The Dudeism Forum

Hiya fellow Duderinos and Brother Shami.  I'm recently ordained and new to the forum.  If I used the search function correctly (of this I am uncertain), then nobody has yet posted on the Great Dudes in History board about the great Spider Robinson.  To my mind, that guy is one of the Dudeliest of all.  He writes some deeply humanist sci-fi, is one of the true original hippies, and has a gloriously limber mind. 

He understands pain.  His writing can take you to a very dark place, a world of pain, then bring you back out into the light again.  For optimal Dudeliness, I recommend the "Stardance" trilogy that he co-wrote with his dance choreographer/zen buddhist wife Jeanne.  It's about pioneering zero-gravity dance, being ambassadors to an alien race that communicates through movement, and preparing for the next step in human evolution by pursuing a state of ultimate zen.  In space.

Then you got your "Callahan's Place" series, wherein a motley crew of laid-back types hang out in a bar where all types of crazy shit tends to go down.  And not only do they keep their minds exceptionally limber with colossal amounts of alcohol, silly songs and appalling puns, but they all stand ready at all times, waiting for someone to tumble through the door with a problem, just so they can all drop everything and help.  They save the world more than once without leaving the bar.  It's the most Dudelike state of heroism I've seen in fiction.

Anyway, that's just like, my opinion.  I can only assume I'm preaching to a fair-sized choir here, but hopefully some of you will be turned on to something you'll dig and that you haven't heard of.  The man got me through some very rough patches.

Kogwheal dude, just dropped in to give a hearty dude like welcome to our beach community. Good to have you here, mang! Interesting comments on Spider Robinson. Grab a place on the rug and abide, dude! Oh yeah, almost forgot; bars' over there.

Thanks, DB.  Glad to be here.  Got signed up as a lark, to (hopefully) make it legal to officiate a friend's wedding, and went this way instead of Universal Life Church because TBL is tied with Casablanca as my favorite movie.  But then, the more I looked at it, the more I realized this here ethos actually described my spiritual views better than anything else I'd found.

Hi Kogwheal, welcome, all the usual bars over there, grab a rug etc.

Can you recomend anything to start with by this guy?

Well, the Callahan's Place series is probably the all-around most laid back sci fi series I've read.  "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" was the first volume.  There are a bunch of short stories, and later on some novels, which kind of rely on you knowing the characters through the short stories. 

Mixed in there you have the two spinoff books, "Callahan's Lady" and "Lady Slings the Booze", both of which are set in the brothel run by the bartender's wife.  This entire sage is fraught with puns and abiding optimism.

The "Stardance" series consists of "Stardance", "Starseed" and "Starmind".  Great stuff, lots of zen and the human condition, plus musing on the mechanics of dancing without gravity (like the battle room stuff in Ender's Game, with less violence).

Also excellent:  The "Lifehouse" trilogy, consisting of "Mindkiller", "Time Pressure" and "Lifehouse".  This story as a whole explores a non-theistic afterlife theory, and focuses on hippies, academics, sci fi nerds and con men.

Basically, make sure you start at the beginning of a series.

Or grab a collection of unrelated short stories, like "User Friendly" or "By Any Other Name".  Or his super-bizarre 80's future vision of a race war in Manhattan, "Night of Power".  Be aware that this guy never paid a hell of a lot of attention to conventional story pacing.  It's weird, it's like he skips the whole middle act sometimes, but I kind of love that unpredictability.

And then there's "Very Bad Deaths", which is pretty nasty, comparatively.  You've got an old hippie and a telepath, so it's definitely Spider, but the villain is the flat-out evillest sonofabitch I think I've ever read.  Definitely in a much darker mold.

I've never actually read anything by Spider, but I've seen him in a few interviews. So far, he seems very cool.

Yeah, even if I didn't love his writing I'd just love to hang out with the guy.  He seems very... well, Dude.  He basically became a writer because the market for folk singers seemed to be drying up at the time.

Hey Kogwheal. Welcome.

I've never heard of this guy but I love the idea of the dudes at the bar. I'm going to download Calahan's Saloon. I'll let you know how I get on.

Peace dude.

Welcome Kogwheal dude!

I love Spider Robinson!  I've read much of the Callahan series and the tone could be very dude, much of the time.   In fact, in times of dire crisis, the solution was usually found and achieved in a very Dudely fashion.  I don't know much of Spider personally, so I can't cast my vote for him, but if he's anything like the ideals he proffered in the Callahan series, I'm happy to second the nomination.