Spider Robinson was born on November 24, 1948 in the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. His career as a science fiction writer began in 1973, with the publication of the short story “The Guy with the Eyes” in the magazine “Analog Science Fiction”, the first set in a fictional universe which includes the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. The author wrote other stories that have that place in common: the first ones were collected in the anthology “Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon” in 1977.

The 1976 the novella “By Any Other Name” won the Hugo Award and was expanded in the novel “Telempath”, published in 1977, set in a dystopian future in which civilization is in ruins. Spider Robinson did even better with the 1977 novella, written with his wife, which won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards and became the first part of a novel with the same title published in 1978. In the following years the couple published the two sequels “Starseed” (1991) and “Starmind” (1995).

In 2001 Spider Robinson published “The Free Lunch”, inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s juveniles, so much so that the title is a reference to his famous phrase “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. The inspiration is even greater in his 2006 novel “Variable Star”, since it was developed from a 7-page outline for a novel written by Heinlein in 1955.