I first read one of Spider's short short stories in either an Analog or a Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine (my dad's hand-me-downs). I do remember it being a Callahan's Crosstime Saloon short, and I was instantly hooked. I couldn't get enough of his stories. Then, in 1986 I read Night Of Power, which was a nakedly ant-American diatribe. Yes, there were Spider's typically interesting thoughts out-loud (one was trying to produce a combination oven - which makes cold things hot - and a freezer - which makes hot things cold, as both do what they do by heat exchange. THAT has stuck in my mind for years).I was dismayed about the main character's (I don't remember their names but I have never forgotten this novel) purchasing pornography for themselves and their teenage daughter. I remember Robinson's recommending that several states be emptied of whites and given to blacks (great idea, moron: The whites thrown out of their houses would do that with smiles upon their faces? Maybe in Canuck Land. We are allowed to own firearms. The black population would be reduced to near extinction level in this country if your bright idea had ever been adopted. You hate the nation of your birth, that much is evident. I've an acquaintance, a Québécois Colonel in the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment. He owns a vehicle that is produced in the United States and is sold in both Canada and the USA. His version costs 10 thousand dollars (US) more than the identical vehicle sold here in order to feed Canada's ravenous socialist ideals. He is in awe of US military power, likes the US but without a doubt loves and is loyal to his nation. But I know from several discussions with him that he is unhappy with the path the US has taken since 2009, and is afraid that the US is the next Canada. Spider is a terrific storyteller but he lost this voracious reader of all things Spider Robinson after I forced myself to finish his anti-American rant. Hey, dude, WE have a Black President (who, as you may or may not know is an incompetent, arrogant and thoroughly racialist Marxist asshole). When are YOU bozo's going to elect an Inuit Prime Minister?)
Spider Robinson's heart is in the right place, but the thought experiment he creates with this novel is not sane. Black people seceding from the United States--by seizing New York state--would not help black people. Also, I see little evidence that black Americans at the time of the writing of the novel were significantly being held back by racism, the proximate cause of the secession.
