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VarleyLog

We Bought a Tesla!

Here’s what happened. Lee came across what looked like a tiny, yellowing IOU at the bottom of some ancient records. It was from the Tooth Fairy, and she said she was a little short of cash and would pay me a dime the next night. It was dated May 8, 1954. I was seven! She’s still in business, you know, the Tooth Fairy, so Lee tracked her down and demanded payment. The old biddy was not ...

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Looking Back

A Hallowood Hollyween

We had a lot of fun last Halloween at the West Hollywood street party, which happens on about mile of Santa Monica Boulevard and features some of the wildest costumes you’ll ever see, some by make-up professionals, many by WH’s vast gay community. Last year we arrived quite early, when nothing much was happening, and stuck around for a few hours. I recall it took us a while, but we ...

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Novels

Irontown Blues

A new noir science fiction novel from a master of science fiction set in the Eight Worlds series about a detective on the hunt for biohackers who have created a dangerous new disease.

Christopher Bach was a policeman in one of the largest Lunar cities when the A.I. Lunar Central Computer had a breakdown, known as the Big Glitch, but it turned out to be a larger war than ...

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Movie Reviews

The Jungle Book

This is the first of what I think of as the Big Three versions of the Kipling book (there are innumerably other versions), long before the Disney animation in 1967 and the CGI “live action” one in 2016. The star is Sabu, who I recall from The Thief of Baghdad. It was made by the Korda brothers, Zoltan, Alexander, and Vincent, during the period when the war forced ...

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Short Fiction

Retrograde Summer

In the varied landscapes of Mercury, the truths about family might be more fluid than mercury.

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Titan: An Overview

A Short Overview of Titan

Here's a very short but quite impressive video made by Jean-Paul Verne, a fly-through of Gaea from my trilogy. M. Verne wants to be involved if a movie ever gets made. Over the years many, many people have written to me wishing these books would be made into a movie. Naturally, I'd like that, too. Let's hope this is not as close as we'll ever get.

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Accidental Hippies

Accidental Hippies

Sometime not long after my high school graduation I was studying at Michigan State University when my long-time girlfriend dumped me. I entered such a state of depression that I could not continue in college. So I dropped out and decided to hit the road with Chris Kingsley, my best friend in the world. Chris had much more experience of life on the road than I did, had actually hitched to ...

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