Since he began writing professionally in 1972, Spider Robinson has won three Hugos, a Nebula, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the E.E. ("Doc") Smith Memorial Award (Skylark), the Pat Terry Memorial Award for Humorous Science Fiction, and Locus Awards for Best Novella and Best Critic; 18 of his 23 books are still in print, in 10 languages. His short work has appeared in magazines around the planet, from OMNI and Analog to Xhurnal Izobretatel i Rationalizator (Inventor & Innovator Journal ; Moscow), and in numerous anthologies. His most recent solo novel is THE CALLAHAN TOUCH [Ace hardcover Oct 93/paperback Oct 94]. A role-playing game based on three of his books, CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON, is available from Steve Jackson Games; a Callahan's computer game is forthcoming from Legend Entertainment; and the Usenet newsgroup alt.callahans, inspired by the Callahan series, is presently rated the 151st largest newsgroup by bits posted, 172nd by messages posted, and propagates to over 60% of all Usenet sites-very high for a non-pornographic "alt." group.
He was born in the Bronx in late 1948, on three successive days (they had to handle him in sections), and holds a Bachelors degree in English from the State University of New York. In 1992 he was the Toastmaster for the 50th World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando.
He has been married for twenty years to Jeanne Robinson, a Boston-born writer, modern dance choreographer, former dancer, and teacher of both dance and the Alexander Technique; she founded and was Artistic Director of Halifax's Nova Dance Theatre during its seven-year history. Her most recent work of choreography, Zenki-zu, premiered at the Women In View Festival in Vancouver.
The Robinsons collaborated on the Hugo-, Nebula- and Locus-winning 1976 classic novel STARDANCE [Baen Books pb, Dec 91; Easton Press leatherbound 92], which created the concept of zero-gravity dance, and on its sequels, STARSEED [Ace hc and pb, Oct 91/92, Easton Press leatherbound 91] and STARMIND [Ace hc and pb, Easton leather, June 95/Feb 96.] (Jeanne was on NASA's short list for a Space Shuttle seat, to try out zero-gee dance in practice - until the Challenger Tragedy ended the Civilian In Space programme.)
The Robinsons met in the woods of Nova Scotia in the early 1970s. Their daughter, Terri, is presently attending Simon Fraser University.
Spider's next solo release will be CALLAHAN'S LEGACY [St. Martin's hc 1996; Tor pb 1997], to be followed by St. Martin's/Tor with an omnibus reissue of the first three Callahan's Place books. In May, Baen Books released DEATHKILLER, a combined reissue of two related non-Callahan novels, MINDKILLER and TIME PRESSURE (a third companion volume, LIFEHOUSE, is in progress).
Spider and Jeanne have lived for the last eight years in Vancouver, British Columbia, where they raise and exhibit hopes.
To see a complete list of Spider & Jeanne's works, click here!