i suspect the books have not aged well at all but i was thinking, you know who we could really use right now?
mike callahan from spider robinson's callahan's crosstime saloon books
i would fucking kill for a callahan's franchise in the area right now, rea or virtual
i tried once, i really did, sorry guys
@zebratron2084 I have a lot of respect for that series, but mostly for it hitting precisely in the time of my life where I needed its basic lessons the most; right around the back half of high school, when I was slowly piecing together rationalizations for my borderline-sociopathic outlook on life. It did a very good job of making me reorganize and actually start treating the outside world as if anyone else mattered or had feelings, and I'll always be thankful for that.
That being said, haha, yeah, nah, the books have so many goddamned problems that I wasn't really able to pick up on at the time.
...Well, okay, just about every book after the bar blew up was complete drivel, and I knew that at the time, but they were still fun.
You made me go check my shelves. Looks like that was a library book.
@zebratron2084 It's a series I never got into, although its hardcore fans were *way* less hard to deal with than, like, Monty Python fans were. I could understand why it should theoretically appeal.
If curious, James Nicoll did a look at the first collection recently and ... yeah, the stories didn't age well. Lot of commenters agreed yeah, but it was of value at the right time.
@xinjinmeng This looks promising, thank you!
@zebratron2084 Oddly, those came across my radar again when I was reading a couple of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books—there are a couple homages to those in the Callahan’s series. (The McGee books, a kind of “Florida noir” mystery series, have…really not aged well, but I have my own Florida noir story series and was reading for background inspiration. My protagonist is, naturally, not a taciturn womanizing cynic, but an amiable middle-aged lesbian squirrel.)
@zebratron2084 Seek the wilds of Route 25A and look not for neon.
Mike's a hard legacy to live up to.