Spider Robinson

Spider Robinson (born November 24, 1948) is an American-born Canadian Hugo Award- and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author. 2Early life and education Robinson was born in the Bronx, New York City, New York. He attended a Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the 1960s, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English. While at Stony Brook, Spider earned a reputation as a great entertainer at campus coffeehouses and gatherings, strumming his guitar and singing in harmony with his female partner. In his 20s, he "spent several years in the woods, deliberately trying to live without technology." In 1971, just out of college, he got a night job guarding sewers in New York City. He wrote his first published science fiction story, "The Guy with The Eyes", to get out of that job. In 1975 he married Jeanne Robinson, a choreographer, dancer, and Sōtō Zen monk, who co-wrote his Stardance Trilogy. They had a daughter, Terri Luanna da Silva, who once worked for Martha Stewart. According to Robinson, he had always been known as "Robbie", a contraction of his last name, until he became sick of it, feeling "it was kind of a juvenile name for a college man." He asked his friends for a new first name, and they came up with "Spider", though each for a different reason. 2Writing Robinson made his first short-story sale in 1972 to Analog Science Fiction magazin