations just recently collapsed--for a while there we thought we had sold Callahan's to the SCI FI Channel. It almost happened, but as they say in Hollywood, it was set, but it wasn't set-set.
Somebody forgot to touch second base somewhere, and our Hollywood guy will try again next season.
Were they considering a TV series or a movie?
Robinson: Apparently [a TV series]. Joe Dante was supposed to be interested, and I was told Stan Winston, the special-effects guy, was interested, and it was all very exciting, but the SCI FI Channel thought it over and passed. It's been happening that way for 25 years.
Callahan's has been optioned for TV or movies countless times, by varying groups of varying degrees of credibility. Some of them were just basic consortia of dentists looking for a tax loss, and on the other hand, David Gerrold had an option for a while. That was the one I had the most hope for. Years and years back David Gerrold optioned the thing and tried like crazy to sell it, and nobody was interested back then.
What about Stardance and the sequels? Has anyone ever considered those for a film?
Robinson: Oh, boy, would I love it. For a long time, we shopped it around, and everybody said "Oh, the special effects would kill you. It'd be so hard to show zero-gravity dance." And nowadays, it would be so trivially easy.
But it's been a while since that book got a lot of publicity, or won an award or something. I keep jogging the Hollywood agent to sell that one, but so far nobody's expressed much interest.
Callahan's, at least, continues to be very popular, especially on the Web.
There's a very strong fan presence based around the alt.callahans newsgroup.
Robinson: It's so strong it terrifies me. I'm so far treating it like the gorilla asleep in the living room, tiptoeing around it very carefully. They tell me this group--I don't know about this stuff, I spend as little time online as possible, but those who like this stuff tell me it's supposed to be the most popular non-pornographic newsgroup on Usenet. I've never been there, except for once or twice on other people's machines I've eavesdropped, and people have given me stacks of printouts from the place, but I just don't dare! ... I'm scared to death of the place. It's a drug perfectly shaped to fit my own endorphin receptors. I can easily see myself logging into alt.callahans and never coming out again, never writing another word for print. Because every time I've sampled it--it's Callahan's Place. It really is. There have been marriages, there have been deaths, they help each other through illness, they help each other through financial disaster--and it's not just alt.callahan's either, it's spread everywhere. That spirit seems to have pervaded Usenet and be escaping from it. I know of one science fiction writer in Australia who just discovered he had a medical crisis coming and needed help badly. The word got out to several of the newsgroups that he frequents, and all of the sudden he had everything he needed. He had access to dialysis, and cheap plane tickets to the States, and a place to stay--that kind of energy seems to be spilling out of the Internet, and that pleases me.
You did post there once, an essay that's been passed around quite a bit since about the state of the publishing industry--
Robinson: [Groans.] I thought I was speaking to the chosen few. I didn't understand the nature of the Internet at all. I was that ignorant. I thought I was speaking to a chosen few friends, and the next thing I know I've posted this on a bulletin board seen by everyone on the planet, and my own publisher is flaming me on their Web site. "Whoops! Sorry! Well, that's enough of that nonsense, I won't do that anymore!"
In your introduction to the third Callahan's collection, which came out in 1986, you suggested that it was time to give Callahan's a rest, that you were considering retiring the series. What changed your mind?
Robinson: Folding money in large denominations. There's nothing quite as inspirational as a phone call from the bank telling you your account is overdrawn. Every time, that seems to provide the necessary creative impetus. Folks like the stories, and if I can keep coming up with interesting stories set in Callahan's Place, I'll keep writing them. One thing I don't want to do is to keep on churning them out when I haven't really got an idea. So far that hasn't happened. I've been making an effort for 25 years now to alternate: one Callahan's, one non-Callahan's.
Your next non-Callahan's novel is called The Free Lunch and it's due out from Tor next year. Your novella The Magnificent Conspiracy used that phrase often, and was billed as the first chapter of a novel. Are the two related?
Robinson: No, no, this is a different deal. What happened here--once again, this came out of a World Science Fiction Convention. They seem to be fruitful things to attend. This one was held basically across the parking lot from Disneyland many years back, so I got to visit Disneyland for the first time ever, in the company of my two native guides, David Gerrold and John Varley. There probably aren't two people on Earth who love Disneyland more than David Gerrold and John Varley. They've both written extensively of the place, and it's the basis of John's future universe. [Ed. note: See Varley's Steel Beach, The Barbie Murders, and so on.] It was just an amazing experience. I came out of there screaming with joy to the skies.
