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Lifehouse 9780671858261 Books

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Lifehouse 9780671858261 Books

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Lifehouse 9780671858261 Books Reviews

This was the first Spider Robinson I've read, and I was quite impressed. I think it takes a courageous science fiction writer to write fiction about science fiction. The humor was a nice change of pace from so many other books which take themselves too seriously.
since everyone always seems to be raving about spider robinson, i decided to give him another try. BIG mistake. the plot was juvenile. it was advanced in a mode that stretched beyond the ability to suspend disbelief (in fact, i thought that some of the things that happened must have been manipulated to lead the writers to find the protagonists. there could be no way these many coincidences and chance occurances could happen without being designed). the ending was a goody two-shoes piece of slop, that in no way satisfied. overall, a very poor piece of work. i am surprised that i managed to finish it.
As a third part to follow up to Mindkiller and Time Pressure, it certainly fits into the group. I did not much like Time Pressure, finding it, to my mind, "rather New Agey." Lifehouse does not dwell too much on the "technologies" of that book, which strikes me as being a good thing.
It presents stories of three couples - "God-like" time travellers protecting their critical secret, - Con artists assortedly seeking "the new con," and then being pursued for stumbling onto "the secret," and - Secret Masters of Fandom, at first sucked into the "big con," but then showing their own initiative to hunt down the con artists. (I lived near the store at the location where they were described as having bought the pistol... The store primarily sells ugly Art Deco "antiques.")
As a "classic" Spider Robinson read, it presents the perhaps-too-clever in- jokes and terrifying puns for which he is famed. And comes up with some new twists on things, and ample "turnings of tables."
I would bet that this book is of special interest to SF fans in Victoria and Toronto; there are references to things that I almost recognize...
This is the third volume in the trilogy that started with Mind Killer and continued with Time Pressure (which are collected together in one volume as Deathkiller). However, the relationship is tenuous between this book and the other two, and for this particular work I'd actually recommend that you don't read the others prior, as I think it would negatively color your impression of this one.
Lifehouse represents a return to Spider's normal outrageous situations and punning humor, couched in a tale of two con artists, Paul and June, SMOFs (Secret Masters of Fandom), and time travelers. Early in the story the SMOFs (in this case, a husband and wife, Wally and Moira, who have been fans and known each other so long they are almost telepathic with each other) are presented with a wild tale by a midnight visitor who arrives with a bang, minus clothing, and claims to be a time traveler who has unfortunately missed his target date by a few years. Naturally, the 'time traveler' would like Wally and Moira to help in changing history just a little bit - ensuring that John Lennon does not get assassinated. Of course, the Wally and Moira are also Beatles fans, and off we go on a pretty wild romp through the ins and outs of multiple con games, time and other paradoxes, manhunts, and puzzle solving the old fashioned way, by thinking.
Along the way, Spider maintains a humorous undertone, as noted by chapter titles like "Grok and Roll" and sentences like "They left and locked the car, and, since it was late at night, crossed Point Grey Road on foot without the customary side effect of dying." But much of the story is a serious investigation into ethics, morals (can con-men have morals? Can ethics impose absolute restrictions on the actions of time travelers?), and individuality versus the 'Group Mind' that true telepathy would make possible. The characters come across as highly intelligent, personable, and believable people caught in situations that are only partially due to their own actions, but must (and can) rely on their own wits to save the day.
Readers who have never attended a science fiction convention or been seriously involved in SF fandom may miss some of Spider's underhanded references, and some of the specified technology will seem absolutely ancient (which is merely an indication of how fast computing technology is changing). But these are fairly minor quibbles with what is generally a very readable story, one that occasionally made me laugh out loud, always kept me grinning, and provided some good food for thought when finished.
This is one of the books in the Lifehouse series. As before, Spider had done a fine job of keeping the reader on edge and guessing.
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