Customer Reviews

Melancholy Elephants

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For anyone who has driven the back routes of New York, hoping to be lucky enough spend an evening at Callahan's. If you dream of being a stardancer, or even just living to see one.... BUY THIS BOOK! I know, it may be out of print, and there may be some lead time on getting it, but each and every story is worth the wait. "Half an Oaf" will have you in stitches as it looks into the possibilities of time travel available to the masses. "High Infidelity" is a bawdy tale, which hilights the joy of a relationship that WORKS. The title story poses some very pointed questions about the nature of art and creation in a world flooded with information. If you love the way Spider tells a tale, these tales MUST become part of your collection.

This book is from 1985.
It contains the title selection and 11 others, including 'Rubber Soul' and "Concordiat to 'Rubber Soul'", which is of interest to Beatles fans.

There is also a story about a time-traveling gangster called 'Chronic Offender'. In this story, on page 124, he uses the word 'muggles', which is pretty funny.
This is a good book to complete a Spider Robinson collection.

The title story is very good, in the classic SF mode. It's brief and taut, pulling the reader into a setting that feels real.
My favorites, though, are the final two stories, "Satan's Children" and "Not Fade Away"
The former is a story of Truth hitting the world in chemical form. It's intriguing, interesting, and also simply fun to read.
The latter describes humanity's far future, and describes a beautiful goal for us, something to hope for.

Melancoly elephants is a classic collection by another modern master of the genre. Spider Robinson has been compared to Robert A. Heinlein, and I believe the comparison holds true in the arenas of originality and imagination. Certainly he's more readable than the grand master himself, whose style could be wooden, especially in dealing with woman characters. Many of these stories are also very short. Robinson likes to grab you with one perfect idea and then let you go. Others have more depth like the title story, which feels even more relevant in today's world of iPods than when it was written in the 80s. He also has an especially good ear for dialogue, and I'll be re-reading more of his works.

I love Spider Robinson's work a lot, because of his strengths and in spite of his occasional weaknesses. But this volume is special, one of my "desert island" books, the ones I don't ever want to live without. Distilled essence of much of what I love best in what Spider has to offer. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.