When we got out, I hollered at the top of my lungs, "Walt Disney, you benevolent old motherfucker, I love you!" There are people who can quarrel with the goals and practices of the Disney corporate empire, and I'm not going to argue with them. There are those who are very cynical about Disney and all it represents, and I say screw those people. I had a wonderful time. So while I was there, I got talking with John Varley, my old friend, and I said, "Wouldn't it be neat to move in here, sneak in and hide and live underground, and whenever the employees came in, pretend to be an animatronic robot and stay here forever." And a light bulb appeared in the air over our heads, and we started kicking it around. We mentioned the idea a little later to Susan Allison, then the science fiction editor at Ace Berkeley. She donated a plot that nobody was using at the moment, and it began as a collaborative novel between me and [John]. So we spent several weeks--I flew out to his place in Oregon, and we huddled up, went to the mattresses and spent about a week or two plotting furiously and making notes and outlining. Then I went home and I wrote Chapter One and mailed it to him with the idea that he would send back a revised Chapter One and a Chapter Two, and then I would send back a revised--and so on. So I wrote Chapter One and I mailed it to him. About 12 or 13 years later I called him to find out how he was doing, and he allowed as how progress had been slow. And I said, "Well, I need to sell something, and I'd like to sell this. Do you want to write it with me?" And he said "No, I'm busy right now, I'm afraid you're going to have to do it." So it became a solo novel by me. I finished it, and only two and a half years later, Tor's actually going to publish it. It's been a long, twisted, strange trip.
And it's actually about someone living at Disneyland?
Robinson: On the advice of lawyers and agents and several other people, Disneyland got changed right early in the creative process. Disney has large lawyers with no sense of humor. Rather than have the whole project in jeopardy at every moment because some lawyer had a bad egg for breakfast, it got changed to a mythical theme park in the near future, a place called Dreamworld. Its location is not specified even as to country, now that I think about it. I kept it as vague as I could. But the basic idea remains: a magical theme park, the kind that makes you feel 20 years younger, that has the white magic going for it, and a character who just wants to move in there full-time and disappear. And when he does, he finds out that odd things are going on, things even odder than the management of the theme park had in mind. More people seem to be leaving the park every day than entered. And being behind the scenes and underground, unnoticed, he's pretty much the only one in a position to observe things like this. And it spools out from there, with all kinds of fun stuff.
It does sound not unlike Varley's work.
Robinson: The title was a deliberate, obvious nod to Robert Heinlein. We found a way to make up a plausible free lunch. Or at least we think so. I don't know what Robert would have thought.
In the essay you posted to alt.callahans, you said you were seriously considering what you would do if you couldn't afford to be a writer anymore. Have you come to any conclusions?
Robinson: I've come to the conclusion that I'm doomed, I'd better make a go in the business, because there isn't anything much else I can do that does pay a living. Other than journalism, which is nowhere near as much fun.
I've found myself writing more and more nonfiction these last few years.
It's unintentional, it's just happened. Now I've got a regular column in [Canadian daily newspaper] The Globe and Mail, and a regular column in this wonderful new online outfit, galaxyonline.com.
One of your favorite topics in those columns is how our current technology could be improved, and ways it shouldn't be improved.
Robinson: [Laughs.] Yeah, I don't think I want them connecting my toaster to the Internet, thank you. It's hard enough to get a damn piece of toast.
But some of the suggestions you've made in recent columns are ideas you suggested in your books 15 years ago. They still haven't invented an oven that doesn't waste heat when you open it or a refrigerator that uses its excess heat in a useful way, or a way to connect the two. Do you ever get discouraged by that?
Robinson: No, it gives me something to write about, you know? [Laughs.] If human beings weren't silly, frail, confused, corruptible, disorganized creatures, I'd have nothing to talk about.
You've also criticized, for instance, the design of coffeemakers and toilets. Have you ever tried designing an improved version and getting a patent?
Robinson: No, and I really should. I'm convinced I could improve all the coffeemaker designs in the world. I'm thinking about another column on the coffeemakers. I've already raved about the drip-stop, which I think is an invention of the devil. I'd like to get into the secret maneuverings and illegal negotiations and the price-fixing cartel whereby they all agree on the same preposterous figure for how much a cup is. [Laughs.] The cup used by coffee-machine manufacturers has nothing to do with any cup used by anyone else anywhere in the world, but they all have the exact same one. It comes out to about .6 of a real cup. How did they all just happen to fall upon the same preposterous figure? I think it's a conspiracy of some kind, and I think Microsoft is not the only monopoly around.
The title of your Globe and Mail column, "Future Tense," seems a little cynical, considering your boundless optimism about humanity's future.
Robinson: Yeah, I just don't like to get caught at it. Especially not writing for mainstream journalism. An optimist in the mainstream is considered a weirdo. In science fiction, an optimist is just one of a recognized school, a valid position, a philosophical way of thinking. But out there in the real world, an optimist is considered a psychotic who just hasn't been locked up yet.
You've claimed that in the next millennium human beings will not have problems that we can recognize as problems, that an average person will be immortal, invulnerable and incredibly wealthy, and will never experience poverty, illness, pain, loneliness, insanity or even fear of any of the above.
Robinson: Yeah, I suspect that's true, that the things that will be worrying them will just be unimaginable to us.
The reason you gave for this evolution was nanotechnology. Do you believe technology is a panacea for human problems?
