Though I'm a long time fan of Spider Robinson, I managed to miss his novel Very Bad Deaths (2004) until I stumbled across it in my public library. I immediately snatched it up, took it home, gobbled it up, and largely enjoyed it, though I rolled my eyes a few times at some incipient Spiderisms.

It was with equal lack of grace that I tripped over Robinson's Very Hard Choices (2008), another novel set, as the title structure suggests, in the same narrative universe. I repeated the snatch/take/gobble process ... but enjoyed this novel considerably less. Taken together, both the successes and failures of these books point to some of Robinson's defining characteristics.

First, the positives: Very Bad Deaths took Robinson in several new directions, and revisited older ones in pleasant and useful ways. Set in 2003, the story opens with alacrity, and proceeds with style. Depressed-to-the-point-of-suicide columnist Russell "Slim" Walker is alone in his workspace late at night, wallowing in his pain, when suddenly there's a knock at the door of his isolated home on a small island in British Columbia. It is Russell's old roommate from college, Zandor Zudenigo, a fleshy math genius who Russell hadn't seen in years. Zandor quickly demonstrates that he a telepath, something Russell had long intuitively known about his old roommate. However, he's not there because he's telepathic; he's there to recruit Russell because Zandor caught a brief telepathic glimpse of the mind of the greatest serial killer of all time, a man who lives for pain and is very gifted at it. The killer's planning to torture and slaughter a family, and Zandor needs help. Are you in, Russell?

Russell is, of course, in, and a wonderfully winding narrative ensues in which Robinson revisits the college scene of the early sixties with love, speculates on the causes and effects of telepathy, allows Russell to engage in self-reflection, and oh yes, follows Russell, Zandor, and Constable Nika Mandic, the female cop they recruit, into an attempt to track down and deal with this terrifying killer.

It's a fun mystery: the investigating trio—largely duo, since being near other people hurts Zandor due to his telepathy—are well-meaning, ill-matched, and complete amateurs at thinking like a serial killer. That characteristic is, if you think about it, a good thing, and part of what marks them as good people. Is a good person able to really face the horrific? To spent a lot of time contemplating pain? Only rarely, and even then, it often isn't voluntary.

Robinson's characters are likewise pleasantly drawn. At times they are convincing—it makes fair sense that uncontrolled telepathy would hurt a sensitive telepath, especially if he's a moral man—and when they aren't, they are entertaining spectacles. For example, while they were in college, Zandor cultivated the world's worst body odor to keep people at bay and cut down on his psychic pain. Walker's descriptions of this stench are pure fun, going on at length like a Mark Twain yarn. Each of the heroes has at least one major vulnerability; these establish roadblocks and interpersonal tension, and demand growth and interaction.

The story's pace blends rollercoaster with Sunday drive: Robinson goes on extended but enjoyable digressions at times, characterizing Slim through his sexual desire, his pride, etc. Other times, though, he's in full control of the reader's tension, and the final chapters are marvelously full of confrontation, trial, torture, and reverses. When Very Bad Deaths ends, the devil in human form is (spoiler alert) dead, the telepath in retreat from pain and shame over his part in the death, and Russell and Nika in only sporadic and not fully comfortable communication. Everything is wrapped up except for Zandor's telepathic promise that he'll come out of seclusion only when he's ready, and for Russell's line that Nika's "career began an upward climb that continued for a while. Right up until the next time we found ourselves working together."

Fast forward, then, to 2008's Very Hard Choices. This novel starts in 2007, following a new character, Charles Harden, as he heads from the United States into Canada. His thoughts are dark and cynical. He often comments on how unready the Canadians are for violence, terrorism, or even, it seems, self-assertion. After establishing the threat heading towards them, Robinson then cuts to Russell's home, where he's entertaining his angry PR man son Jesse. Their relationship is difficult, and the conversation is further complicated by the arrival of Nika Mandic, who lets Russell know that someone seems to know about their earlier adventure. Through a stretched coincidence, Jesse manages to overhear them...about the same time he points out a cutting edge surveillance device on Nika's car.

In other words, the book starts well. In Very Bad Deaths Robinson established beyond all down how depraved people can be, and that shadow darkens the new book immediately. Very Bad Deaths' killer had been, in addition to evil, skilled with electronic surveillance and quite gifted with computers. He had hoped and planned to share his depraved gifts with others, giving them better tools for pain. Readers would have every reason to think the new person following our band of heroes is from the fraternity of pain.

However, after this promising start, Robinson largely loses his way. There are three reasons for this. The first is that the speculations Robinson indulges in about things like the nature of consciousness are much closer to the "As you know" expository dumps from early pulp science fiction than the speculation in the first book. They aren't quite that bad, but specific contemporary thinkers are named (Dennett on consciousness) and applied. In other words, we're shown, not told.

Second, while Robinson rides his hobbyhorses in the first book (yes, we understand—pot is good), they largely fit Russell Walker's character. A funky guy from the sixties is going to believe in the power of drugs and music. In Very Hard Choices, they get a bit odder. For example, is it likely that the same character would use the term "Mordor" (taken from The Lord of the Rings) to refer to both advertising/PR work and the Ukraine? Are both really the realms of evil?

The final reason this novel isn't as good as Very Bad Deaths is one much closer to the heart of Robinson's values, and one that shows up in several of his novels: it's harder to make a scene in which someone persuades another person as dramatic as scenes in which people are tortured and fight to the death. A subtler problem is that since Robinson had been following Charles Harden closely off and on throughout the book, readers know how completely his thoughts are oriented towards predation. Combine that with the history Zandor shares about Harden's prior involvement with government investigations into ESP, and Robinson has successfully established Harden as a Bad Guy.

This means, quite simply, that there's a sense of anticlimax to the final scenes in Very Hard Choices that is quite profound. I also simply didn't believe it at first; I waited for this to be an extended ploy to lull the heroes into a false sense of security. Nope. They've got a would-be recruit: an extremely smart, extremely lethal senior citizen with a lifetime of experience in intelligence wants to help them save the world. This is part of the issue, too. Stopping a serial killer is a clear act of virtue. Solving the entire human race's problems means agreeing on what they are, and how to act together. That means these final scenes include political statements that sometimes work to characterize people, but often pull the novel into contention, sliding into preaching at times.

In both books, Robinson is grappling with real problems. In both books, he gives credible near-future science fiction that blends a genuine unexplained leap—telepathy—with intelligent discussion of both contemporary technology and ongoing human dilemmas. But in the differences between these two books he demonstrates the difficulties involved in shifting from violent virtue to peaceful negotiation, and from clear human morality to more ambiguous political ethical issues.

Greg Beatty lives with his wife in Bellingham, Washington, where he tries, unsuccessfully to stay dry. He writes everything from children's books to essays about his cooking debacles. He has a particular fondness for speculative poetry; he won the 2005 Rhysling Award. Greg recently published his first poetry chapbook. Titled Phrases of the Moon, it is available from Spec House. For more information on Greg's writing, visit http://gregbeatty.net.