May – June 2023
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon introduces a group of people who support each other in handling their problems and celebrating their joys. In this and later books they go beyond this to actual group telepathic communication. In Callahan’s Keys they show their commitment to each other by all moving out-of-state together when local laws and the abuse of them prevented them from meeting together where they were.
According to Spider’s biographical material, many of the metaphysical as well as the group related experiences come from his real-life ones with his expanded family and close friends during the ‘60s in Haight Ashbury.
The Lady Callahan books are definitely Poly as committed couples share their partners with customers of this high-class brothel/ international diplomacy center. The “artists” who work there have relationships with the Lady herself, other artists (some of which include legal marriage), etc. Lady Callahan’s place could itself be considered a group house since the artists and some of their partners actually do live there.
Spider’s Star Dance series features very unusually configured group marriages — combining extra-terrestrials with humans, gays with straights who share mental “intercourse”, etc. Eventually his proposed intentional Family includes the whole human race, past, present and future.
Spider has written many other stories with incidental poly themes in fictional worlds where it is assumed any choice of whom and how many you love is OK. He has been called the new Heinlein by many. How can we use this information in our own group living and multiple committed relationship efforts?