Fantasy Fiction, Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Other Fantasy Fiction Categories, Other Science Fiction Categories
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Overview
It's more than twenty years since Spider Robinson revealed the existence of Callahan's bar, and the original bar is gone. Mike Callahan is gone, too, but not forgotten. His spirit lives on in the new bar, called Mary's Place, named for his daughter. On this particular morning, Jake Stonebender, proprietor of Mary's Place, wakes up and crawls out of bed, not realizing how big a mistake he's made. It's going to be one of those days. It's not that his lovely wife, Zoey Berkowitz, is nine and a half months pregnant. Maybe it's the early morning knock on the door and the incredibly ugly person who greets Jake and startles him so badly that he spills Zoey's urine sample - all over the misshapen mistake of nature standing in front of him. That's when he realizes that this is going to be a day of reckoning. After this inauspicious start, the day takes a turn for the worse when a huge storm rips the roof off the bar - and moments later drops another, better roof on it. Then the guy with the suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills arrives and starts making them into paper airplanes that he cheerfully launches toward the fireplace. That's when Mary Callahan and her husband, Mickey Finn, show up, unconscious, appearing literally out of nowhere. And they have bad news. They've come to warn the barfolk that a three-eyed, three-toed, three-everythinged purple monster - the nastiest, most vile servant of the Beast - is going to descend on them within mere hours. The fate of life on Earth will depend on the collective karma of the bar when they confront this all-powerful monster. Through laughter and tears, with puns powerful enough to melt Formica, the most famous bar in all of spacetime is going to rock this night...but will the Earth survive?Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
First novel-sized entry in Robinson's series of tall stories (the first collection appeared in 1976) about Callahan's Bar (Callahan's Lady, 1989, etc.). Though the original Callahan's is gone, the tradition continues—alcohol-lubricated jokes, puns, histrionics and all—at Mary's Place, where Callahan's daughter, Mary, and her husband, the retired alien assassin Mickey Finn, preside, and proprietor/bartender Jake Stonebender's partner, Zoey Berkowitz, is an uncomfortable nine and a half months pregnant. The patrons include: Naggeneen, an Irish psi-powered leprechaun; the probability-bending Lucky Duck; Ralph von Wau Wau the taking dog; Solace the Artificial Intelligence; and various aliens, machines, and reconstituted personalities, such as the scientist Nikola Tesla. Even the time-traveling Mike Callahan himself shows up, to warn the company of an impending alien invasion by a three-eyed, three-legged purple cyborg Lizard. So as Jake pours drinks and coffee with a liberal hand, and Zoey at last gives birth, the assembly must figure out how to defeat the invader. After, that is, the bar's roof has been ripped off by a tornado, only to be replaced moments later by another, better roof—it's that sort of place.A riot for Callahan addicts; newcomers may find it to be an acquired taste.
Ben Bova
“Nobody’s perfect, but Spider comes pretty damned close.”[Spider Robinson] "embodies the best of Sturgeon, Heinlein, and Asimov."
"Spider Robinson is the Tom Robbins of the 21st century."
"A riot for Callahan's addicts."
Book Details
Published
August 28, 1996
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Pages
219
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780737219289