VarleyLog
My Two Eclipses
In the very early hours of February 26, 1979, I was on the road with some friends, heading north from Eugene, Oregon, in a driving rain, hoping to see a total solar eclipse. We had our maps and I had my nice little 4-inch refracting telescope in the car, but the odds seemed against us. It was really pouring, and the forecast was not good. We pulled into the little town of Goldendale, ...
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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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Brassed Off
The finest experience of my high school life was being in the Nederland High School Band, the Golden Pride of the Golden Triangle …
… that would be Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, Texas. Nederland is right in the middle of that triangle, and as I write this, the whole area is still mostly underwater from Hurricane Harvey. It’s not only Houston that is drowning, and in fact some ...
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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
Retrograde Summer
In the varied landscapes of Mercury, the truths about family might be more fluid than mercury.
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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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