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 ...
More details »Looking Back
Dog Pound to the Stars
Sid Grauman built the Chinese Theater, his third Los Angeles movie palace (after the Million Dollar in 1918 and the Egyptian in 1922), in 1926. The Million Dollar degenerated over the years and is only now coming back as a venue for Spanish theater. The Egyptian had been closed for years and had holes in the roof before a cinema society bought it for a dollar and committed to restore it. ...
More details »Novels
The Ophiuchi Hotline
Varley’s first novel. Cover by Boris Vallejo.
After the effortless capture of Earth by vastly superior aliens, humanity is forced to fight for existence on the Moon and other lumps of airless rock. The invention of the Hotline–a constant stream of data from a star in the constellation Ophiuchus–facilitates survival and enables the ...
More details »Movie Reviews
Shutter Island
It’s going to be hard to write very much about this. I don’t think it’s any secret that the ending is quite a large surprise, and I won’t say anything more about it than that it is a surprise. But I got the surprise by reading the book, both when it was new and a few months ago to refresh my memory. And while I was watching I was struck that, subjectively, there are two movies here. Sort ...
More details »Collections
Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories
“This stellar collection by John Varley contains eleven provocative, utterly distinctive stories and novellas. None of them are currently available in any other book. Some have been unavailable in any form for twenty-five years or more. The result is a publishing event that no admirer of Varley—or of first-rate imaginative fiction—can afford to miss.
“The ...
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Short Fiction
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.
More details »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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