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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

The Launch Diary: AURA Satellite

MONDAY NIGHT. Actually, Tuesday morning, 1:30 AM. We get up and wander around. I’m awake, not having actually slept. Lee brews her coffee. What with one thing and another, we get out the door at about 2:10. There is a low cloud layer. Very low: the searchlight from the nearby private airport sweeps by every 30 seconds, a solid beam of light. Very soon we are ...

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Novels

Steel Beach

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 ...

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Movie Reviews

Walking With Monsters/ Walking With Dinosaurs/ Walking With Beasts

On one of Larry Niven’s Known Space worlds there is a creature called the runforit. I’ve always loved this critter. You don’t need to describe it, and as far as I can remember Larry doesn’t. The name says it all. It was named after what the person who first saw it immediately said: “Run for it!” I’ve always wondered if there were similarly named creatures somewhere in Known Space. Beasts ...

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Collections

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 ...

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Short Fiction

Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe

Ever want to get away from it all? Traveling to faraway places is not the only possibility.

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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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