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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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Novels

The Golden Globe

All the universe is a stage, and Sparky Valentine is its itinerant thespian–and a wanted man. His galactic roamings are bringing him closer to home, closer to justice–and closer to the truth of his strange and prolonged existence.

– Ingram

There’s a lot of humor … plenty of theatrical ...

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Movie Reviews

Rope

Some years later, even Hitchcock admitted that this movie was a stunt. And it is, but it’s an interesting one. The whole film was shot in just ten long takes, and an attempt is made to disguise most of the cuts. It was a practical matter. That’s as much film as could be loaded into a camera of the day. And it posed all sorts of problems. Walls and prop furniture had to be on rollers so the ...

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Collections

Picnic on Nearside

Varley’s second story collection, originally published as The Barbie Murders and Other Stories in 1980.

Picnic on Nearside won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Single-Author Collection.

The title story, “Picnic ...

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Short Fiction

Manikins

Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t after you, and you might be right.

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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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