Born in the Bronx, New York City, Spider Robinson: Bio Robinson attended Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the 1960s, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English. While at Stony Brook, Spider earned a reputation as a great entertainer at campus coffeehouses and gatherings, strumming his guitar and singing in harmony with his female partner. In his 20s, he "spent several years in the woods, deliberately trying to live without technology." In 1971, just out of college, he got a night job guarding sewers in New York City.. He wrote his first published science fiction story, "The Guy with The Eyes", to get out of that job. In 1975 he married his wife Jeanne, a choreographer, dancer, and Soto Zen monk, who co-wrote his Stardance Trilogy. They have a daughter Terri, who once worked for Martha Stewart.

Robinson has lived in Canada for the past 30 years, primarily in the provinces of Nova Scotia and British Columbia. He formerly lived in "an upscale district of Vancouver for a decade," and has lived on Bowen Island since approximately 1999. He became a Canadian citizen in 2002, retaining his American citizenship. Spider and Jeanne's first grandchild, Marisa, was born in 2009, as Jeanne was undergoing treatment for "a rare and virulent form of biliary cancer". Jeanne Robinson died May 30, 2010.

Robinson made his first short-story sale in 1972 to Analog Science Fiction magazine. The story, "The Guy With The Eyes" (Analog February 1973), was set in a bar called Callahan's Place; Robinson would, off-and-on, continue to write stories about the denizens of Callahan's into the 21st century. Robinson made several short-story sales to Analog, Galaxy Science Fiction magazine and others, and worked as a book reviewer for Galaxy magazine during the mid-to-late 1970s. In 1978—79 he contributed book reviews to the original anthology series Destinies.

Robinson's first published novel, Telempath (1976), was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella "By Any Other Name". The first edition had cover art by 'Powers'. Over the following three decades, Robinson on average released a book a year, including short story anthologies. In 1996—2005, he served as a columnist in the Op-Ed section (and briefly in the technology section) of the Globe and Mail.

In 2004, he pronounced himself "overjoyed" to begin working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Robert A. Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The book, titled Variable Star, was released on September 19, 2006. Robinson has always made his admiration for Heinlein very clear; in an afterword to Variable Star he recounts the story of how on his first visit to a public library a librarian named Ruth Siegel "changed my life completely" by sizing up the child in front of her and handing him a copy of the Heinlein juvenile novel Rocket Ship Galileo, after which "the first ten books I ever read in my life were by Robert Heinlein, and they were all great."

Robinson is also an admirer of mystery writer John D. MacDonald. Lady Sally McGee, from the Callahan's series, is apparently named in honor of Travis McGee, the central character in MacDonald's mystery novels. The lead character in Lady Slings The Booze frequently refers to Travis McGee as a role model. In Callahan's Key the patrons make a visit to the marina near Fort Lauderdale where the Busted Flush was usually moored in the McGee series. On Robinson's website there is a photo of him "at the address (now demolished) of 'The Busted Flush,' home of John D. MacDonald’s immortal character Travis McGee: Slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale FL." Similarly important to Robinson is writer Donald E. Westlake and Westlake's most famous character, John Archibald Dortmunder.

Between the end of Chapter 5 and the start of Chapter 6 in Robinson's novel Lifehouse (1997) is a list of the aliases used by a con man character, containing an impressive number of cultural references (including McGee, Dortmunder, and several Heinlein characters, plus other SF and popular fiction allusions). One subtlety is the inclusion in the list of aliases that were aliases for other people, either real or fictional: James Tiptree, Jr, the pen name used by SF writer Alice Sheldon, and "Sebastian Tombs," which was an alias often adopted by the character "Simon Templar" in many novels by Leslie Charteris.

Robinson's stance may be described as humanistic and humorous. He has frequently encouraged a positive attitude towards world issues, claiming that a pessimistic world view will yield pessimistic results. Frequently in his writing, the conflicts center around a science fiction issue with a human solution, following Theodore Sturgeon's definition of a good science fiction story.

Stand-alone novels

• Telempath (New York: Berkley, 1976)
• Night of Power (1985)
• The Free Lunch (2001)
• Variable Star (2006)

The Russell Walker/Zandor Zudenigo/Nika Mandiç Mysteries

• Very Bad Deaths (2004)
• Very Hard Choices (2008)

The Deathkiller Trilogy

• Mindkiller (1982)
• Time Pressure (1987)
• Lifehouse (1997)

The Stardance Trilogy

Written in collaboration with his wife, Jeanne Robinson.

• Stardance (1979)
• Starseed (1991)
• Starmind (1995)
• The Star Dancers (1997) (omnibus edition of Stardance and Starseed)

The Callahan's Series

• Callahan's Place
• Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977)
• Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981) (contains several non-Callahan's stories as well)
• Callahan's Secret (1986)
• Callahan and Company (1988) - (omnibus edition of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Time Travelers Strictly Cash, and Callahan's Secret)
• The Callahan Chronicals (1997) - (retitled republication of Callahan and Company)
• Lady Sally's
• Callahan's Lady (1989)
• Lady Slings the Booze (1992)
• Kill the Editor (1991) - (an excerpt from Lady Slings the Booze, published in a special edition)
• Mary's Place
• The Callahan Touch (1993)
• Callahan's Legacy (1996)
• The Place
• Callahan's Key (2000)
• Callahan's Con (2003)
• Off the Wall at Callahan's (1994) - (a collection of quotes from other books in the series)

Short story collections

• Antinomy (1980)
• The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980) - (collection of works by other authors edited and introduced by Robinson)
• Melancholy Elephants (1984 - Canada; 1985 - United States)
• True Minds (1990)
• User Friendly (1998)
• By Any Other Name (2001)
• God Is an Iron and Other Stories (2002)

Discography

• Belabouring the Obvious (2000)

Collected essays

• The Crazy Years: Reflections of a Science Fiction Original (2004), a collection of his articles for The Globe and Mail