Callahan's Crosstime Saloon", the first collected volume of Spider Robinsons Callahan's stories...
...My absolute favorite series of stories and novels; which, in all honesty and seriousness, and without any hyperbole at all, I fully credit with saving my sanity, and my soul; more than a couple times...
...Was actually published on the exact day of my birth.
Thank God for that... because it, and the other two collected volumes of stories in the series, "Time Travellers Strictly Cash" and "Callahan's Secret" (all three are now collected in a single volume "The Callahan Chronicles"), were all in paperback a dozen someodd years later, the first time I really needed them.
... There have been many other times I have needed them since...
And the six more novels to follow, between 1989 and 2003, which were also there when I needed them... As was Spider himself once... though only by email, no less a help for it.
I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but my friends who have, and particularly those...more than a couple... who also call him friend; have told me he's just what I would expect him to be, from my experience with him, and his writing, and his music. He is a man who must, by nature, because of his intellect, his empathy, his sincerity, his force of will, his sheer heart... reveal himself in all he does.
I will say without a shadow of a doubt... I would not be alive, or remotely sane today, if it weren't for Spider Robinson, and Callahans... Or if by some awful curse or terrible miracle I was, I would be in prison... or very much worse.
You see.. Callahans law states:
"Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other. Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased - thus do we refute entropy"
If you think you might need Callahans too... I'm happy to help you out as I can. For that matter, theres at least a few thousand people just like me, all around the world, who also know they wouldn't be here, or sane, without Callahans... and without exception, they will help anyone who needs it, if they can.
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased - Thus do we refute entropy.
