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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

Jules Verne in the Last Remaining Seats

Awhile back we had an eventful 10 days. First, we joined the Los Angeles Conservancy, an organization dedicated to saving what scraps of history remain in this town after the developers have been tearing stuff down for 50 years. It’s too late for the historic Ambassador Hotel, as seen in The Graduate and almost 100 other movies, the place where Bobby Kennedy was ...

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Novels

Dark Lightning

Dark Lightning is the fourth and last in my Thunder and Lightning series.

Cassandra Ann and Pollyanna Sue are 18-year-old identical twins from an illustrious family. Their great-grandparents were among the first people to land on Mars. Their grandparents fought in the wars to keep Mars free. Their mother, Podkayne, is a famous ...

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Movie Reviews

The Legend of Zorro

We’re such determined drive-in goers that we will pop the corn, buy the Subway sandwiches, and tootle off to one of our two local places even if the outlook is bad. It sure was bad last night, but we went anyway … (The second feature was The Fog.)

I had forgotten that Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones had made one of these before, back in ...

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Collections

The John Varley Reader

The John Varley Reader is a representative collection of 18 of the science fiction short stories by John Varley, first published in paperback in September 2004. It features five new stories. Each story is preceded by an autobiographical introduction; until this book Varley had avoided discussing himself, or his works, in print.

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Short Fiction

Picnic on Nearside

We all change as we grow up, but some changes…

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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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