Spider Robinson was born on November 24, 1948, in the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA.
In his youth, Spider Robinson spent a year in a seminar and later studied at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he earned a degree in English. In the following years, he lived for some time without technology, in the woods. At that time he moved to Canada and met the one who in 1975 became his wife Jeanne, a choreographer, dancer, and Zen monk.
Spider Robinson’s 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 that 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.
In 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 1982, Spider Robinson published “Mindkiller”, the first novel of the Deathkiller trilogy set in the near future (a new edition moved it forward) in which there are technologies that can directly manipulate a person’s mind. The other novels are “Time Pressure” (1987) and “Lifehouse” (1997).
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.
In 2004, Spider Robinson published “Very Bad Deaths” a science fiction mystery that explores the theme of telepathy with its social implications. In 2004 he published a sequel, “Very Hard Choices”.
The birth of a granddaughter in 2009 was the last happy event for Spider Robinson as the following years were terrible with the death of his wife Jeanne in 2010 and of his daughter Terri in 2014 from various forms of cancer. The author had a heart attack in 2013, another problem that kept him away from his work.
Some time ago Spider Robinson started working on a new novel, a sequel to “Variable Star”, albeit slowly. Many fans are waiting for the return of an author who wrote many science fiction stories, often set on the Earth of the near future in which he uses classic themes to offer insights that go far beyond the initial theme.
