VarleyLog
2,000,000 Stars
Whenever I’m tempted to think that humans will someday create a “galactic empire,” I take a look at this.
This is the nearest 2,026,095 stars in our galaxy. Bear in mind that the galaxy is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 BILLION stars. This is just the local neighborhood, just our ...
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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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The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson was the best of the new hard-boiled writers of the ‘50s. He’s sort of the Philip K. Dick of the paperback crime novel: Fairly prolific, not much appreciated while he was alive, “discovered” later. So sad. Several good films have been made from his books, including The Grifters, from an Oscar-nominated script by Donald E. Westlake.
This was ...
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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 blues
Penguin House has just informed me of a new publication date for Irontown Blues. It is now scheduled to appear in August 28, 2018. Fifteen months away. I’m very sorry to have to tell you all this, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Vancouver, WA
May 31, 2017
Featured Short Fiction
The Barbie Murders
We all want to be part of the crowd, but we all want to be unique. Sometimes the tension can be lethal.
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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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