Sharedpain is lessened; sharedjoy, increased — thus do we refuteentropy.
Spider Robinson (born24 November1948) is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author. Spider states that the internet rumors of his name being, or having been, Paul Robinson are incorrect.
There are in factLaws of Conservation ofPain andJoy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.In aculture wherepessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raisehopes, like hothouse flowers.
Originally published in the March 1981 issue ofOmni. Page numbers from the reprint inTerry Carr (ed.),The Best Science Fiction of the Year 11,ISBN 0-671-44483-2
Would he grow up to be Maker, Taker, or Faker?
p. 281
Okay, I grant you the provisional status of human beings. Let’s deal.
Omnibus edition of the first three Callahan books,Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, andCallahan's Secret. Page numbers from the trade paperback first edition, published by Tor Books in 1997,ISBN 0-812-53937-0, 4th printing.
In aculture wherepessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raisehopes, like hothouseflowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick ofTime was backward enough to think that theworld can look just that essential tad better when seen through a glass, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.)Above all, he—and his goofball customers—believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased. Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or hislove again.
Backword (p. xii)
I mean, progress is something with no pity and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew and spits out things you can’t understand and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money. What the hell is the sense of progress anyway?
The Time-Traveler (p. 31)
“You know,” he said with a dangerous high note in his voice, “in all the nine years the prayers never stopped rising from that filthy little cell. For the first three years we prayed that someone would deposeEl Supremo. For approximately the next three years Mary prayed constantly that my faith in God would return. Then, for about a year I prayed to I-don’t-know-who that Mary would live. And after malaria took her, I spent my time praying to anyone who would listen for a chance to killEl Supremo with my own hands.”
The Time-Traveler (p. 41)
Just as there areLaws of Conservation of Matter andEnergy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation ofPain andJoy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.
The Law of Conservation of Pain (p. 96)
She was pretty enough to make a preacher kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
Tom said what struck him was how little progress churches have made in two hundred years toward convincing people that the unknown is not by definition evil.
A Voice is Heard in Ramah… (p. 112)
The prime datum of the Universe is that life survives by eating life, and no other way. The expense of eating is, in great part, the resistance the second life offers to being eaten.
Unnatural Causes (p. 132)
You humans are at least aware of that supreme paradox—that free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group—although you can’t work with it.
Unnatural Causes (p. 133)
You can show a dozen guys murderin’ each other on TV but you can’t ever show two people making love. The naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman.
The Wonderful Conspiracy (p. 150)
Next morning I decided that hangovers are like sex—the second time isn’tquite as painful. If the analogy held, by tomorrow I’d be enjoying it.
Pyotr’s Story (p. 288)
If we have to, we can all go to Hell together—maybe there’s a group rate.
The Mick of Time (p. 340)
Sharedpain is lessened; sharedjoy is increased; thus do we refuteentropy.
Post Toast (p. 388). Known as "Callahan's Law." On the back cover ofCallahan's Legacy (1996) this is modified into "Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased (and bad puns are appreciated)."
“To all theCallahan's Places there ever were or ever will be,” Spider Robinson says, “whatever they may be called—and to all the merry maniacs andhappyfools who are fortunate enough to stumble into one: may none of them arrive too late!”
Page numbers from the mass market paperback edition, published by Baen Books in September 2001,ISBN 0-671-31831-4, first printing.
Italics as in the book
There are basically three kinds of prostitute: street hooker, call girl, and house whore. Each kind is convinced that the other two are the lowest of the low.
Chapter 2, “The House” (p. 35)
This is a House ofhealthy repute—no sleaze, fleas or social disease.
Chapter 2, “The House” (p. 37)
Lady Sally does not permit any kind of contempt here. Not even self-contempt. Maybe especially not self-contempt. Art with contempt in it is always sour.
Chapter 2, “The House” (p. 49)
If you’ve lived a bad life, they send you to Hell. But if you’ve been trulywicked, they give you a tour of Heaven first….
Chapter 3, “Final Exam” (p. 59)
Don’t waste time blaming the bull if you can’t make it moo.
Chapter 4, “Repeat Business” (p. 96)
As the poet tells us: once a king, always a king—but once a night is often sufficient.
Chapter 4, “Repeat Business” (p. 100)
Oh, any bordello hears secrets, by definition: if our culture were not so sick that natural healthy urges are deadly secrets, there would be little need for bordellos. Father Newman suggested once, only half kidding, that we artists—that all prostitutes—function rather like priests for people who feel more natural confessing their sins while naked.
Chapter 6, “For the Asking” (p. 129)
Maybe I’m being illogical. I like word games, anagrams, palindromes, verbal puzzles: why are they okay and straight puns abhorrent? I think because in a straight pun, all the cleverness and wit has been used to poke a hole through the very idea of language, the possibility of communicating unambiguously with words—and that’s too dismaying to be funny to me.
