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
Dick Wolf Gets a STAR
When: Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 11:30 a.m.
Location: 7040 Hollywood Blvd, west of Orange Drive.
Comment: Wolf’s least favorite of more than 350 episodes, up to this point, is the one in which the daughter of Det. Lennie Briscoe (played by Jerry Orbach) gets killed by a drug dealer. “It was exactly what the show wasn’t, but Jerry has pled for ...
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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 ...
More details »Movie Reviews
28 Weeks Later
(2007) Here’s a sequel that subscribes to the “The last was one pretty bloody, so let’s make this one even bloodier” school of sequel-making. 28 Days Later was pretty good until the last twenty minutes, when it degenerated into a ho-hum bloodbath. So they started this one with a bloodbath, and had another every twenty minutes. You begin to wonder how these ...
More details »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 ...
More details »Short Fiction
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
There are many lessons to learn, and many ways to learn them.
PBS turned “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” into a 3-(out of 10)-Star, made-for-TV movie starring Raul Julia.
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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