VarleyLog
The Phantom of Kansas
Back in our Bicentennial year of 1976 I wrote a novelette titled “The Phantom of Kansas.” I was pleased with it, and even happier when it made the final Hugo Award ballot. There it lost to, appropriately enough, Isaac Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man.” It has been suggested by some that my story would have won except for A) the fact that I had two stories on the ballot in that category that ...
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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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Now You See Me 2
Wouldn’t you think it would make more sense to call this sequel Now You Don’t? It just seems such an unimaginative way to name a film, sticking a number on the back. But I guess they want to make sure you know this relates to a previous hit.
If anything, I liked this one a little better than the first. As before, the tricks are based on real principles of ...
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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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News
IRONTOWN BLUES
It’s six years after I was included on io9’s list of 12 Unfinished SF Novels We Wish We Could Read, and I am finally at work on IRONTOWN BLUES! I hope to have it finished by the end of the year, and it should see print sometime in 2016.
July 11, 2015
Vancouver, WA
Featured Short Fiction
Featured Film
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
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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