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Robinson Spider
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
 List Price: Price: $49.95 DescriptionCallahan's Place is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulars are anything but. Pull up a chair, grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths...and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.
Variable Star (Tor Science Fiction)
 List Price: Price: $3.99 You Save: $4.00 (50%) DescriptionA never-before-published masterpiece from science fiction's greatest writer, rediscovered after more than half a century. When Joel Johnston first met Jinny Hamilton, it seemed like a dream come true. And when she finally agreed to marry him, he felt like the luckiest man in the universe. There was just one small problem. He was broke. His only goal in life was to become a composer, and he knew it would take years before he was earning enough to support a family. But Jinny wasn't willing to wait. And when Joel asked her what they were going to do for money, she gave him a most unexpected answer. She told him that her name wasn't really Jinny Hamilton---it was Jinny Conrad, and she was the granddaughter of Richard Conrad, the wealthiest man in the solar system. And now that she was sure that Joel loved her for herself, not for her wealth, she revealed her family's plans for him---he would be groomed for a place in the vast Conrad empire and sire a dynasty to carry on the family business. Most men would have jumped at the opportunity. But Joel Johnston wasn't most men. To Jinny's surprise, and even his own, he turned down her generous offer and then set off on the mother of all benders. And woke up on a colony ship heading out into space, torn between regret over his rash decision and his determination to forget Jinny and make a life for himself among the stars. He was on his way to succeeding when his plans--and the plans of billions of others--were shattered by a cosmic cataclysm so devastating it would take all of humanity's strength and ingenuity just to survive.
Callahan's Legacy
 List Price: Price: $49.99 DescriptionFor years, Callahan's was the place where friends met to have a few drinks, tell a few jokes, and occasionally save the world. Until that unfortunate incident with the nuke a few years ago....
But Jake Stonebender and his wife have opened a new Callahan's, Mary's Place, and all the regulars are there: Doc Webster, Fast Eddie the piano player, Long Drink McGonnigle, and of course the usual talking dogs, alcoholic vampires, aliens, and time travelers. Songs will be sung, drinks will be drunk (and drunks will have drinks), puns will be swapped...and as a three-eyed, three-legged, three-armed, three-everythinged alien flashes through space toward the bar, it just might be time to save the world again.... This is the fifth book in the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, a short read that once again brings together the Callahan regulars in a plot that combines the usual group therapy, the best/worst puns ever to see print and epic, world-saving deeds. This time around the gang must save Earth from a decidedly nasty alien, and only group telepathy will do the trick. Spider Robinson, whose cutting wit and keen insights are in full force, takes the opportunity to dive deep into the psyche of his various mainstay characters, making for some darkly intimate reading.
Callahan's Key
 List Price: Price: $2.18 You Save: $4.81 (69%) DescriptionNobody blends good science with bad puns as brilliantly as Spider Robinson, as his legion of devoted fans will attest. Now he's back with the latest chapter of the Callahan saga -- an improbable tale of impending doom, a road trip, space, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.The universe is in desperate peril. Due to a cluster of freakish phenomena, the United States' own defense system has become a perfect doomsday machine, threatening the entire universe. And only one man can save everything-as-we-know-it from annihilation. Unfortunately, he's not available. So the job falls instead to bar owner Jake Stonebender, his wife, Zoey, and superintelligent toddler, Erin. Not to mention two dozen busloads of ex-hippies and freaks, Robert Heinlein's wandering cat, a whorehouse parrot, and misunderstood genius-inventor Nikola Tesla, who is in fact alive and well.... What's Jake Stonebender's standard fee for saving the universe? That's easy: "A bar, and enough money and clout to run it." It's time for Jake to save the day yet again, with a lot of help from the rest of his pun-happy, cosmically strange crew. And no more kiddie stakes like in the previous Callahan books, when mere humanity was on the line. Nope, Jake needs to save the totality of the universe. From, of all things, the quest for knowledge. What does that mean? Well, it's got something to do with a classified satellite called the Deathstar, a hurricane named Erin, a superenergetic cosmic ray in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Soviet space station Mir, and a shamelessly enormous volume of Irish coffee. But as any Callahan fan will duly attest, all of this is really beside the point. Books in this series (this one included) showcase the Münchhausen-style storytelling skills of Nebula- and Hugo-winner Spider Robinson. Putting one of cinema's most robust tropes into service--calling the team back together, à la Oceans 11--and doing a bang-up job at it as usual, Robinson should please old fans and win new ones. If nothing else, you'll surely come to love the eclectic cast of dozens, including everybody from a talking baby (Jake's teleporting, superhacker daughter) to a talking German shepherd (Ralph Von Wau Wau) to--why not?--the forgotten father of the 20th century, Nikola Tesla. --Paul Hughes
Very Bad Deaths
 List Price: Price: $3.93 You Save: $4.06 (51%) DescriptionAging baby-boomer Russell Walker wants only to retreat from the world and the shattering death of his beloved wife, into the woods of British Columbia. But the real world won't let him become a hermit. Instead, he finds himself thrust into the mystery of a series of mass murders by a monstrous sadist and serial killer who makes Hannibal Lector look like a boy scout. And he is caught in a frightening predicament: He is the only possible intermediary between a telepath called Smelly, so sensitive he can't stand to be near most people, and a skeptical police officer who needs to hear and believe what Smelly knows about the fiend. This involuntary trio may be the only ones who can catch the inhuman butcher before he kills again-if he doesn't catch them first.Robinson Spider News
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Financial TimesCurse of the credit crunchBut he has picked up a thing or two directing the monstrously successful Spider-Man films, not least access to larger budgets, and Drag Me to Hell is a B-movie served up with almost disconcertingly lavish special effects. The result is hokum and trash,
Escapist MagazineBioShock Novel Coming This YearTor Books is a well-known sci-fi and fantasy imprint that's published a wide range of authors including Orson Scott Card, RA Salvatore, Spider Robinson and Andre Norton. Tor has also published a series of novels based on the Halo games as well as the