Melancholy Elephants

Maybe I'm too hooked on Callahan's, maybe I just too recently read a Callahan, but this didn't hit the same way. Don't get me wrong, these have the expected Spider level of funny, ironic twist endings (a few puns), a focus on feelings and emotions of our characters as the focal point with the genre trappings as just framing devices. Still a solid collection, but just wasn't scratching the itch quite the same.
I think the only thing I didn't particularly enjoy was the weird two part story about the Beatles and out of body experiences.

"Pico review" written for the SF fanzine OtherRealms, June 1989: Excellent short story collection, including the 1982 Hugo winner, the title story. A few puns, but more serious in overall tone than Robinson's Callahan's stories. Both "No Renewal" and "In the Olden Days" make unpleasant points about the kind of society our world's current greed and lack of conservation are leading too, so does "Melancholy Elephants", in a way. "Father Paradox" is a different solution to the time travel "kill an ancestor" plot. "Chronic Offender" is a time travel story on the "you can't really change anything" model. "Rubber Soul" and "Satan's Children" are my favorites of the bunch. Though I'm not quite old enough to get all the references in "Rubber show more Soul", I did realize who it was about rather quickly, and the detailed footnoted explanations are as interesting as the story itself (to say more would be a definite spoiler). show less

Again, seriously good shorts, though it duplicates many of the stories in another collection or two.

I read this over a long period of time. I managed to read through the end of it relatively recently. The range of writing in this is pretty amazing. I find that most authors tend to fall into writing very similar stuff over time. In a way this might read as that, I don't really know.

The title story won a Hugo (deservedly), but one of the most interesting pieces, especially for those of you too young to remember the original events being discussed, is the "Concordiat to 'Rubber Soul'" (and "Rubber Soul," too). It's a good collection. Not all the stories are perfect, but enough of them are.

It's worth noting that this is the US edition, which had two stories added, and one taken away. For the purists, the missing story is:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?59016 {It's a Sunny Day}

and the two added are:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?351391 (Common Sense)
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?351411 (Father Paradox)

I also don't see the (Concordiat to "Rubber Soul") listed in the Canadian version. show more (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?351401) show less

Twelve stories by Spider published only in Canada. Thank goodness Spider decided to leave the USA and settle here.