Robinson: No, just for some of them. It assures you of a constant supply of ever-changing problems, which is lot better than the same old ones over and over again. But no, overall I'm a fan of technology. I'd have died years ago if it wasn't for high-tech medicine. Like Robert Heinlein, I owe my continued existence to guys who had nothing better to do than speculate on bizarre things they might do. I tried living in the woods back in the '70s. Like a lot of my generation, I went back to the land--be a vegetarian and grow your own food, chop your own firewood. Couple-three years of that was enough to last me a lifetime, thanks. Now I know why we invented civilization. 'Cause I tried living without it to see if I could do it. And yes, it can be done, but it's an unbearable pain in the ass. You spend every waking minute just surviving. It's constant hard work. And myself, I'm foolish enough to think that there is some value to lying around with my feet up, reading a paperback book.
Isn't laziness part of being human? How are we going to get around that in the next millennium to achieve your vision of the future?
Robinson: I think we need more lazy people. Most progress is made by lazy people. ... It's always the lazy ones who will think "There must be an easier way to do this." And those are the people who are responsible for all progress. They're invariably persecuted for it, and it serves 'em right.
You're also a folksinger and frequently put your original songs into your written work. Have you ever put out an album?
Robinson: No, I haven't. I've recorded four whole songs in my life, and it was dumb luck and somebody else's money. Somebody made a computer game out of Callahan's Place, an outfit called Legend Entertainment. [Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, 1997] A brilliant fellow named Josh Mandel adapted Callahan's for a CD-ROM computer game, and did a terrific job, just first-rate. And midway through the process, he called up and said, "Spider, I heard you used to be a folksinger, you write songs and you still perform." I said, "A little bit." He said, "Well, would you by any chance be interested in recording some of your original songs for the soundtrack of this game?" And my ears grew points. ... So that night, I went out to town because Amos Garrett, my favorite guitar player in all the universe, was in town. Amos and I have known each other for a long time, I've done liner notes for a couple of his albums. And I go see him whenever he's in town.
When he came down at the break, I said, "Let me tell you about this hilarious thing that's happened to me. Twenty-five, 30 years after I bombed out of the music business because I didn't make the cut, I'm actually going to get to record some of my songs! Isn't that terrific?" ... And he said, "Got anybody to play guitar?" in that inimitable baritone. ... Whoa! When I regained consciousness, I ran around like a chicken, and some six months later I was holding in my hand a CD on which was four of my songs, sung by me, with myself on the guitar, and a whole batch of really superb, first-rate studio musicians from Vancouver backing me up, and with Mr. Amos Garrett, my idol since I was 17 years old, playing lead guitar. It's like a dream come true. I still have to every so often pinch myself. Once every week I pull out my CD and play it for myself.
Have you considered getting back into the music business?
Robinson: So far, nobody's offered me fifty or a hundred grand to record the other eight songs. Tens of thousands of dollars of somebody else's money to record four lousy songs! It's not a cheap enterprise, you know?
Not if you want it done professionally. The closest I've gotten is, this weekend I'm going to be recording me reading aloud some of Callahan's Key, probably the first chapter, and then Jeanne's producing and organizing--that and the four songs from the Callahan's game, we're going to put on a CD and sell. I've got a new commercial Web site, spiderrobinson.net, specifically for the purpose of selling crap through the Internet, and this is going to be our first project.
You've said that there are no limits, that human beings can do anything they want.
Robinson: Pretty much, though I still haven't come up with a way to ski through a revolving door. I've been working on that all my life, and I confess I still come up empty there. Man's reach should exceed his grasp, right?
Is that why you write positive science fiction? To show people what they're capable of?
Robinson: Yeah. Generally, I just wanted people to calm down. I hear an awful lot of stuff about how the future is going to be horrid and evil and awful, and run for your lives, we're all doomed. And for all I know that could even be true, how the hell do I know? I'm just convinced that despairing people solve no problems. What I think we need is more art that cheers up the average citizen. The morale is rotten in this society right now. More rotten than it needs to be, when you consider how well we're doing. For all the problems and disasters, we have decades more to bemoan them than our ancestors did. [Laughs.] We can bitch and moan about how terrible things are until we drop dead at 85 instead of 35.
Your books were a lot darker, more unforgiving, when you started writing.
Are you getting more optimistic as time goes by?
Robinson: I started out as cynical and dark and despairing and pessimistic and gloomy as just about all of my cohort, I guess. We all went through a period there where we figured the world was going to end by next Thursday, and it was a good thing, too. We grew out of that, I think. I certainly hope so, anyway.
What's changed?
Robinson: I'm not sure. Maybe just that thing Robert Heinlein said, "It's amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired." I'm not any smarter than I was 20 years ago, I just haven't got the energy for that bullshit any more. If I'm going to sit down with a novel for a year and have to live with it every day, I'd just as soon it be a cheerful one.
What would you like people to learn from your writing?
Robinson: I'm not sure how to answer that. I guess what I'd like them to take away is the feeling that it would be a real good idea to buy this guy's next one. [Laughs.] "I need to get more copies of this and give them away as Christmas presents." Seriously, though, if folks come away with the notion that shared pain is diminished and shared joy is increased, that'd be good. That, and another hobby horse that I ride pretty hard is the notion that anger always turns out to be fear in disguise. There's way too much anger in the world these days, and if we could all understand that anger always means you're afraid of something, maybe it would help us a little in dealing with it.
