What do You think about Time Travellers Strictly Cash (2001)?
The reason this book scored so low is the downright serious taking both the Lord Jesus Christ's and God's names in vain and the profanity in the stories that weren't Callahan's Place.The cover picture has nothing to do with the stories in the book. The aliens are not in the book. You might say one of the ones on the cover is in a story, except he is drawn as an alien instead of a human. The lady is very sad, not happy. The other humans, unless I missed someone, do not look like anyone in the book.60% of the short stories in this book are written for Callahan's Place(Bar) where "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased". Many strange things happen at Callahan's Place including a time traveler story and a someone coming into this continuum from another one. There is very little profanity in the Callahan's Place stories.There is one great chapter (IMHO) about the affect that R.A.H. (Robert A. Heinlein's) short stories and novels have had on people and the world in general. He is my favorite science fiction author.Since it would be impractical to get the Robert A. Heinlein's chapter copies right two sided, and get them collated right, let alone the Callahan's Place also, Since I do not want to reread the taking both the Lord Jesus Christ's and God's names in vain, which I would have to do to find which non-Callahan's Place chapter to avoid I am going to use a Sharpie® on the front cover to say read only the R.A.H. chapter and the Callahan's Place chapters.
—Russell Fletcher
Actual rating: 2.5 starsI am rapidly coming to the conclusion that my sensibilities just do not mesh with those of author Spider Robinson. I think he is strong on writing skills, but his sense of humour and mine miss by a mile. He punning skills are high (and there is lots of it in his Callahan’s stories), but I find them more of a mental puzzle to figure out, rather than amusing. But that’s just me.This little volume of stories has only 4 actual Callahan’s tales in it. The rest is filler—and much of it is now dated. One section became Chapter 2 of his novel Mindkiller (which I read earlier this year and was very “meh” about). There were a couple of speeches which were passably interesting, but a bit dated (hard to avoid that with thirty year old opinion pieces).For those of you who are die-hard Callahan fans, don’t miss these stories. They were the best part of the collection. Those of you seeking time-travel tales may be somewhat disappointed—there is only one tale involving a time traveler who shows up at Callahan’s.Robinson is a very good writer and I wish I could appreciate him more.Book number 180 of my SF&F reading project.
—Wanda
Short shorts that play around with some of the classic concepts of sci-fi fiction. Perhaps my favorite of the series, but be warned: puns happen more frequently than just Punsday Night."Fivesight" about a woman who's husband could see negative events three hours into the future. One of the few Callahan bar stories that is told by a woman. It works well, achieving a quite poignant tone with a twist."Dog Day Evening" happens on Tall Tales Night, but puns also seem to be part of the agenda. A human and a dog walk into a bar... and it's a sci=fi twist what happens next, but safe to say it involves a time-traveling Temporal Agent. I enjoyed it."Have You Heard the One...?" was Tale Tales Night again, and an intergalactic traveling salesman steals the show. Almost literally. Another fun twist."Mirror, Mirror off the Wall" is another sci-fi thought experiment on closely aligned worlds. A little confusing.
—Carol.
