Book fair

Yesterday was the annual Library of Congress (and Laura Bush) Book Fair on the National Mall. There was a smaller group of familiar authors there this time than the last few years. I mostly went to see Spider Robinson. He's a sci-fi writer and author of the Callahan's Bar^* stories. His wife, Jeannie, was there, too since they've put out three books together. She's a dancer and helped him write books about dancers in space.

He also recently released a book that was started with Robert Heinlein. Heinlein wrote the outline decades ago and it recently surfaced after his wife died. At some writer's panel at a sci-fi convention someone suggest that Spider finish it. A few weeks later he had the outline and turned it out. I'll write the review when I finish reading it.

Then I stood in line for him to sign one of the Callahan books. I figure that's what introduced me to that author so that's what I wanted signed. We talked briefly. He's great. He and his wife are basically still hippies.

Before Spider was the guy who wrote the book "Thank You For Smoking" which recently became a great movie. Instead of pimping his book or the movie he just performed a brilliant 30 minute routine about the trouble naming books.

All the speakers were video taped and should eventually be on the C-Span 2 website.
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^*Callahan's isn't sci-fi. It's just a great bar full of funny people. Ideal books for pun lovers.