VarleyLog
Opportunity
Three days ago, on 2/13/19, NASA declared the Opportunity Mars rover mission to be over. They had not heard from it since June, and all efforts to revive it for one more trip were futile.
It landed on Mars in 2004. In a bit of cosmic luck, it landed, bounced, and rolled /dead center/ into a small crater that was later named Eagle Crater. The Mars Orbital Surveyor actually took ...
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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
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
The only reason I can see for some of the simply devastating reviews of this picture is what I’m calling the Mary Poppins effect. How dare they fuck with an icon like Mary/Tchaikovsky!
“Lovely to look at, easy to forget.”
“Empty but eye-popping.”
“Soulless.”
“Dreck.”
Some deranged butthead named Alonso Durande, in a review titled “This Sugarplum is ...
More details »Latest Collection
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
Ezvid Wiki, the World’s First Video Wiki
A few days ago an email arrived at the website from Caroline Eliasson. Subject: You’ve been chosen for a Wiki: 9 Phenomenal Sci-Fi Novels by Contemporary Authors. See it here. Ophiuchi Hotline is number one. I’m honored.
She wrote: “Some ...
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Featured Film
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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