Chapter 6, “For the Asking” (p. 132)
Take it from your Aunt Maureen: if there is any way you can arrange your affairs so as to avoid dropping into whorehouse garbage from a great height, naked in February, then that is almost certainly the course your life should take.
Chapter 6, “For the Asking” (p. 149)
My father used to say that you couldn’t trust Soviet technology—unless it was a weapon. “Paranoids,” he said, “can be relied on to make the best weapons.”
Chapter 6, “For the Asking” (p. 154)
An unkind God gave us more tender places than He gave us hands to cover them.
Chapter 7, “The Paranoid” (p. 161)
Please, dear. Vengeance is counterproductive. Not to mention the fact that it gets your soul all sticky.
Chapter 7, “The Paranoid” (p. 182)
The Professor had come back from the Infinite. His eyes unrolled, his shoulders slumped slightly, and he acquired a wistful smile, as of one leaving Paradise to attend a sales convention in Columbus, Ohio.
Chapter 9, “Dollars to Donuts” (p. 220)
“Any time you offer your honor, I will gladly honor your offer.” “‘—and all night long it was on ’er and off ’er,’” Mary said.
Chapter 9, “Dollars to Donuts” (p. 223)
He stroked my hair. “But don’t worry. To coin a phrase, I have a plan.”
Chapter 9, “Dollars to Donuts” (p. 236)
It is relatively foolproof—but you’re right, I forgot to make it moronproof.
Chapter 11, “Willoughby, Weep for Me” (p. 264)
Terror leaves you when you despair; once you let yourself hope again it returns redoubled.
The delusion that one's sexual pattern isThe Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observingreality.
"God is aniron," I said. "Did you know that?" I turned to look at her and she was staring. She laughed experimentally, stopped when I failed to join in. "And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass?"If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, thenGod is aniron.AsBob Dylan forgot to say,To live outside thelaw, you must belucky.
I smelled her before I saw her. Even so, the first sight was shocking.
First lines
I had just seen the two most horrible things. The first was thesmile. They say that when the bomb went off at Hiroshima, some people'sshadows were baked onto walls by it. I think thatsmile got baked on the surface of mybrain in much the same way. I don't want to talk about that smile.
Five days of wireheading alone should have killed her, never mind sudden cold turkey.
Animated the face might have been beautiful — any set of features can supportbeauty — but even a superb makeup job could not have made her pretty.
I was putting together a picture of alife that would have depressed anyone with the sensitivity of a rhino. Back when I had first seen her, when her features were alive, she had looked sensitive. Or had that been a trick of the juice?
I've tried it with men and women and boys and girls, in the dark and in the desert sun, with people I cared for and people I didn't give a damn about, and I have never understood the pleasure in it. The best it's ever been for me is not uncomfortable.
"God is an iron," I said. "Did you know that?" I turned to look at her and she was staring. She laughed experimentally, stopped when I failed to join in. "And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass?" "If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is aniron. Or else He's the dumbest designer that ever lived."
Man has historically devoted much more subtle and ingenious thought to inflictingcruelty than to giving otherspleasure — which, given his gregariousnature, would seem a much moresurvival-oriented behavior. Poll any hundred people at random and you'll find at least twenty or thirty who know all there is to know about psychologicaltorture and psychic castration — and maybe two who know how to give a terrific back-rub.
Call it…joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done agood thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of theuniverse just seems especially apt. It's nowhere near as flashy and intense as pleasure can be.Believe me! But it's gotsomething going for it. Something that can make you do without pleasure, or even accept a lot ofpain, to get it.
"It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talking about is there — but there's another kind of drive, another kind of force that's working against it. Or else there wouldn't still be any people and there wouldn't be the words to have this conversation and—" She paused, looked down at herself. "And I wouldn't be here to say them."
Now I can say that I have sampled the spectrum of the pleasure system at both ends — none and all there is — and I think the rest of my life I will dedicate myself to the middle of the road and see how that works out. Starting with the very weak tea and toast I'm going to ask you to bring me in another ten minutes or so. With maltose. But as for this other stuff, this joy thing, that I would like to begin learning about, as much as I can. I don't really know aGod damned thing about it, but I understand it has something to do withsharing andcaring and what did you say yourname was?
Author's Postscript to the story. This story is also the second chapter of his novelMindkiller (1982) and appears as the title story in the collectionGod Is An Iron and Other StoriesISBN 0-7862-4162-4 ·Cover art for Book
The only kind of church I'd want to belong to is the one where no one can quite remember who the hell the prophet was or what exactly it was he did and they wouldn't recognize him if he showed up.
Over and over again I find in my short stories that I am, by policy, optimistic. Looking back on it and thinking it over after 25 years, I'm real proud of that. If that's a defect, it's a defect I'm sinfully proud of and I hope I can manage to maintain that excessively optimistic attitude for another 25 years.
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