VarleyLog
Third Time
At 10:34 AM yesterday a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, where we watched several launches when we lived on the Central Coast of California. It was a Falcon 9 rocket that had already been used (twice!) and it was about as perfect as a rocket launch and landing could be. There were 64 satellites aboard, most of them about the size of a microwave oven. The first stage ...
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Irontown Blues
A new noir science fiction novel from a master of science fiction set in the Eight Worlds series about a detective on the hunt for biohackers who have created a dangerous new disease.
Christopher Bach was a policeman in one of the largest Lunar cities when the A.I. Lunar Central Computer had a breakdown, known as the Big Glitch, but it turned out to be a larger war than ...
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Latest Movie Review
Only the Brave
Sadly and ironically, as I write this most of the citizens of the little town of Redding, California, pop. 89,861, are being evacuated before what is known as the Carr fire, which has already obliterated several neighborhoods. One of those evacuees is Valerie, one of our friend Dean Ing’s daughters. Dean has been writing about how to survive catastrophes for a long, long time, and now 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
An Interview with John Varley
I recently was interviewed by email by Kermit Woodall, of Amazing Stories. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I hadn’t known it was still being published, if only online. But now there is actually a print edition, starting in Fall 2018! That’s a span of 92 years (with some interruptions) since Hugo Gernsback published the first issue, in April ...
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The Bellman
Someone once asked Benjamin Franklin “What possible use are balloons?” He answered with a question, “What use is a newborn baby?” Here are many answers…
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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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