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
Part 2: The Loneliest Place in America
We stayed one night at the Diamond D motel in Delta, Utah. Small as it was, it was the largest town for maybe a hundred miles. It had wide, wide streets. In most of the years since 1776, when some Spanish friars became the first white men ever to visit what the maps call the Sevier Desert, the land hadn’t been worth much, so why be stingy when surveying for streets? We had to cross the ...
More details »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
Ratatouille
Ratatouille (2007) Here is a movie that is exactly what I’ve come to expect from Pixar … and that’s a good thing. I wonder if ever, in the history of motion pictures, a studio has had a string of hits like this:
Worldwide Gross (rounded off)
Toy Story
$362,000,000
A Bug’s Life
$363,000,000
...
Collections
Superheroes
Superheroes is an anthology edited by John Varley and Ricia Mainhardt of superhero stories written by some of today’s top fantasy and science fiction writers, with an introduction by Varley. These modern-day heroes champion justice in an age where good and bad aren’t always black and white. Varley’s story: “Truth, Justice and the ...
More details »Short Fiction
Truth, Justice and the Politically Correct Socialist Path
An infant who might have become Clark Kent came to Earth in Stalinist USSR, instead becoming Kyril Kentarovsky with Murphy’s Law in overdrive.
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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