Rah, Rah, RAH! Spider Robinson

This collaborative effort sounded too good to be true. The buildup and promo, for a year or more before release, convinced me I could expected to be disappointed. No such luck. No disappointment, Variable Star is a fantastic! It delivers on every promise and is truly a collaborative effort.

The plotting and characters are unmistakeably Heinlein. The voice telling me about them, however, is immediately recognizable as "pure Spider" at his snappy happy best. It's weird to be reading something where I recognize so much of BOTH authors. I've read collaborative works before, and usually, you cannot tell where one author stops and the other begins. They are a seamless pair. Not so here--and that's a good thing, because Spider couldn't be better-suited to speak a Heinlein story if he'd spent the last 50 years practicing reading it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some part of Spider's brain has been getting signals from Heinlein for the last 50 years (and Heinlein's been dead since 1988 for those of you who didn't know ;-))

Heinlein's Future History (from Harriman and Leslie LaCroix to dreams of colonizing Ganymede) is the setting, Spider's unmatched sense of irony is the diction, Heinlein's sense of pacing sets the flow, with little bits of Spider jolts whipping you along into the century. It's just a perfect meshing, matching visitation from beyond--and that's only the first 3 chapters!

You have to get this book--or if you want, White Dwarf Books will get Spider to autograph it for you (alas, no way to get RAH to sign books from beyond the grave--give him a break, he wrote it from beyond the grave, you ingrate!) If you can't afford to buy the HC (yet), start saving your pennies and get thyself to the library--it's in! Then buy this book as soon as you can. You're going to want to read it again and again and again. Check out Spider's Tour Schedule if don't want to buy online and be sure to shake his hand (just be sure he gives it back to you).

Oh, and here's the icing on the cake part: half of the proceeds are being donated to fund the $500,000 Heinlein Prize for commercial manned spaceflight. Support mankind's reach for the stars. Buy a copy of this book.