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| 2.5 stars out of 5 |
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.
Hi Wanda
ReplyDeleteI read the first Callahan book but got tired of the series rather quickly, I don't seem to have much loyalty, but I am on Canto XVII of Paradiso so it might not just be me. Robinson's Callahan does seem aimed at a YA teenaged sensibility where everything is black and white, saving money of the family's brakes, bad, launching the holocaust really bad. I have not even been tempted to read his other books although I might try later. Some books you may have to approach when you are young and possibly in SF especially, young and male, I still have my Heinlein juveniles but found I could not reread the Moon is a Harsh Mistress much less Stranger in a Strange Land. I am not sure if this is making sense, and I may have been a bit hard on poor Spider but there you go.
Regards
Guy
Guy, we seem to have quite similar sensibilities on the SF genre. I'm always glad to get your feedback on the books that I'm reading. You're right, some of the older stuff needs to be enjoyed when one is young and foolish! ;)
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