The Star Dancers

by Spider Robinson, Jeanne Robinson

Leaving the Earth, where her unusually tall frame prevents her from having a successful dancing career, Shara creates a new form of dance in the weightlessness of space, where years later she is joined by another dancer of genius. Original.

Genres: Science Fiction

496 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author. He was born in the USA, but chose to live in Canada, and gained citizenship in his adopted country in 2002.

Robinson's writing career began in 1972 with a sale to Analog Science Fiction magazine of a story entitled, The Guy With The Eyes. His writing proved popular, and his first novel saw print in 1976, Telempath. Since then he has averaged a novel (or collection) a year. His most well known stories are the Callahan saloon series.

Reviews

[Neeuqdrazil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always cry while reading this book.

Not from sadness, but from joy.

Goodness, love, connection, truth... all are possible. All are present in all of us, we just have to let go and accept them.

"This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving - and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.
This is what it is to be human: to persist."

This quote, from the end of the first piece of the first novel, has always spoken to me. It makes me smile, inside and out, every time I read it.

We live. We love. We create.

Thank you, Spider and Jeanne. Thank you for reminding me, every time I read this, that humanity can be beautiful. That art is valuable. And that saints surround us.

[Richard Pulfer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Star Dancers" is a collection of two novellas from Spider Robinson and his wife Jeanne - Stardance and Starseed. The first novella "Stardance" follows Shara, a gifted dancer shunned for being too big. This part required a little suspension of disbelief. At six feet tall, Shara is described as practically Amazonian and "having the body of Venus de Milo". In an era of "Dancing with the Stars", it's a little hard to imagine someone with that description unable to get work as a professional dancer. Then again, this was written well over forty years ago so . . . in any case Shara goes to space with her camera man Charlie (the story's POV and a former dancer himself), where she must contend with a lecherous businessman financing her endeavors of Zero-G dance. This is interrupted by an unexpected phenomenon which points the story in a vastly different direction.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story, in particular Stardance, and how it explored the nature of dancing in a sci-fi setting. I found Starseed to be serviceable - it might done well on its own, but back to back with Stardance, it didn't quite hold the spark of the original. Still, it's a very recommended omnibus.

[Jason Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the science fiction and artistic heart of this piece. So much fun to read.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published as two books. Shara Drummond is an amazing dancer, but she doesn’t fit a typical dancer’s form—she’s tall and curvy. So she goes into space and develops a new dance form which results in the creation of the Stardancers. A life-form is also discovered that will enable dancers to live in space without any mechanical or technological aides.

Years later, Rain M’Cloud also goes to space to dance because gravity has destroyed her back and knees. There are thousands of Stardancers now and she gets embroiled in a plot to destroy them. However, her courage and her dancer’s gifts keep her strong so she can achieve symbiosis and do what she most loves—dance.