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
Novels
Steel Beach
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Set in a future where humanity, expelled from the Earth by the alien Invaders, now lives in artificial habitats on the moon, Mars and other planets. Advanced technologies ensure a fairly effortless and secure life–almost any injury or disease is curable; people can change their features or even their gender with an afternoon of painless surgery. But all is not well on ...
Movie Reviews
The Power of Few
This was an experimental film that was supposed to be interactive, reaching all the way back to 2006. You went online and helped in the casting and the editing, somehow. I’ve never been much taken with interactive stuff, going all the way back to some paperbacks that included multiple endings. To me, if you have a story to tell, tell it. We watched the first two segments and it was clear ...
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The Persistence of Vision
This is Varley’s first story collection — a multiple award winner. It won the Locus Award and the Prix Apollo for Best Single Author Collection. The title story also won a Locus Award and a Hugo and a Nebula. Five other stories were near awards.
PBS turned “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” into a 3-(out of ...
More details »Short Fiction
In Fading Suns and Dying Moons
Fermi asked of extraterrestrials, “Where is everybody?” Perhaps we might not want to know.
More details »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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