The Callahan Chronicals [Paperback]

Spider Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Callahan | Publication Date: October 15, 1997

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulars are anything but: time travelers, talking dogs, alcoholic vampires, cybernetic aliens--and a group of people who really, truly care about each other. It's the rare kind of place where bad pun are as appreciated as good conversation.

Time Travelers Strictly Cash is their policy, but then again everybody pays cash at Callahan's. Lay your money on the bar, name your poison, step up to the line drawn on the barroom floor, and after drinking make a toast and throw the glass into the fireplace. It's an odd tradition (don't worry about the cost--Callahan gets the glasses at a bulk discount), but one's that's led to some interesting stories.

Callahan's Secret may be something even the regulars would never guess. then again, it may be as simple as listening to those post-toast stories. After-all, like Callahan says, shared pain is lessened and shared joy in increased--a simple concept that could, after a few drinks, lead to saving the world....

This omnibus edition contains the trio of books that introduced the world to Mike Callahan, Jake Stonebender, Doc Webster, Mickey Finn, Fast Eddie Costigan, Long-Drink McGonnigle, Ralph Won Wau Wau and the rest of the regulars of Callahan's Place in the stories that helped Spider Robinson to win both a John W. Campbell Award and a legion of fans.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This omnibus edition collects Spider Robinson's first three books about the Long Island bar that attracts the weirdest clientele and the tallest tales in the known universe. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, and Callahan's Secret are playful, pun-filled delights from the pen of a truly inimitable writer, winner of the Skylark and John W. Campbell awards.

Review

"Nobody's perfect. But Spider comes pretty damned close."--Ben Bova

"If one were ever give the task of creating Spider Robinson from scratch, the best way to do it would be to snatch James Joyce from history, force-feed him Marx Brothers films and good jazz for the better part of a decade, then turn him loose on a world badly in need of a look at itself."--Vancouver Sun

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1 edition (October 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812539370
• ISBN-13: 978-0812539370
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #387,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've worn out my copy re-reading it., February 19, 2001

By 

E. M. Hunt (Donelson, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Callahan Chronicals (Paperback)

I was introduced to Spider Robinson stories by a waitress at Beth's Cafe in Seattle back in 1989, I've been hooked ever since. This is a reprint of some of the "Callahan" Books. If you like Brin, Bujold, Dickson, Frankowski, Heinlein, Hogan, McCaffrey, Modesitt Jr, Rosenberg, or Rowley you will like Spider Robinson. He's unique, but his flavor compliments each of them.

This book includes the previously released books titled: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Time Traveler's Strictly Cash, and Callahan's Secret.

Callahan's is a mythical pub in Halifax where people are healed. Callahan doesn't believe in drinking in the dark, sitting on stools, recorded music, or snoopy questions. Patrons pay $1 for any drink served. After receiving their drink they can exercise their option. They can toe the chalk line, make a toast, and pitch the glass into the fire place OR they can collect their change from the cigar box by the door. It's a place where people learn that pain shared is halved, but joy shared is squared. It's not like A.A. or group therapy, it's more like a place where you celibrate being human. Since it came out I've offered friends and aquantences a money back guarantee; if they don't like it, I'll buy it back at their cost. In the 4 years it's been out I haven't had one taker.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The expression of an ideal, June 3, 2005

By 

Cynthia Cooper "Cyn" (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Callahan Chronicals (Paperback)

Callahan's Place is the ideal of the neighborhood bar: a place people go not so much to drink as to be together and share their lives. The Place's motto is that shared pain is lessened, while shared joy is increased; its regulars are a bunch of working-class joes who have developed an amazing degree of compassion and empathy ... not to mention a matter-of-fact outlook towards the occasional time-traveler or space alien who drops in.

It should be emphatically noted that the Callahan's books are not science fiction, although they're still speculative fiction -- Robinson is exploring the psychological universe, not the physical one. Nevertheless, this book alternates between laugh-out-loud hilarious and deeply moving, almost to the point of spiritual experience.

Unfortunately, as the series went on the stories got longer, incorporated more sci-fi elements and less humanity, and finally turned into just interminable rhapsodizing by Robinson about what would constitute the Ideal Party. All of the good stories (and the first couple of bad ones) are fortunately collected in this convenient volume, thus sparing you the horror that is Callahan's Key.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased, December 23, 2001

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Callahan Chronicals (Paperback)

That's the lesson of Callahan's Bar, and it's why Spider Robinson's Callahan stories are the most warmly _humane_ speculative fiction since Theodore Sturgeon.

Actually the same could be said of his non-Callahan stories, and I've mentioned in another review that the Callahan tales aren't my personal favorites of his work. But they are very, very good; the best of them -- and all of the best are included in the present volume, along with the second-stringers -- will draw you in, rip you apart, fix you up better than before, and then turn you loose to get on with your life. The later Callahan (and para-Callahan) _novels_ are okay too, but the original short stories are like the first twenty-four Holmes tales by Conan Doyle: the later stuff just couldn't touch them. The _very_ best of them (most of which make up most of the first volume) are pure magic.

This collection (the title of which is spelled correctly) assembles all of the original three books, with the exception of the non-Callahan material from _Time Travelers Strictly Cash_. It also incorporates some other neat features, like the 1976 introduction by Ben Bova, a Callahan bibliography, and some additional stuff by Spider (including the Callahan "short story" that was published on the Internet a few years ago).

The stuff has held up mighty well. I usually recommend that newcomers to Robinson start with _Mindkiller_ and _Time Pressure_ (available in the combo volume _Deathkiller_), but you could start here instead if you like. The important thing is to start _somewhere_; Robinson's fiction, profoundly hopeful without being even remotely Pollyanna-ish, is almost a multivolume primer on the difficult art of nonviolent conflict resolution.