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Callahan's Key  By  cover art

Callahan's Key

By: Spider Robinson
Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
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Publisher's summary

Nobody blends good science with bad puns as brilliantly as Spider Robinson. Now he's back with the latest chapter of the Callahan saga: an improbable tale of impending doom, a road trip, space, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

The universe is in desperate peril. Due to a cluster of freakish phenomena, the United States' own defense system has become a doomsday machine, threatening the entire universe. Only one man can save everything-as-we-know-it from annihilation. Unfortunately, he's not available. So the job falls instead to bar owner Jake Stonebender, his wife Zoey, and their superintelligent toddler, Erin, not to mention two dozen busloads of ex-hippies and freaks, Robert Heinlein's wandering cat, a whorehouse parrot, and misunderstood genius-inventor, Nikola Tesla, who is in fact alive and well.

©2000 Spider Robinson (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Fans and the uninitiated alike will devour this intoxicating blend of character comedy and hard sci-fi, for [Spider] Robinson's writing remains as potentially addictive and as full of earthy delight as [Jake] Stonebender's famed Irish coffee." (Publishers Weekly)
"[Spider] Robinson resembles [Robert] Heinlein in his mild anarchism; oft-cited, never described sex; and characters that think they're smarter than the rest of us, and are." (Booklist)
"I'd nominate Spider Robinson as the new Robert Heinlein." (The New York Times)

What listeners say about Callahan's Key

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Stupid

This was my first Spider Robinson book and maybe I should have read the previous Callahan's books first to better understand the story. I thought it was plain stupid. Looking at the reviews - you either love it or hate it. I did not want to waste a credit so I listened to the end - would not recommend this book to anybody.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

The New Spider is not a new Heinlein

"Callahan's Key" is about as far from a Heinlein tale is you can get. Heinlein dealt with the individualist. Spider in this book became very political and 'Green'. His characters formed committees to work on problems. Heinlein characters felt that committees were creatures with many legs and no brains. This is too bad since the early Callahan tales in Analog had such potential.

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