Frank M. Robinson: A Must-Read SF Author

FRANK ROBINSON AND HARVEY MILK

For many years, I knew of Frank M. Robinson (1926-2014) as the highly gifted speechwriter of gay rights visionary, Harvey Milk. In tapes recorded by Harvey before his death by assassination in 1978, he spoke of Robinson as the one person who was most familiar with his thinking and as his first choice to replace him on the Board of Supervisors. Yet we have even more to thank Frank beyond his critical role in polishing up Harvey’s inspiring Hope Speech.

A GREAT SF WRITER

Frank was also, as I discovered a few weeks ago, a truly great science fiction writer. His beautifully crafted mind-bending stories have all the excitement of a thriller combined with the thoughtfulness of a philosopher. They hold up well beside the best of the golden age sf, often with a queer slant, and once read, stay with you forever. No less a great than William Gibson is a committed Frank M. Robinson fan.

THE POWER

I would like to highlight two of Robinson’s outstanding novels, The Power and The Dark Beyond the Stars, written more than thirty years apart. The Power, published in 1956 and later a 1968 movie, is in the great pulp tradition as a soft-sf thriller involving a search for an Übermensch killer who can perform telekinesis and much more. I could not stop reading this book until I finished it and enjoyed the numerous twists, even when they were at times predictable. There is an updated version of The Power published in 2000, but I strongly recommend you read the original.

THE DARK BEYOND THE STARS

The Power was a fun read. But The Dark Beyond the Stars, which came out in 1991, is a masterpiece. A winner of a Lambda Literary Award and a New York Times Notable Book, it is a well-researched hard sf generational space opera that left me gasping with awe and which many have compared with Heinlein. The book opens with a seemingly young man named Sparrow who believes he has been in a near-fatal accident while exploring a planet for signs of alien life and has no memories prior to the accident.

Sparrow lives on a ship, The Astron, that has been traveling for two thousand years in search of other galactic beings, captained by an immortal man who refuses to stop the mission even though the crew is yet to discover any form of life other than on Earth. Over time, the many generations of crew members have developed their own culture, which include highly realistic VR experiences and different types of names for each generation. The crew are essentially pansexual and some of them are poly in groups of three and four.

The greater part of the novel focuses on Sparrow exploring the mystery of his past, which is incredible in its own right but as he more deeply goes down the rabbit hole, he discovers much that is both fascinating and chilling. At the same time, he works closely with many of the other crew members, both friend and enemy, and eventually joins forces with those who wish to form a mutiny. Their goal is to prevent the Captain from entering a region known as The Dark which would destroy the already decrepit ship and instead have The Astron return to Earth.

With memorable characters, fantastic world building, a gripping and thrilling plot, excellent science, and raising critical philosophical questions, The Dark Beyond the Stars gave me the same level of enjoyment I got from reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, but with a much more compelling space opera. As with The Power, there are twists upon twists, some which I could predict, but with an ending that completely surprised me. This is truly the best sf I have read in decades. Content Warnings: Rape (not depicted graphically) and a culture in which crew members must agree to having sex the first time asked.

READ AND BUY FRANK ROBINSON’S BOOKS

Sadly, Frank’s books are out of print. But you can easily get at least some of them from online stores like Alibris or request them through interlibrary loan at your favorite library. Some online reviewers have spoken about trying to get them published on Kindle. If enough of us make a fuss, we could bring about a much-needed Frank M. Robinson revival. Other books you may enjoy include a series of volumes he co-wrote with Thomas N. Scortia, such as The Glass Inferno, which was combined with another book to become the 1974 movie, The Towering Inferno.